We started things off on Saturday by decorating hard boiled eggs. Gavin started with a nice multicolored egg, but with his second egg moved into the dunking phase. He kept dunking his egg, and hand, into each color for a good 30 minutes until they we’re both a nice dark green/purple color.

On Sunday morning Gavin woke up and found a surprise from the Easter bunny!

After he loaded up on candy he was ready to go on an egg hunt! The Easter bunny hid eggs all around and Gavin ran around searching and gathering them up. This year was his first real Easter egg hunt, and he loved it!

Chanin worked her usual magic in the kitchen and whipped up deviled eggs, potato cheese casserole, green beans with bacon, honey glazed ham, green salad with homemade dressing and rolls. Later, we finished it off with strawberry shortcake. Mmmmm…

We had a nice Easter and our little guy had a lot of fun!

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We rushed the little guy out of bed and bundled him up in many layers of clothing (long undies, warm pants, sweater, winter coat, scarf, mittens, and snow boots).

Gavin had a blast playing in the snow and I had fun throwing little snow balls at him! The word on the street is that tonight/tomorrow we’re going to get even more snow, and they’re recommending that everyone stay home!

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We hopped aboard the little plane and taxied out to the “runway.”   The runway always changes and is dependent on the boat traffic on the lake.

Once the Captain saw a break in the traffic he revved up the engine and we were soon airborne!

We flew the route below, but not in the same order.  Overall, we got a really nice birds eye view of the city and surrounding areas.

After the flight we made our way to Ray’s Boathouse for dinner and an amazing view.  Between the two of us we enjoyed salad, salmon, sablefish, a crab cake, sturgeon, nutella mouse cake, Caramel Pot de Crème (basically fancy caramel custard), a brewski, a fancy cocktail, and coffee.   Mmmmm, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

We had a great time celebrating our 5th Anniversary and are looking forward to many more!

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Enjoy sharing in our memories below…

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I ordered the 1/2 rack of baby backs with fried pickles, hush puppies, and a Deschutes Twilight Summer Ale to wash it all down.  Chanin ordered the “Who’s Your Mama” with a side of Brunswick Stew.  The “Who’s your mama” is a humongous pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw piled on top.  Both the ribs and pulled pork were smoked perfectly and very tasty (all smoking is done on site with fruit woods).   All of the sides were very good as well, with the hush puppies being the unexpected favorite.  They were fried up just right and had a hint of jalapeno in the batter.  Little Gavin munched on home-made french fries and sweet corn bread.  YUM!

Eatin’ ribs with my two favorite people while overlooking Lake Washington on a Sunday afternoon.  You can’t ask for a better Father’s Day than that!

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Another lovely perk I received from my ever-so-snug brace, was the inability to overeat.  With the constant compressing embrace of my reinforcing friend, I was regularly reminded of when I should put my fork down and stop stuffing my face.  Putting it simply, making a glutton of myself ceased to be an option, and I was forced to eat smaller meals throughout the day.  This may not seem like a hard endeavor for most people, but when my mom was here cooking up a storm of all my favorite recipes, it was agonizing at times.  My mom makes the best buttermilk waffles with homemade syrup ever!

So, now that I’m free, there are a lot of things I’m looking forward to getting back to.  Of course, I will have to take things slowly and limit myself quite a bit, but I’m just excited that I can now give Gavin soft, “real” Mommy hugs.  I love my baby so much!  I’m also actually looking forward to helping James out a lot more with the chores around the house, and cooking big meals again for the family and then cleaning up the mess I make in the kitchen myself.  I’m so very thankful to both James and my mom for helping me get these seemingly simple, but necessary, things done during these last few months.  Never once did either of them complain to me about the stress these tasks must have added to their daily routines.  Thank you again Mom and James.  I love you both tons!

And lastly, on a simpler note, I am just really looking forward to once again dressing in normal clothing.  No more big baggy pants that fit over my brace and tight, spandex shirts to fit under it.  Yay… I get to be me again!

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Chanin’s donor is a hero, and we even named our son’s middle name after him (Timothy) in his honor.  You can be a hero too!  Many people don’t want to think about death, but please just think about the following.  Any one of us could be involved in a fatal accident tomorrow.  Imagine if the very same day, or shortly thereafter, a person who was on the brink of death was brought back to life because of one of our organs.  It might be a sick child, a college student, a mother of 4, a grandfather, etc.  That person could go on living, working, celebrating holidays, driving the kids to soccer practice, singing, dancing (and much more) ALL BECAUSE you decided to donate some organs that you no longer needed.

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How else can you save someone’s life so easily?  Imagine your lungs allowing someone else to breathe, or your heart continuing to beat long after you’re gone.  What better way for your legacy to live on?

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I think the biggest reasons for people choosing not to donate are 1)  myths 2) people not expressing their wishes to their family.  I won’t go into organ donation myths here but you can read about them on the Mayo Clinic site <-click.  I will say that they are called “myths” for a reason and that organ donation is almost always portrayed the wrong way in TV/Movies.

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So, now are you going to talk to your family about organ donation and sign up to be a donor?  If you have chosen not to be a donor I have one last question.  If you found out a donated organ would enable you, your mother/father, or your child to continue living would you accept it, or let them pass on?  If you’d accept it then you owe it to society to be an organ donor also.  If you have religious reasons then this site has some excellent information.

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As of 5:26pm today there are 108,860 people waiting for the gift of life.  Doesn’ t the “gift of life” have a nice ring to it?  How does that compare to the last big gift you gave someone, which was probably a Snuggie Dog last Christmas?  Do the right thing!

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-james

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p.s. If you’ve signed up and/or talked to your family about your wished to donate your organs let us know in the comments!  Also, if you have any questions about the process Chanin would welcome them.