To Washington--State, that is!

I always love to tend the grand kids when asked because it gives me the opportunity to spend more time with them since they all live so far away from us.  Kent and Natalie planned a trip to Hawaii for six days, so I flew to Washington to stay with Ethan and Ella.  George came up three days later.  I didn't take a lot of pictures, but wanted to record some of the special memories I'll have there:

I love staying in Cannon's room.  Although he never was able to sleep in here because his little bed was always beside his parents, this bedroom has everything that reminds us of Cannon.

 Natalie has done such a great job of placing the many items that touch your heart with memories of Cannon.  I especially love the tiny hand print in the little brown square above the "I love you to the moon and back" sign.  Cannon always had the softest little skin and we all loved to cuddle with him.

 So many special remembrances have been given from wonderful, loving family members and friends.

For two entire days, George and I were able to watch Ethan in the Martin Luther King Tournament held in Yakima.  We were in heaven.  It reminded us of the many hours we watched our five boys at their athletic events.  We loved it!

George was in his heyday as Ethan would always come up to George after a game and ask, "Now, what do I need to work on Grandpa?"  George coached our sons for so many years, and if truth be known, I know he would love to get back into coaching truly motivated kids like this again!

One of the games was on Sunday, but we were so proud of Ethan.  He chose to attend church instead, but fortunately his team won, so we continued to be undefeated when day three was played which was the semi-finals and finals on Monday.

And after three hard-fought days, Ethan's team, "The Rebels," came away with FIRST PLACE!!!

I don't think I've seen a group of young players play more as a team than this team did.   They are such good sports and work to get it off to the one in the best situation to score at that time.  No one tries to "showboat," because they work so well together!  That makes winners!

Yes, Grandpa and I were pretty proud of our Ethan boy!

And Ella was such a great "helper" girl.  I really appreciated all she did to help me out at home.

 And I definitely saw this a lot as I dropped Ella off to her dance lessons which she takes three or four nights a week.  Wish I could have taken pictures of the dance class, but parents (and grandparents) can only sit on chairs in the lobby and watch on a tiny little TV.  When she would come home, we would work on skills that she needed a little extra help with such as cartwheels and back bends.  Although I can't do them myself, we worked on them from tutorials on the internet.  Thank goodness for those!  One night, Ethan decided to show Ella how easy cartwheels were.  Ella and I had a pretty good laugh about his attempts.  Yes, he may be able to hit three-pointers from anywhere, but he definitely needs more work on his cartwheels!  Hah!

As you can see, we had a great time in Washington with Kent and Natalie's kids.  We were able to spend about a day and a half with Kent and Natalie after they got back, then we headed for the airport nine days later, getting up at 4:00 a.m. to make the 6:00 a.m. flight home.