Heat Wave and the First Week of Summer

It has been a little too warm here in the PNW, without A/C it makes the warm days a little uncomfortable but we are making the best of it. Not complaining really, but I do love my 75 degrees and I wouldn't mind a rainy day now and then.
We have had some busy summer days and some really lazy days, we have had recitals, and end of school performances. We have enjoyed the sunny days and we have been slugs just hanging out at the house.
First up...

  Gymnastics recital, Avrie is having fun, loves gymnastics and loves that her big sister is one of her coaches.
Somehow I didn't get very good pictures of the end of the year school performances Avrie had a 2nd grade choir performance, she was so excited she kept asking me everyday if I was coming, she did a great job and loves singing. Destina had a talent show, her and her BFF did a dance, they did a good job and she loved preforming in front of the whole school.
The day after school got out we decided to go pick strawberries, we arrived at the farm and the strawberries were all done and it was time for raspberries all ready. We went with some friends, and it was a little crazy but fun to watch all the little's eating more berries than they picked. After picking the berries the kids played in the play ground, Avrie thought it was a good idea to roll around in the dirt and was covered in dust and somehow had mashed raspberries on her shirt humm...

 

Next up was meeting my sister and exchanging kids. She took Jayden down to Utah to spend the next 5 weeks with Katie and Jeremy and Captian. Katie offered to take Jayden for the summer and I wasted no time accepting her offer. I am sure they will have a great time and it will be fun for Jayden to spend time with his Utah cousins and Katie. I have Delanie for the next 2 weeks, we love having Delanie she is helpful and plays with Avrie and the girls have a built in friend.

I can't forget about this little cutie that I spend most of my days with, she is now mobile and getting into everything, we have to keep a close eye on her, luckily the dog is still a little faster, she likes to chase the dog and the dog avoids her as much as he can.
On Saturday Avrie had her dance recital, she was so excited and she did a great job. On Sunday Destina had her recital. We were so lucky to be able to sit through the 2 hour dance recital twice!

And finally to round out the week, Avrie has been asking me to sew, so I pulled out the sewing machine, dusted it off and we started sewing lessons. It would be nice if I actually was good at sewing. We will see how far this goes. Her goal is to make a skirt, she did pretty good with sewing straight lines.

Now that Summer is in Full Swing...

It is finally time for the last day of school. Going to school until almost the end of June is crazy, and starting 8 weeks later is even more crazy.

Time flies Destina graduated from 5th grade and is now onto middle school. She had a great year, with great friends and a teacher she loved. She is excited for middle school. They had a graduation celebration and I had to work so I missed it, glad a friend took pictures for me, because I knew Scott would forget!

Avrie will now be a 3rd grader, she loved 2nd grade and school.

Now let the Summer fun begin!

Unplugged

I came home from work on Thursday and there was a pile of cable wire coiled neatly beside our garage, I went inside and Kelsie informed me that the cable, internet were all not working. Scott was gone until late that night and thus began our unplugged forced experiment.  When Jayden came home and found out that he had no internet he slammed the kitchen cupboard that he was looking in and stormed off. I thought, "This is going to be a long day." I needed the internet for work, so I went down to the local Starbucks and finished up what I needed to do. I have been on a Netflix kick and watching it before going to bed, lucky for me I had a book on the kindle that I could read instead. On Friday I cleaned all day and didn't miss the computer too much, but I did realize how often I went to the computer to just "check" my email, FB etc. My phone was not working very well either it was not fun surfing with the phone, so I was really unplugged and left it home so that the kids would have some way of communicating since the WiFi was off.  Saturday I went up to Canada for a good part of the day and then was busy for most of the night, the kids started finding other things to do and the complaining lessened.  On Sunday when we came home from church the pile of cable was magically reattached and we were all back up and running, the kids shouted for joy, I was able to check my email that I had ignored for a few days.
It is amazing how much we rely on our internet to stay connected. I looked at my computer and thought, "What did I even do with a computer before the internet?" It only took me a day or two to get over the addiction of checking all my stuff, and when the service was restored today I gave a little sigh of sadness, but resolved not to be so quick to spend time at the computer, we'll see how that goes.

We also celebrated Father's Day, with a BBQ and we were happy to have all but Katie and Jeremy here crammed around our little table, talking and the kids teasing each other and playing games. The kids all love Scott, he is the fun-loving parent, the go to parent when wanting something, the softie. Happy Father's Day Scott!

Double Bluff Beach

It has been a while since we have made the 90 mile trip to this beach and we thought it was time to go again. We have had beautiful weather and wanted to take advantage of it. Kelsie had the day off and we were happy to have her come along, the boys were busy doing other things.  The drive was beautiful and we had a picnic on the beach and stopped for ice cream on the way home. The beach was not quite as nice as we remembered but that did not stop Avrie from playing in the sand. It was a little breezy and just perfect for sitting out getting a really weird sunburn.

 We had a little photo shoot with the girls and took walks along the beach.

 Mt. Rainer is in the distance.

 When it got too hot Scott found a nice shady place to hang out. We thought it would be too chilly to wear swimsuits but we were wrong.

Round 2

I found some pictures from Avrie's baptism, Avrie was happy to have her big brother baptize her and Avrie was really happy Aunt Sheree could come and be there and give a talk.

Avrie sang at her baptism, she was a little nervous but I think she did a great job!





My little buddy, she loved being outside and loved picking the grass!

 Cute cousins!

And finally some pictures from another phone, Not sure what Kelsie is trying to do here, but I think Mia and Maya are unsure of each other. At our house our dog stays clear of Mia, but Maya wanted to check her out and I don't think she really liked that furry creature getting too close.

I am glad my adult children like to hang out together, even if they uninvited me!

I-Phone Photo Dump

I rarely pull the pictures off of my phone, I usually don't use it that much but I was looking through my pictures and thought I would post some of them.

 Ryan's home away from home. He was using my current phone before I started using it. He lives in these trails.

 He loves coming home all dirty, means it was a good, wet ride.

 Destina wearing the new skirt grandma bought for her.

 Avrie with her magic puffballs hair style one of our favorites.

 I found more Hawaii pictures and it is alway fun, for me, to relive a fun vacation. This was on the first day, shaved ice!

 We found Kelsie and we were so happy to see her, Avrie's new smile I didn't notice she was smiling like this in her pictures until the end of the week.

 The girls would hit the beach around 7 am each morning, they could pitch a tent and live right there!

 They were practicing their surfing skills.

 We loved our cute house on the beach!

 We met up with Kelsie's friends for dinner and had a fun night hanging out with them.

 More phone photo's to come.