Late Summer 2017: Adventures

Tyler and daddy continued their pattern of having adventures together on Saturdays. In late July Tyler got to play with the hose in a fireman simulation up at the Silvana Community Fair.

He also pet Floyd the cow

And saw lots of other animals. 

Cute kiddos on the airplane at Howarth park playground. Allison says "whee" when she sees these pictures. Adorbs!

One day at another park, Tyler decided to pee on the grass in front of at least 20 girl scouts picnicing there.

Here are the kids in the bounce house at National Night Out at the YMCA.

Here's Tyler meeting Batman and other superheroes at the Touch a Truck event at the Comcast Arena in Everett.

He looks so cute on the scooter.

He's cool. We like him.

Oscar's work had their annual picnic at The Farm at Swan's Trail again this year. It was a lovely day this time. Last year they held their picnic on the one day that was super rainy in the middle of two straight weeks of sun. The only detriment was that it was on a Sunday, so we had to leave early to get to 1:00pm church. I wore a dress so I didn't have to change before church, but with all the stuff we did, I should have worn leggings underneath.

Here's me doing the pedal carts in a dress with Allison on my lap. 

Turns out Allison was just as happy climbing and playing as riding.

Tyler and daddy's turn! Oscar found it easier to have Tyler on his shoulders than on his lap.

 These jump pillows were so much fun! It gives you better bounce than a trampoline. 

This girl loved it! She could have stayed there all day.

 These slides on rollers were bizarre, but the kids loved them. I tried it once and had no interest in doing it again. 

Allison liked doing it backwards on her tummy

We had just enough time before church to go on a hay ride. I tried putting Allison in my lap since it was getting crowded, but she refused me. She had to sit on the hay. Good thing she's adorable and doesn't take up much space.

Museum time! Didn't you all know both my kids are the master spinners of the Universe?

Allison's figured out how to climb up slides now, though she usually slides down before making it to the top.

I love her static hair when she slides down plastic slides!

This guy was actually playing fairly well on the outdoor instruments with a decent tune going. Allison went up to make music with him.

Playing in the toddler area. Ty's too old for it now (3 and under) but no one else was there, so I let him play too. Allison never wants to go in there anyway unless Tyler goes with her.

It's so nice to be there right at 9am when it's totally empty.

Tyler found a 9 year old boy one day and was so excited when he said he'd be his friend. The two of them went down the big yellow slide together a few times. Even Allison went down it once.

She prefers open slides like this, but in August she finally came around to doing tunnel slides.

Wild Waves with auntie and Hana. Tyler's tall enough for the Tidal Wave now. They have a 42 inch height requirement, which I think is weird since Lagoon's is 32.

Being super silly with mommy! Tyler loves taking selfies.

His favorite is still the train and probably will be until he's too tall for it. He also liked the big log water ride. Unfortunately the lines in the waterpark were a bit too hard for him. We only did one with about an hour wait, and he didn't like the waves hitting him in the wavepool. We headed out after that since he was so tired. Too bad I can't get him a midday nap like when we go to Lagoon in Utah.

Last year we went to Silver Lake park at least once a week. This year we only got around to it once. Allison found some people to play with (my little social butterfly!) and then decided she'd rather go to the playground. I wanted them to stay in the lake since they were already wet, but Allison is super STUBBORN when she wants something, so I relented. Next time we'll do playground first before the water.

I love watching these two play together. I wish the airplane wasn't so poorly designed, though. I worry Allison's going to bang her head hard on the handle when Tyler rocks it so fast.

We made it down Howarth Park beach during mid-tide. We'd gone at low tide earlier in the summer, but that's when the sand is crazy sinky. Mid-tide was great since there were still a few parts that were sandy enough to walk around barefoot and no sinky sand at all.

Before we left for the beach that day, Tyler asked if we were meeting any friends there. I told him "no" but that we might make some friends while we're there, and I encouraged him to shake hands and meet new people wherever we went. Later on our way down the stairs that lead over the train tracks to the beach, three adult men passed us coming up the stairs. Tyler (totally unprompted) shook hands with all of them, and Allison did too. Afterwards I overheard the men laughing and talking in Spanish about how adorable my kids were.

Usually we get school lunch at Voyager Middle School during the summer free meals for kids program. They closed a couple weeks early this year, but it was still available at Horizon Elementary for a little bit longer. It's more out of the way for us and not a reasonable walking distance, but at least they have a fun playground. 

Here's what happens to Allison's hair when she goes down plastic slides. Someone remarked that it looks like a dandelion right before you blow it out. You can watch it happen in the video.

Sweet girl trying to do whatever her older brother does.

Allison figured out how to bounce on this for the first time ever. She'd tried it before at North Creek and Mariner playgrounds, but I always had to do the bouncing.

We originally planned to drive down to Oregon for the solar eclipse on Monday, August 21st. We were going to stay with friends of my parents who live in Portland and then drive the rest of the way in the morning, but we started getting a bad feeling about it over the weekend. Allison does not road trip well, especially when the car is moving slowly, and we knew the crowds and traffic would be ridiculous.  She's also a very busy child whereever we go and does not stay in one place unless she's belted into something, and even then she's screaming to get out unless that something is moving. We would have likely spent the whole time wrangling the kids and then been stuck in hours of slow moving traffic getting home (I heard from friends that the drive back, which is normally about 4 hours, took at least twice that). As much as we would have loved to see it, we didn't think it was worth worrying about entertaining/losing our kids in the crowds and having many hours of an inconsolable child who wouldn't even get anything positive out of the experience.

Oscar had already taken the day off work, so we drove over to Paine Field park and watched the eclipse from there. This kept Allison happy since she could run and play and climb as much as she wanted to. Tyler liked looking through the eclipse glasses we'd gotten from Eclipse storytime at the library. He kept saying "the sun looks like a moon!" and "I want to see the moon/sun again."

We also tried the pinhole thing with a box, but it's not really worth it. It was definitely better with glasses. Thankfully I ran into a friend from the YMCA at the park who loaned us an extra pair so both Oscar and I could look together. 

The crescent shadows the eclipse made were neat. A Facebook friend posted a picture of tiny crescent shadows she'd made with a ritz cracker. To me that's much more interesting than the pinhole viewer.

Swinging kids! Even Tyler liked it and he's not usually a big fan of swings.

Last year we took several trips to Jetty Island, but this year we only made one at the end of the season. It was low tide, which I'm not a big fan of since the water is super far out and the sand gets too sinky out there. But the kids like wading in the water, so I found this little pool where they could splash and collect water in their buckets.

I think the reason we didn't take as many trips to Jetty Island this year is because it requires more planning and I found we could get sandy beaches at both Edgewater and Howarth Park beaches if we just came at the right time. The benefit with Jetty Island is that it's always sandy regardless of time.

Allison threw a bit fit on the way back. She didn't want to walk, but I couldn't carry her well with a lawn chair and a bag of sand toys. I kept trying to get her to walk and she kept protesting by throwing herself in the sand. You can see from the pics on the right and the left that she covered herself in sand pretty well. At least she and Tyler really enjoyed the boat ride both ways.

We made sure to get one last trip to the Zoo in before school started. Our friend was running a little late so we got to try the fun playground out in the parking lot while we waited for her.

The kids both zonked out instantly in the car after Allison first tried falling asleep on the sheep and goats. One sheep even got mad at her and tried pushing her off with its head, but she just kept going back for more. That same sheep was super soft, like a walking wool blanket, and Allison is crazy about blankets.

We met daddy at the finish line after he ran a 10K in the Run-A-Muk race. The kids saw daddy and wanted to run after him, which was absolutely adorable.

 Daddy and Tyler go to Home Depot often, but we just recently learned that they have free workshops there, some of which are kid friendly. On the Saturday before school started Tyler got a building kit to make his own pencil box and got an apron and a pin. Cute!

On labor day the kids had fun swimming and jumping on the tramp with our friends the Rogers family.

And on the day before school started we experienced a red sun and smoky skies all day. It was supposed to be the hottest day of the year at 93 degrees, but the smoke reduced some of the heat we felt.

I'd intended to take the kids to the children's museum but had forgotten they were closed that week. Since we were already downtown, we went to Legion Memorial park to try the new playground.

It's a neat structure that's easily climbable with lots of slides.

Tyler did an excellent job making a new friend there. He asked his name, asked him to tell him a few things about himself, and asked if he wanted to be his friend all completely unprompted. Tyler also played sweetly and adorably with his sister, which always makes my heart happy.