August 2019: Part I - A Sunny, Lovely, Smoke-free August!

This August brought great weather without the smoke of the last two years. It was wonderful! I took full advantage of it and got the kids out as much as possible, even on the cloudy days.

Here's Allison climbing across the ropes for the first time at the YMCA. She never wanted to do this before, even with my help. Now she's doing it completely independently.

Throughout the school year I often had to take Allison over to Tyler's school to give his nurse more medicine. Allison always wanted to play on the school playground, but of course, it's not open to the public during school hours. So one nice summer day when we were looking for a place to play, she finally got her wish!

Ninja kids! We watch Ninja Warrior pretty regularly, which has made the kids much more daring at the playground. Here they both are climbing high and swinging from the monkey bars. And then there's the time that Allison randomly sits down and tells me "I'm just canna sit right here" (she says "canna" in place of "gonna").

Here's Tyler having fun spinning with Fillip at Silverlake park. It was 80+ degrees when I picked them up from their summer program, so we had to get outside and get wet.

Allison is such a water baby! She's just joyous when she's splashing.

Tyler is more likely to dig and wade then swim, so his skin is more exposed than Allison's. Too bad I forgot the sunblock.

 How 21st Century kids handle internet issues

Tyler's summer program was Mon - Thurs, so we typically picked Friday to do something extra adventurous. One day I'd planned to take the kids on pony rides at Forest Park, but my sister called me up Thursday evening to ask if we could possibly go paint a team name and slogan on a bus up in Ferndale, Washington for a friend of hers playing the online game Gish. Since my sister drove us all the way up to Vancouver for our cruise in 2009, I figured this was my chance to return the favor. It was still an adventure. Just furthur north than we'd originally planned on.

I didn't let the kids paint since I didn't want them covering up other teams' slogans, but I did give them some washable markers to draw on the bus with. Tyler copied my writing in marker.

From there we found a playground and splashpark in Bellingham before starting the long drive home.

Cute kids having fun at the Children's Museum!

Tyler is my little artist/engineer/builder, so he and Allison never want to be in the same area since she wants to run around playing and never stays in one place very long. Tyler could spend his entire time in the art studio, but he's required to have an adult in there with him, so taking them both together means I usually have to force one to do what the other is doing. Since he's been out of school we've only gone on Saturdays when Oscar can come with us.

 Allison had her face painted and the kids sat in a firetruck at National Night Out at the YMCA

The kids got to do summer camp at the Brown's house again during the first full week of August. Allison spent most of it playing with dinosaurs and dressing up in a dinosaur costume. I took advantage of my alone time by doing a LOT of cleaning and having a kid-free day at Wild Waves with a friend (more about that in another post).

Here we are the following Friday visiting the Animal Farm, Playground, and Splashpad at Forest park. Tyler got good and soaked in spite of the cloudy, 65 degree weather.

And of course, we did our Pony rides for Adventure Friday.

That weekend we took the adventure even further by driving out to the Tri-Cities for Avery's epic birthday party. Here's Fry soaking himself in the sink just before we left. Fry is a water seeker, and Oscar let the sink run for him. He was in kitty heaven.

We left Saturday morning and arrived around 2. The party didn't start until 4pm, so we went swimming first.

Cambria went all out on this party with a bounce house and a clown.

We got a great show as well as balloons and face painting, and the kids jumped on the trampoline while I held their place in line for balloons.

Tyler reacts very animatedly to magic shows and the like. The clown should record him and use his reactions in his marketing.

Cambria made some fantastic ice cream cone cupcakes! 

Allison was literally eating cheese while saying cheese for this picture.

Guess which one of Avery's gifts was Allison's favorite?

 The next day we went to church and then just hung out with Chris and Cambria. The kids were TIRED after going to bed around 10 the previous night. They still woke up at their usual time but were very sleepy. Allison nearly fell asleep on the hotel floor before we left for church and Tyler fell asleep on their couch after church. Each got a nice nap before we drove home, and the kids were extra excited to cuddle with Nibbler the next morning. You'd think we'd been gone more than a day and a half!

Allison is a huge fan of the show "Dinosaur Train" so one day she decided to make her own Dinosaur Train with Tyler's Lego train and her dinosaurs. Tyler helped her out with it before heading out to hike Wallace Falls with daddy.

This was Tyler's first really significant hike, about 5 miles round trip. We were impressed that he didn't complain at all. He enjoyed being with daddy and wanted to impress him.

Great shot of my guys!

Here he is running to the end with daddy and falling asleep in the car (too bad that nap didn't last long).

The next day we took the kids to play at the playground at Tyler's new Elementary school. The kids had fun jumping on our shadows just before we left.

Kids enjoying some bubbles and cuddles while daddy was out of town (more about that in another post).

And during the last week of August we finally made it out to Jetty Island. We got the last 3 tickets on standby for the 11:15am ferry, but since I'd forgotten to make a reservation in advance we had to leave at either 12:45pm or 4:15pm.

I randomly ran into some ladies I know from two previous wards I attended, so my kids had fun playing with their kids and I had people to talk to. Everyone was having lots of fun and I was kind of bummed that we couldn't stay longer, then around 12:20pm Allison got something in her eye and didn't want to do anything but cuddle. Leaving on the 12:45pm ferry ended up working out perfectly.