September 2019 - Allison is 4!

Tyler's 1st day of first grade was a huge success! The past two years when I've asked him how his first day of school was, he quietly said "good" and shrugged me off. This year he said "Great! It was better than any day of Kindergarten or Preschool!"

Allison flipped out the first time she had her first dentist appointment last April, but in September she went in much more confident. She looks so suave in this picture. She's also making huge strides in climbing whenever she's on the playground.

We've attended the Mukilteo Lighthouse parade and fireworks before, but this is the first time we've gone down to the festival during the daytime. We went down around noon before the crowds got too big in the evening before the fireworks. The kids made their $16 passes well worth it on the bounce houses and rides.

The kids were expecting more rides after attending the Mountlake Terrace festival, but there were only two. Fortunately there were lots of fun bounce houses and other activities. A balloon animal booth was making these nifty balloon spiders for the kids.

Tyler climbed higher than he ever has on the rock wall in spite of far too many climbing holds obviously missing.

Allison loved having her face painted like a dragon! When we came back later after Allison's nap we easily found $5 parking with all proceeds going to charity (this was so much better than taking the shuttle the last time I came with Tyler and Amy. Waiting for the shuttle after the fireworks took FOREVER). We told the kids if they wanted to have their own chairs they'd have to carry them themselves, which they did without complaint!

The kids made the most of the remaining 25 minutes the bounce houses were open then played on the playground in the dark with lightning striking far in the distance. Once I was seeing it on both sides I took them back to their chairs just in time for the fireworks to start. They say they'll start at dusk or shortly after, but last time it was 40 minutes after dusk, so we really had no idea when to expect them to start if they were ever going to start at all.

Here's some video Oscar took of the lightning before the fireworks started. It was pretty distant, but it still concerned us that they would cancel the show.

You can view video of the whole fireworks show here. It's too big of a file for blogger to upload. The video can't capture just how incredible it was. Seeing a fireworks show in conjunction with a lightning storm all over the Puget Sound was more mind-blowing than words can express. It was as if God were competing with man to see who could make the most noise and light up the sky the brightest. Fortunately God had a slow enough start for them not to cancel the fireworks show, but in the end God won big time! It would have still been incredible to see it alone, and even more amazing to see it with Oscar, but getting to experience it with our entire family is something I'll remember forever and am so grateful for!

You don't see much of the lightning in the video because it was all off to the sides and the camera couldn't capture it. But shortly before the finale there's some lightning, then during the finale there's a huge strike, then another one just after the show finished. The picture on the right is a freeze frame of a lighting strike during the finale.

This last video was taken after the fireworks show had ended. These are some freeze frames we took of the storm lighting up the sky. If you didn't know better you'd think it was midday in the picture on the right.

The next day Tyler got in trouble and Oscar sent him to his room for a timeout. Allison ran to the bottom of the stairs and screamed at the top of her lungs "GIVE ME MY BROTHER BACK!!!" Oscar and I laughed hysterically and let her come up to his room and give him a hug so she'd know he wasn't gone forever. Later on that week he was playing in his room stark naked refusing to get dressed, so I locked his door and said he couldn't come out until he'd at least put his underwear on. Allison then came up to me and said "you need to stop taking my brother away with his underwear!"

Cute girl splashing in puddles on September 10th. Who knew it was an omen of a very rainy September to come. We had quadruple the average amount.

Uncle Mike decided to come up the week of Allison's birthday. He stayed in Seattle with Malia, but we met up with them to tour the city and ride Wings Over Washington. Allison wasn't tall enough to ride it last year when grandma and grandpa came, but she is now. She walked on and asked excitedly "is it a ride?!" She remembered it being similar to Soarin' at California Adventure saying "it's like at Disneyland!" Needless to say she loved it. I also took her on the Carousel, and she could see the Great Wheel, so she assumed we were at a themepark and asked when we could do more rides.

Later on Allison and Malia both needed a rest, so we took them back to Lia's Seattle apartment while Mike and I went down to the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Here's a budda head I thought was something very different when I saw just the tip of it from a distance.

Here's how Allison's dinosaur cake evolved. It was supposed to be purple, her favorite color, but Oscar couldn't find the red food coloring. It was his first time working with fondant. He made a marshmallow fondant, which is a bit better tasting than the usual stuff, but still not particularly tasty.

Tyler wrote a book for Allison for her birthday - "T-Rex Makes his Poopy on the Potty." Here it is on top of the dinosaur tablecloth. In the morning she saw it and was so excited that we'd got her a dinosaur table.

Allison had been invited to a fairy birthday party for her friend Ruby, so I gave her some fairy wings as her first gift. She was absolutely delighted by them!

After that she opened a few new books, including this dinosaur A-Z book. Lia read it to her while Mike and Tyler read a few of the other ones.

Allison was enjoying her new stuff so much that we took a break from present opening and played some Wii Mario with Tyler. Allison watched at first but after awhile she went and sat down at the table looking so sweet and waiting so patiently for her cake. We decided we couldn't resist her anymore and decided to light up the candles.

My sweet birthday girl blew out her candles then had a hard time getting a handle on her cake. She'd never eaten one with fondant before. She couldn't figure out how to break into it with her fork.

After cake we played a little more Mario while Allison ate fondant dinosaur teeth.

The next day we took Mike down to the Chihuly glass garden.

Keeping Allison in one place was very challenging. I didn't dare take any pictures (Mike sent all these to me). I needed both hands available at all times. I didn't want to risk her bumping or falling into something valuable!

I was much more comfortable taking out my phone once we were outside.

Pretty pretty!

I took Allison out well before Mike and Lia were finished and let her play on the nearby play structure. She loved the enormous xylophone. She got a bit too scared trying to climb on the big web so she joined a daycare group on the small structure.

She didn't think she could do this big climb but eventually she figured it out (just as Mike and Lia were arriving). I showed her how to climb and rest on the little seats.

Climbing high and going down those HUGE slides! Uncle Mike climbed up the big structure while she was going down one slide.

Then Allison climbed back up to him and they both went down the other huge slide.

Mike and Lia wanted to lie down on the grass for a bit, so Allison went swinging. She found a daycare friend to swing with then took her own little snooze on the swing.

From there we walked through around the fountain over to lunch

We had to get going after that since we had an appointment with Tyler's doctor. Tyler read a dinosaur book to Allison for a bit, but it didn't last long. She was wired from not getting enough nap.

That evening Allison finished opening her presents and the kids played with the little T-Rex piñata we hadn't gotten around to the previous evening.

Allison's final present was a dinosaur costume from granny and grandpa.

And the next day we dropped Mike off at the airport but not before picking up an enormous donut.

Here's Allison in her fairy wings at her friend's fairy garden party that weekend.

Splashing in puddles after stake conference.

Oscar made a coin drop for the kids. It's a huge hit!

 Ginormous alligator! Auntie Lia got Allison a little alligator for her birthday but it claimed to grow up to 6x its size in water. We put it to the test, and it totally lived up to its claims.

Cute kids at the Children's museum. Tyler and Oscar made dinosaur fossils. Oscar put a LOT of effort into his triceratops.

We also took the kids for a party at the new Everett YMCA site in the afternoon and enjoyed our last evening we could be outside after 7:00pm by taking the kids to a park. Allison somehow convinced these four girls, who were all using the swing when we arrived, to let her have the swing while they pushed her.

Climbing high and sleeping on her packed bedding before we took off for the tri-cities (more on that in the next post).