Early Summer 2020

Back home I started taking the kids to whichever playgrounds were open. I was happy to see them having fun at parks again. Unfortunately not all the playgrounds are open, even now in August. Some have signs saying they're not sanitized and to play at your own risk, some are technically still closed but it's not being enforced anymore, and others are still taped off with signs saying keep off.

Tyler's creations

Tyler got the Marvelous Mathmetician award from his teacher at the end of the school year.

In the video Allison is running in Tyler's old Batman shoes. She's loved them for years. Now she's finally grown into them.

I do have to say I love all these extra kiddo cuddles I get these days.

I love wondering what Allison's doing then looking in the camera to find her quietly reading.

Here we are at Lion's Park. 

And we spend plenty of time at Silverlake. I got Tyler these water shooters for his birthday. They're super fun at the lake.

Even I got in on a hot day. Utah made me forget just how much of a difference humidity makes. In Utah low 70s is too cold to get in a cold lake, but here low 70's with humidity is definitely a swimming day.

Here we are at Kasch park. It's nice to have playgrounds, but we're sad there are no pools or splashpads. We do have the lake and the ocean, but it'd be nice to have some water play minus all the sand (because our sand has little rocks in it, as opposed to the sand in California or Hawaii).

Sweet girl running and swinging. I adore this girl's enthusiasm.

In case you were wondering where the popular place to be is on a Saturday in Seattle during the pandemic - it's IKEA. We'd just had our carpets professionally cleaned and had to wait a few hours for them to dry, so we thought we'd drive down and pick up a few things. We had no idea it would be an hour long line just to get in.

Here's Tyler building our names with Jenga blocks.

Our children have started making jokes and laughing uproariously at themselves. Problem is their jokes don't make any sense, and we don't know how to explain to them how a joke actually works. We're not trying too hard, though, because it's cute watching them entertain themselves with bad jokes. Here are some recent ones.

"Why did the dragon chase a snake? Because it wanted to eat a penguin!" - Allison

"Why did the scooter wear a helmet? So that its wheels wouldn't fall off!" - Tyler

 The kids finally got to have their dentist appointments when we returned from Utah. They were scheduled in April but that was during the stay home order. Unfortunately Allison's tooth now has to be removed, which makes me wonder if we could have prevented that by her being seen in April.

Allison's recently gotten into the Tinkerbell movies on Disney+. Here she is running pretending to be a flying fairy.

In the backyard all the fairies got a turn swinging. First she'd be Tinkerbell, then Silvermist, then Fawn, etc. until every one of the Disney fairies had had a turn on the swing.

Legion park playground was available to play on, but the bathrooms are still closed.

On the 4th of July we did some fireworks with the kids during the daytime. We went over to the neighborhood where Daniel from Tyler's bus stop lives (it's against the HOA rules to light them in our complex).

Daniel and his little sister Yelena came out and played with us too. We had to do the fireworks in the daytime since we were taking them up to see Marysville city fireworks that night.

Here's my flying patriotic fairy girl! She got a nap so she could stay up for fireworks and was full of energy when she woke up.

It was great that we were still able to see some big city fireworks. The main show we go to in Everett was cancelled in order to avoid crowds. These were lit up 100 feet higher than usual so that people could see them from their homes. We found a neighborhood still being developed where we could set up our chairs and watch them while easily social distancing.

The next day we took a little hike to Pigeon Creek Beach. Daddy showed the kids itty bitty crabs underneath rocks. We didn't stay too long on the beach though since ghost shrimp had made it super sinky.

Here we are at Lake Stickney park, having an FHE with daddy about the anti-Nephi-Lehis, and Tyler making a Hershey kiss out of playdough.

The Seattle Aquarium reopened (with distancing and masks of course), so we took a trip down with Auntie Lia and cousin Alex.

I love the circle of jellies!

Unfortunately the petting areas are all closed off.

While we were waiting in line to purchase admission Tyler said "so all we're going to do is look at fish. There's nothing else to do?" Then within a few minutes he was having fun and getting excited about all the neat things there were to see.

Here are some fish on the ceiling, eels, and puffins.

 Tyler really liked the moving crab and the shark on the ceiling.

And we finished up with the seals and otters.

Outside seals

We even got to be there for an Otter feeding!

In the gift shop we bought some huge gummy sharks. Allison zonked out on the drive home

The next day we took Allison to Stellar kids dentistry so they could take a look at her tooth that needs to come out. Unfortunately they don't have an appointment for the extraction until August 18th.

And here's Allison playing with dinosaurs with the neighborhood boys. She offers them to the girls too, but in our complex only the boys seem to like them.