Late Summer 2020

The cats have noticed we've been gone a lot this summer, so they've been taking advantage of our affection whenever we are home. 

Allison still says the cutest things! Here are some recent ones.

"Pinkla (her pink unicorn) uses her horn for defense. It shoots predators with lava and they burn in the lava."

"I like weird tasting bread!"

"I like getting splashed by sea animals now." This means "I want to go back to Sea World."

We found a new playground after picking up school lunch and driving to Lynnwood to get Allison's glasses adjusted. We liked the slides on the hills. 

Tyler wanted to see his rock goes down the slide.

One Saturday we drove up to Whidbey Island. We'd meant to hike a bit at Deception Pass, but there were too many cars to find a parking space. We still enjoyed the view, picked up lunch, then stopped to eat and play at City Beach Park. We thought there was just this small piece of climbing equipment, but then we saw this story trek. If you continue along the story trek path you wind up at a big playground.

 

 Once the kids were good and worn out, we drove down to Fort Casey and Ebey's Landing

The kids liked climbing the ladders and having a pretend time out in the nooks and crannies. They also liked finding this little rabbit in the bushes.

We took the Clinton ferry back to Mukilteo, not realizing what an enormous wait we would have. Our ferry left 90 minutes after it was scheduled. Thankfully we'd brought the kids' Kindles so they at least had something to do during the wait. 

Here they are playing with the hose and the kiddie pool on a hot day. We've really missed splash pads and pools. We still have beaches, but I can't do that more than about once a week. I get tired of cleaning sand and tiny rocks off the kids and out of Allison's hair.

 I started teaching the kids some basic piano lessons in August. One of our first lessons was learning to identify and label all the keys.

Here we are at Howarth Park Beach. We were lucky to find the last parking spot (with several cars behind us vying for it). Allison, of course, found some dogs to entertain her.

On the playground afterwards Allison played on the dinosaur and airplane rockers saying "I'm going to fly to dino island!"

On one of our trips to Silver Lake there was a ridiculous amount of dog poop in the sand. No one dog could have made it all. It was EVERYWHERE! Tyler buried some of it with his shovel so we wouldn't accidentally step on it. 

One weekend we took the kids for a hike to Twin Falls. Here we are at a partial view of the main falls. It was just me and the kids for the first half since Oscar dropped us off at the trailhead while he went to find a parking space and caught up with us later.

On the way back Allison found a dog named cookie. 

And the kids both tossed stones in the river. They'd been asking for that since the beginning, but the only area you can safely get to the river is early on the trailhead, and we wanted them to have finished the hike first before playing.

One morning we really needed to do some deep cleaning. I deliberately avoided picking up these Jenga blocks and told the kids if they were downstairs they had to pick up the Jenga blocks and help clean. That kept them upstairs entertaining themselves for a good 2 hours while I got some good work done. Eventually Allison wanted lunch and cleaned up the Jenga blocks, and Tyler to my great delight came down and asked how he could help clean. I set him to work washing the windows. He was very helpful!

Miner's Corner County Park is always great! Too bad it's a bit of a drive.

This is what happens in our house when the poop hits the fan.

Frisbee fun at the park! I brought the kids here since there was a baseball field where Tyler could practice throwing a frisbee while Allison played on the playground. Tyler, of course, started building with the frisbees once he was done playing with them.

We went back to Silver Lake park the next week, which fortunately was free of dog poop. There was a cute, playful dog though. And she was fast! 

The head came off Allison's spinosaurus, which now makes it look remarkably like the demigorgon from "Stranger Things."

Tyler enjoyed drumming pots during one of his music lessons.

Daddy overcooked some leftover pasta in the microwave. Allison ate a crunchy bit and asked if it was a pasta seed.

Here they are at the playground at Richmond Beach park. I was surprised to find it accessible since it's in King County where Covid cases are higher.

And here they are at the beach. It's gorgeous, but there are too many rocks for Tyler to build in the sand.

Here's Allison playing with the neighbor girl and me working out at Gateway Middle School. The Refit class I usually attend has moved their workouts outside during the pandemic. It gets us out of the house and Tyler's had fun learning how to play frisbee golf in the football field right next to the covered basketball hoops where we exercise. 

Allison's started making things with Lego recently. With her it's more about playing pretend with them while with Tyler it was always so focused on construction. 

Tyler liked the sun shining on the river and insisted I take a picture of the dots. We had a LOT of sunny days this summer. 

One Friday we took a walk along the riverfront in downtown Everett. Tyler is becoming more willing to take walks these days, but Allison still poops out early on.

I let them toss rocks in the river before we walked back to the car. This area was apparently open the entire pandemic, which I wish I'd known in April when most parks, beaches, and hikes were closed.

After we got back to the car we saw there was a river lookout only 50 feet further. I hadn't even noticed it when we first drove in. 

After that we drove over to Garfield park. While there I looked online and saw that Garfield Elementary, just across the street from the park, was serving school lunch, so we walked over there. The kids got a lot of walking in that day and were hungry and thirsty, so it was nice to get some food and drink to refuel and hydrate them. I love days like that where we wear ourselves out, I don't have to worry about preparing food for them, and I can relax when we get home. That's what most of our summer days were like pre-pandemic. It's harder to get them this worn out with less play options. 

Sunday the 16th was the hottest day of the year. I was too tired to take them anywhere after our previous day (read more about that in my next post), and Oscar was unavailable to help, so we spent the hottest part of the day playing with the hose in the shaded back yard. 

Tyler built with the hose and the swing and figured out how he could get sprinkled by the hose while swinging.

The next day we took a hike down to Meadowdale Beach Park. 

The hike back was a bit challenging for the kids, but they made it. I let them eat some cocoa puffs in the car that had been part of our school lunch pickup earlier that day. Keep that in mid before reading this next story.

After two silver diamine flouride fillings we were told Allison's tooth was dead and needed to be removed. Our main dentist referred us to Stellar Kids Dentistry since Allison has had some anxiety in her cleanings. At our first appointment at Stellar Kids on July 10th it was decided she was too wiggly and non compliant for laughing gas, so we opted for sedation. 8 hours of fasting is required for sedation, which they typically only do in the early morning. They didn't have any spots until August 18th, even though I called multiple times to see if any openings had come up. 

We got there on the 18th and were instructed to text on arrival and wait in the car until they were ready for us. A couple minutes later Allison says "there were cocoa puffs in my seat." I literally screamed out "noooooo!!!" We'd been waiting for that appointment 7 weeks already and now it would be months again before another appointment was available all because of two stupid cocoa puffs. I'd made sure there was no random food or cups of water lying around in the house anywhere Allison might grab them that morning, but I didn't even think about leftover cereal pieces in the car seat. 

I called the dentist's office. They said the appointment would need to be rescheduled. I nearly cried. They had me come in and speak with the dentist who explained that even a small amount in her belly could result in life threatening complications. He couldn't give me a direct answer, though, on how much longer the tooth had before it could cause an infection in her mouth. Most people feel pain and discomfort when a tooth gets as bad as Allison's, but little kids seem to have more tolerance for it. He did offer to try the laughing gas, though, so that's what we did. I explained to Allison that because she'd eaten those cocoa puffs they couldn't give her the sleepy medicine, so she'd need to pretend to be asleep even if it was scary or painful. In the waiting room they were showing Zootopia, and fortunately it intrigued her today. She wanted to watch it during the procedure, as opposed to the last time we were there when she had zero interest in watching any of their movies. Before she went back I signed a waiver letting them give her physical comfort with a weighted blanket and hold her tight if necessary. In the end that's what worked. The dentist told me she was a bit distressed but determined to see it through, and the physical comfort helped her considerably. The tooth was so diseased it came out in pieces, but they got it all. At home she's doing fine and just wanted to watch more Zootopia.

And one last day at Paine Field park before heading out on our end of summer trip.