Fall 2021

In September, the kids finally went back to full time in person school for the first time in 18 months. Of course term didn't start until Wednesday, and the first two days were just parent/teacher conferences, so Tyler's first day attending school wasn't until Friday, which is an early release day. It's like they just wanted to tease us with a return to normalcy. Here are his first day pictures. The better lighting was with him looking east, but he couldn't keep his eyes open with the sun in his face. Of course his eyes are only barely open in the picture where he's not facing the sun, and he's in shadow...They're not great 1st day pictures, but it was such a relief to be done with the complete failure that was virtual learning this past school year.

Allison's PT conferences went on for 3 days, so her first day attending school wasn't until after labor day. Her first day pictures turned out great, though. The middle one was her after her conference learning the protocols of getting on the bus. It took about a month for her to realize school was a Monday - Friday thing. She'd never had anything like it. She started preschool two days a week for only 2 and 1/2 hours, then switched to 4 days, then the pandemic happened and she had nothing for a year, then when she did return it was only 2 days a week for 90 minutes. She kept being surprised that it was "another school day!"

Allison attends a school that's just for kindergarteners, so seeing a bus full of only cute little 5 year olds on their first day was just so sweet. It's been a bit of an adjustment for everyone going from 18 months of staying home as much as possible to full time school 5 days a week. She had attended full day summer camp/child care before, but they were play based (not structured like school), and she never went 5 days a week. As much as I was grateful for the free time I was about to get, I was eager for the first day to go by to see if she was adjusting well to it, completely overwhelmed by it, or a little bit of both.

I worried needlessly. She came home triumphant! 

At the YMCA she put toys snakes all over the ping pong table and said "let's play snake pong!"

Both kids got great school pictures

The night before Allison's birthday we let the kids have a birthday cake preview then decorated a bit after putting them to bed.

Allison's birthday conveniently fell on the same day as the Mukilteo Lighthouse parade. It was like the entire city of Mukilteo was celebrating with her! First they rode in the children's parade before sitting to watch the grand parade. I bought birthday balloons for the kids to hold while they participated. Allison rode her scooter, and luckily the Haupt family had an extra seat for Tyler to ride on their tandem bike. 

After the kids' parade we watch the grand parade then got some free root beer floats at the church. We drove down to the lighthouse for the other festivities (which were pretty lame without the bounce houses and rides of previous years), then went out to eat for pizza, pasta, and bread sticks. 

After lunch we went over to the Children museum. Allison had requested we go to the museum on her birthday and let her pick out a toy of her choice from the gift shop. I told her she could have whatever she wanted up to about $50, but fortunately she picked a reusable sticker book that was only $6.

Once the kids were good and worn out we went home so Allison could open presents and play with her new toys. Later we had cake, which was much simpler for Oscar than it usually is. Previously he's shaped a unicorn ducky cake, a dinosaur cake, and a dragon cake, but thankfully this year Allison said she didn't care what it looked like. She just wanted it to be lemon raspberry flavored with raspberries on top. It wasn't a cheesecake, but it looked exactly like one. 

Later that evening we went back to the festival for fireworks. On the website it said they would start at dusk. In previous years they've always started quite a bit later than that. This year they didn't start until 18 minutes beyond 2019's fireworks. We had almost given up and had started leaving when they finally started going off. 

Allison loves the chirping bird auntie Malia gave her for birthday so much that she made a picture of it. It's called a "painted bunting," but she could never remember the name correctly and kept asking our Google mini to show her pictures of "painted bundles." 

Tyler likes his new goggles for swim lessons and eating the gigantic blueberries I found at the store. That's a standard size plastic spoon that blueberry is sitting in.

Tyler passed the swim test at the YMCA, and Allison lost her first tooth while riding the bus home from school. It fell out into her mask.

In early October we took Chris and Cambria and family down to Wild Waves. I'd hoped more rides would be open since they didn't need to worry about employing people to work the water park anymore, but ride closures were even worse than they'd been in the summer. For Fright Fest they'd posted on their website which rides would be open, then only 1/4 of them actually were open. It was pretty disappointing, especially since our friends had driven such a long distance to get there.

Fortunately the magic show was back, and it was great! Tayla even got to be sawed in half. That alone was worth coming for.

The next weekend we'd been invited to a birthday party up in Burlington in the evening, so we decided to head up north early and let the kids have some fun at Schuh Farms.

Here they are on the bucket train

and the hay ride. Allison decided to briefly join another family

We loved the big pumpkin out front.

Here we are posing with the cutouts for "Wizard of Oz" Why yes, I did sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" while standing under the rainbow.

This was unique. We'd never been to a farm with a train made out of mini tractors.

We stayed until closing then drove up the remaining 10 minutes to the skating rink. Our kids skated for the 1st time with this skating assistant to help out. Even then it was challenging. Oscar and I were pretty wobbly at first too, but we've skated before in our youth, so it eventually came back to us. The kids never quite got the hang of it.

With the pumpkins we'd bought at the farm, Oscar carved up fun jack-o-lanterns for the kids. This year they were inspired by our kids' choices in literature. Allison had recently checked out a book called "Clouded Leopards" from her school library, and couldn't stop talking about it all week. She carried it around with her, took it in the car as well as into church and the YMCA, and sometimes took it to bed with her (I thought about buying it for her, but it's $50 on Amazon, which is an improvement from the $877 it was selling for when I'd looked it up a few days earlier...). Oscar traced a page from her book, then traced it onto the pumpkin, then carved it. It looked awesome! He stuck an electric light in it that night, and she slept with it in place of her salt lamp.

Tyler and I had just finished reading the 3rd Harry Potter book, so he asked for a pumpkin carved into an unhooded dementor giving someone the dementor's kiss. Oscar did the best he could from a picture he found online and then traced. The thing that looks like a sun is someone's soul being sucked out, the big hole is the dementor's mouth, and the smaller hole up top is an empty eye socket. When he made the drawing before carving the pumpkin I told him it looked like a creepy onion. I detest onions and Oscar is a big onion lover, so I teased him that he was just trying to get onions in any way he can.

Allison spilled yogurt all over my digital piano. We took it apart to see if we could fix it, but the damage was done. I ordered a semi-weighted 88 key keyboard off of Amazon, but I didn't love it and ended up sending it back and borrowing Meledie's 76 key keyboard until we could find a better replacement (more about that in a future post). To Allison's credit, though, she seems to have learned her lesson not to bring food or drink near the piano.

Tyler wore this shirt grandma had gotten him for the first time, then made the origami dinosaur that was on it while he was at the YMCA. Oscar make a super tasty soup with one of our Cinderella pumpkins.

Our silly Fry guy kept up his festive tradition by sitting next to Allison's pumpkin and on the kids' Halloween costumes. 

The kids got in some good park fun while wearing their Halloween costumes. Tyler's costume's zipper broke just before Halloween, hence why we put the jacket over it. It made him too hot though, and fortunately a clip worked just as well. At least he got three Halloweens out of that costume.

We got to do 3 Trunk of Treats this year, and Oscar carved another cute pumpkin. I thought it was totally unnecessary that there weren't trunk or treats last year. If adults can safely get food from a drive thru, kids can do a trunk or treat.

For our church Trunk or Treat, I decked out our car with Allison's dinosaurs. One of the sister missionaries had also come dressed in a dinosaur costume, so she posed with me for a picture.

Ms J, one of Allison's paraeducators from preschool, invited us to Trick or Treat at her house. She gave Allison and Tyler a bunch of toys and treats, which Allison spent much of the next morning playing with. We continued trick or treating in Mukilteo since we were already there, and got a good haul with lots of prepackaged goody bags like last year.

We really liked this big black cat blowup.

Tyler and I had fun at the Museum for the stake mothers and sons night out, and Oscar enjoyed getting his runs in during "Golden Hour." Allison had a week off school due to being exposed to Covid by one of her class mates. I felt no qualms about taking her out of the house since she test negative on both day 3 and day 6 past exposure. Shortly after her quarantine was over they changed the guidance to the kids could come back if they tested negative on day 5 or after, which makes more sense. She would have missed 4 less days of school.

Here we are celebrating Tyler's 1/2 birthday with cinnamon rolls (in hindsight we should have waited before they were cool before putting 8 and 1/2 candles on them). Allison made her own dolphin pop-up book, Ty had fun balancing one of his new erasers, and Allison "pranked" me by packing her own lunch for school. I always have them just eat at school since this year public school is giving all kids free lunch, but she really wanted to bring her own food and sneakily packed her own lunch, put it in her bag, then told me about it once she got home. I was a little concerned that she'd packed herself yogurt and cheese and that it sat in her bag all night long before getting eaten for lunch the next day, but fortunately she was fine.

The kids also got their first Covid shots the 2nd weekend of November.

On the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week we took our first trip down to Great Wolf Lodge. The kids had Mon-Wed off for parent/teacher conferences, so we had Allison's on Monday at 8:00am then drove down to the lodge for the night. Mom came too and went on every slide once. She'd come up for the stake play (more about that in the next post). 

Here we are in the wave pool and on the obstacle course.

And here we are having fun on the slides. They measured Allison with shoes before she walked in, so she was able to do the big hurricane slide for 48+ inches even though she's not that tall barefoot. She said it was fun afterwards, but her face while riding down very much said otherwise. The next day I made sure they measured her without shoes so she didn't feel worried about going on it again.

Mom and I wore our matching swimsuits. I'd order the X-Large this past summer, but it was too big to me, so I gave it to mom when she came up for Tyler's baptism and repurchased the Large for me. 

Mom, Oscar, and Allison finished up before Ty and I did, so he and I went down a few more slides in the dark before heading back to the room. The water park is indoor, but the tubes go outside, so it gets dark inside the slide when it's dark outside. 

After resting and getting in some tablet time, the kids went out to the lobby to do some coloring, story time, and get a picture with one of the wolves. 

The next morning the kids wanted to do the wolf origami craft before going back into the water park. Mom bought them some fun stuffies from the gift shop.

Oscar, Tyler, and I rode the 48+ inch slide again while mom stayed with Allison, then we went and grabbed Allison to do the other slides with her. We finished up our water fun in the indoor/outdoor hot tub. It's impressive how many attractions they condense into their space.

On Wednesday we had Tyler's PT conference over zoom then Oscar and I did deliveries while mom stayed with the kids. That evening Oscar and I came up with a fun cornucopia scavenger for them to do the next day. We did it last year and the kids liked it so much we've made it a new tradition. Oscar took the kids out on a turkey trot while mom finished up some meal prep and I got the cornucopias prepared. It was a good Thanksgiving with yummy food, fun, and a great last day of mom's trip before taking her to the airport the next morning.