Twinsies!

Cecily just got this Husky shirt from Fiona.

She wore it for all of 45 minutes and she'll probably never wear it again, but how cute are they?!?!

"Look at my pet slug!"

I informed her that her pet was not welcome in my home, so they "fed him and found him a safe home"

Cecily's favorite thing this summer is "going camping".  This involves packing everything she owns up into as many back packs & suitcases as she can find, and then carting everything outside and then sitting around the "campfire" that they make with a pile of sticks.

The 5-meter hurdles

Obviously, we're all obsessed with the Olympics.  Parker has been making up his own sports, here, we have the hurdles.

(Sorry about the video direction, the phone never reminds you that this will get mangled on a computer)

Waiting for Gracie

Parker & Fiona had their Kindergarden assessments, so Cecily got to go play with Gracie.  Do you think she was excited to see her friend?

Trip to Samish Island, Version 2.0

Since our friends moved up to Samish Island, our small group decided to have a "camp-out" up at the Burwashes.

We had SUCH a great time, it was at the end of our vacation so everyone was relaxed and we had such a great time hanging out at their house and letting the kids play.

Their house has water access that is only slightly less death-defying as visiting the Need's beach.  But once you get there, it's amazing.  In the morning the tide was way out, but when we went down in the afternoon, the water was in and perfect for swimming, shallow and warm.

We tried out the Burwash's paddleboard, I think at one point we had about 6 or 7 kids on there (plus Gunner and Grant).

We love this family and we will miss them SO much, but we're looking forward to more trips up to visit.

Saturday night, we put the kids to bed in the motorhome and then headed down to Brian & Sandi's for Amber's birthday party.  Samish Island is about 1 1/2 hours North West of  Seattle, so we left Samish Island  at 9 and got to Brian & Sandi's at 2 am.

Maybe not our best decision ever, but we were intent on squeezing every last drop out of our vacation!

After Amber's party, we headed home.  With traffic, it actually took us longer to drive from Portland to Seattle than it took us to drive Samish Island down to Portland.  That's over 11 hours of driving in 24 hours, good thing we like our friends & family so much!

The EMP

Parker has been begging to to back to "the Music Museum" for months, we had a free day during vacation, so we headed down there.  There was some sort of big video game competition at the Key so the whole place was PACKED, but we had a great time.

Honestly, I think we could have skipped the EMP and just gone to the center-house and the playground and the kids would have had a blast.

We finally got to the EMP and the first exhibit we saw was about the Seahawks.  I think Parker would have happily stayed there the entire time.

Keith is almost as big as a professional football player.

Cecily had a rough morning because she wanted to wear her "sparkly pink dress", which we don't own so she threw quite the fit.  She & I went through the "wearable art" display and she found this chrome dress and looked at me like "See Mama, THIS is what I was looking for!"

I don't remember...

The problem with being 2+ months behind on your blogging is that sometimes you don't remember the context of why you took some photos.  For example:

I don't even know where we were?  In the motorhome? On the couch? On the floor?  We may never know.

Judging by the date and my unwashed hair, I'm going to guess in the motorhome on the way home from Lake Wenatchee.

I think I just took this photo to prove that I finally got Cecily to try this adorable dress on and wear her hair in a ponytail (both things she usually refuses).  But, she wouldn't let me take a photo.