Weekend fun

I'm behind, so to begin with a little about last weekend...we were working on getting camping gear ready. We got the canoe out and scrubbed it up. Even Jack helped. Then, we took it out for a little test run of Silver Lake on Sunday.

 

When we first arrived, Jack was cold, even in sweatpants. 

 

We had a lovely ride around the lake and by time we finished, Jack was ready to play in the water!

Another story...after working on the canoe on Saturday, I was sitting in a chair out back. We've been battling a mole problem, and as I'm sitting there, the ground next to my chair starts to churn, right in the middle of the day. I yell to Mike, and he brings the hose and stuffs it into the hole and turns it on full blast. A little mole nose suddenly sticks out, trying to get away for the flood. Now what? So, I grab a screwdriver and I'm stabbing into the puddle, but I can't hit the thing. I do manage to use the screwdriver like a wedge and flip the mole out of the hole onto the grass. Now what?? I scoop it up onto a garden shovel and go to throw it over the fence...still alive, but the. I miss in my throw and it thuds into the fence...I got it over on my second try. Talk about a comedy of errors! We have once less mole in our yard anyway. 

Now on to today.  After a very long week, we headed out this morning. We are in a hotel in Portland tonight. We arrived here about 2pm, did some shopping, had some dinner, and then a nice swim in the pool. However, the evening was not as relaxing as this sounds because through a large part of it, I was on the phone with our house sitter boys. They said the key wasn't working and they couldn't get in. We asked them to try the back door, no go. We asked them to check with the next door neighbor; he wasn't home. We asked them to try a window-they couldn't get it open. They sent me a text picture of the key to make sure it was the right one. Just as I'm on the phone with a locksmith asking them to go over to the house and check things out, the boys tell me it looks like our neighbor, Greg, has come home so I send them to ask him for help. He helped alright...he let them know they'd been trying to get into the wrong house! The whole time, they were trying to get into the neighbor on the other side's house! I didn't even think I had to ask that question! After that, they got in with no problem obviously. Sigh-doesn't inspire great confidence, but I guess it can only get better from here. 

In the morning, we head out to Trillium Lake. Not sure when I'll have wifi again, but more to come to when I have access again.

Whew! Busy weekend!

We've been getting a handful of strawberries every day from our backyard bed, which is great because the fun of watching for ripe berries and getting to pick them has made Jack decide he likes strawberries! I'm not going to say no to that, so we've probably eaten several quarts in the past week. Here's our haul from tonight, which we promptly ate for dessert:

Yesterday, I decided we didn't have enough strawberries. I like to keep some in the freezer for smoothies and baking year round, so we stopped at a U-pick place and in 20 minutes had this:

So now, not only do I have two gallon bags of strawberries frozen, but I also made a batch of strawberry jam yesterday too. Yum...

We've been working on painting our old bookcases white, and Mike also power washed the back porch, which really needed it!  We introduced Jack to two games from our childhoods: Connect Four and Don't Break the Ice. He loves playing games (although he didn't quite understand the point of Connect Four yet). We played this game a couple dozen times this weekend:

In addition, we visited the park, rode bikes, played frisbee, did yard work, laundry, and shopping, and I did a bunch of food prep today too. 

The evening (which was beautiful) was rounded out nicely by pizza on the grill for dinner. Mike got a pizza oven that fits on the top of his charcoal grill that cooks them really nicely, and we had a lovely dinner on the back patio.

Nothing Much to Report

We always keep on trucking. School ends in a couple weeks, so I'm looking forward to the slightly slower pace of summer (although this summer is a busy one!), but for now we have another copy weeks of busy-ness. Mike has also been really busy at work because he's had auditors checking up on things this past week. Jack is getting used to his new pre-school and seems to like it okay. I'm not sure if we are going to keep him there next fall because it's not very convenient and I don't think they are pushing his learning enough, but it's okay for now. He's been very in to imaginative play lately, which is good. Here's the "traffic jam" he created on his track, filling it up with cars, trucks, and busses. 

 He's also discovered driving his RC truck off ramps on the back porch...

 He's a super cool kid, who needs to wear sunglasses when he goes outside now.

 Is he driving?

 Aspen and Wall Street are both shedding like crazy and need to be brushed constantly or we have balls of cat and dog hair floating around the wood floors.

 It's been very nice weather the last two weeks. My peonies and roses started blooming about 2 weeks ago, which is much earlier than usual.

 Other than that, nothing much to report.

We

Catch Up and Cousin Weekend

 Whew! What a crazy couple of weeks. Floors are finally done downstairs, and they look great!

Jack had a fun 4th birthday party. It was kinda overshadowed by everything that happened right around then, but the kids loved playing on all the toys at the YMCA!

After that, we headed to Nevada to see baby Haydn and to Utah for grandma's funeral. 

It was nice to see my folks and catch up with a bunch of my cousins, but I wish it could have been for a different reason. Here are some of my cousins and brothers with our children. 

Then, we had a little bit of time to get the house put back together, catch up at work, and I had homework to do for my grad program, which started the same weekend everything else occurred. 

We had another busy weekend this past weekend, keeping Tommy and Sam while Lesa and Colin went on a little trip. We tried to keep the boys busy....Friday night, they destroyed the house and climbed all over Mike. 

 Saturday, we decided on the game plan of lots of activities outside to keep the house intact. Luckily, the weather was gorgeous. We started with a visit to see the farm animals.

 Then, we drove up Hwy 2 to "the beach," which was really a bank along the Skagit river at Rasar State Park, a great little park that never seems to be crowded. The boys started with playing in the sand.

 However, then they realized there was this awesome, really big mud puddle left over from a storm, and in they went, pants, jackets and all. We did get shoes and socks off at least. It was about 65 degrees, and I'm sure the water was cold, but they didn't care.

 We had a picnic lunch and played at the playground, right there at the park as well (after we got into dry, clean clothes anyway).

 Here's the only quiet time of the whole weekend on the drive.

 We stopped at the mall on the way home. Then, at home we cooked hotdogs and marshmallows on the fire for dinner and played outside until bedtime!

 On Sunday, we continued the out-of-the-house plan with a trip up to Skykomish to ride the mini-trains.

 After that, we had a picnic lunch around the Skykomish River, and then the boys threw rocks into the water forever. Then, we drove home, where we immediately went to the park for a little more playtime before coming home for pizza and an after dinner movie! The weekend was full and exhausting, but the boys had fun!

Whew!