Summer Week 7

This week Merrick had a multi sport camp every morning.  They played baseball, basketball, soccer, and football.  He had a great time, but unfortunately I have no pictures to prove it (mom fail!).  When I picked him up on the last day, one of the coaches pulled me aside and said he just wanted me to know know that Merrick was such a positive kid.  He had never said anything negative or unkind or complained.  This was no surprise to me, but is still nice to hear from an outside source.

So this week CC and I had the mornings to ourselves to do girl things.   We ran errands, went shopping, and just played games.  One morning we had a little extra time and we decided to pick blackberries.  I learned an important life lesson for living in the Pacific Northwest; you should always had a Tupperware container in your car because you never know when the timing will be just right to pull over and pick berries by the side of the road.

One day this week I also had Becca's littles while she and Ben celebrated their anniversary (her bigs were at camp).  At one point Carrigan and Isabel were giving each other checkups.  I had to laugh at their technique of rolling the subway car up and down each other's backs.

On Friday Merrick had his last day of camp so we stayed after and played in the splash pad with some friends and Becca and her littles.  As if that wasn't enough excitement, then we rushed off to the police station for a special story time and tour of the station.  They even let the kids explore a police car and dusted for their fingerprints.  We joked that now Merrick is in the system.

It was a great week, but the summer is seriously flying by!  In fact it is almost time for our trip to AZ for Garret's wedding.  Merrick was getting excited so we made a countdown chain.  Only 11 days left until we go.

Summer Week 6

This week flew by in a blur!  My cousin Kyle, his wife Carly, and their baby Josh came down from Seattle the first part of the week.  We enjoyed spending time with them and Merrick and C.C. (particularly Merrick) were so enamored with Josh.  Merrick not so secretly hopes that he will have a baby brother one day.  We got to spend one day at the zoo with them, Becca and her kids, and Maude and everyone had a great time.

Also this week Ben and Becca were getting their floors refinished in their house after having some water damage.  That meant that they had to be out of the house all day everyday.  Subsequently they spent several days over here and we spent a fair amount of time at the park together.  This picture is one of my favorites of Lincoln and C.C. taking a walk around the park.

On Friday I needed to go shopping to try to find things for Garret's upcoming wedding.  I had lots of stops to make and my parents were kind enough to go along to help out with the kids.  This meant that my poor dad often got left behind with the kids while my mom and I looked at something.  At one store in  particular I needed to try on couple of dresses and my dad got tasked with monitoring C.C. who was very into the jewelry rack.  This girl can be hard to shop with sometimes, but one day her love for clothes, shoes, and jewelry is going to make her a power shopper not to be trifled with.

One last thing from the week I wanted to mention, we went to Dave and Busters on Saturday which is always a favorite around our house.  Merrick has not gotten any prizes the last two times we have gone because he wanted to save up for something big.  This time he decided that the time had come to cash in.  He elected to go for a tabletop Foosball game.  It was a good choice has been quite the hit in our house.

Summer Week 5

After several weeks of visitors and go, go, go, this was our chill week.  Our days consisted of playing at home, visiting parks, and the library.  Over the course of the week went to more parks than I can keep track of.  Sometimes we went alone, sometimes with cousins, and sometimes with friends, but at everyone C.C. always took time to pick me flowers as she is so fond of doing.  It was a nice relaxing week.

Saturday on the other hand was full speed ahead again.  We went to the outlet mall, rode go-carts, played at Kidopolis (think McDonald's playland on steroids), had a picnic on our living room floor, and watched the Peanuts movie.  We have to make the most of every minute we have Jeremy home and I think that made up for the slow week.

Summer Week 4

This week we still had Kai through Wednesday and so we tried to cram in as much fun as possible before he went home.

The excitement started with the 4th of July, despite the fact that that feels like ages ago already.  In the morning we had a ward pancake breakfast and the kids all decorated there bikes and scooters and put on a parade.  After the breakfast we went to Memorial park in Wilsonville (where we took our last family pictures) so the kids could play.  Later that night we had dinner at Brendon and Rachel's house and then went to see fireworks.  The only bummer part of the day was that is stays light in Oregon until 10pm in the summer so the fireworks didn't even start until 10:15.  It was a really late night for the kids.

Another highlight from the week was picking blueberries.  Before we moved here I didn't even think I liked blueberries, but I just had never tasted the real thing.  It turns out fresh blueberries are amazing!  So this week we went to a local farm and picked 10lbs.  If you are not sure how many blueberries it takes to make 10lbs, let me assure you that it is a lot.

My favorite part of the week though was going to "Creature Feature" at the library.  It was this awesome reptile show where the kids got to see a "talking" lizard (it has a voice box), a gila monster, a komodo dragon, rattlesnakes, cobras, and pythons.  They even got to hold a 13 foot python and pet an alligator.  We had not planned on going to the show and decided last minute to go.  I am glad we did because, like I said, it was the highlight of a great week for me.  Oh,and we had to pet Otto the library dog before we went home because what visit to the library would be complete without that.

All that fun and I didn't even mention the movies, lego store, and birthday party.  Now Kai has gone home and I have set the bar pretty high for fun.  Let's see what next week has in store.
 

Summer Week 3

On Monday Emily went home and left me with an extra kiddo for 10 days.  The first night without his mom was rough and the second night was worse.  That night I went to bed at 11 pm with him still awake and vowed things would be different going forward.  When Merrick woke up at 6:30 I told him to go wake up Kai.  We spent the day on the go.  We played outside and rode scooters and went swimming.  That night Kai talked to his mom until about 7:40 and when she texted me at 8 he was long asleep.  Ever since that day the name of the game has been early up, run until we drop, and early to bed and every day the kids have been asleep by 8.

The next day we went to the zoo.  We spent 5 hours there walking around and seeing everything there was to possibly see.

Friday was the pool again with 3 hours of fun in the sun.

We capped the week off yesterday with another hike to Latourell falls and this time, since Merrick had his cast off and no longer has water restrictions, we played in the water.  Carrigan did not care for the direct spray from the falls but otherwise we had a great time.