The circus life

We went to the Wenatchee Youth Circus last week with Andrea, Chelsea and lots of little girls.This was practically free and a fun afternoon event. Even if it was a little hot and a little long. Still fun, and now Hailey can't decide if she wants to be an artist, cook or tightrope walker when she grows up. Good thing she has lots of time to decide.

Derek keeps telling us that our life is like one big circus. Or party. Or something else exciting and fun every day while he is at work. As if this is a bad thing? Who can resist sunny days and all the options to enjoy them? I seriously love summer with my age of children, and I love that I get to be doing all these things. They will only be kids for a short time. But I get his point - the kids are starting to expect something big and exciting every day. This is evident by Addison asking every day, "Where we going today? We going to the Circus?"

We really do stay home now and then. I've been working on that this week. At least a little bit. See....

Home is pretty great, too.

Exploring with the Boyd boys (and one Boyd girl)

We headed to Saltwater State Park to hang out with Holly and her three boys this week. Not exactly the nicest sandy beach, but a great place to explore and discover "treasures" (my girls had buckets of these, that of course we had to leave at the beach) and creatures - like this humongous jellyfish:

You should have heard Holly and I trying to keep the kids from touching this. And you should have seen the kids trying their hardest to grab, fall on, throw rocks on, or generally give us heart attacks around it. We were happy to head in another direction.

Crabs were also a big hit. I love Cole showing Addison this big one he found (yes, it was dead). Caden's was just a little bit smaller, but he thought it was still pretty cool.

The girls couldn't collect enough shells in their buckets. 

And really, can you ever have enough pictures of your kids in the waves??

Thanks for the fun time, Boyd boys and Boyd girl!

Milestones

It's my 200th blog post!

Just happened to notice this and thought it was somewhat exciting.

I love keeping memories and sharing pictures through this blog. It is like a simple form of scrapbooking for me, and with as busy as I get, I love knowing that I'm getting some big and small memories recorded here. Plus, it's fun knowing friends and family get to see what we are up to and comment on it now and then.  Thanks for reading and helping to motivate me:)

That was milestone number one. 

Here is milestone number two....

 Addison blew her first bubbles and it was the cutest thing I have ever seen. Up until now she pretty much just spit on the wand, but yesterday she finally figured it out. Now she just wants to sit and blow bubbles all day.

Taking the Taxi

The water taxi, that is. We had been meaning to do this last year, but never got around to it. So, this year we grabbed Amy Jo and headed to Alki. It was a little cloudy in the morning, but burned off before the afternoon. I love all the pictures we got of this, so be prepared for just a few in this post... and I seriously narrowed it down!

Before taking the taxi over to downtown, we played at the park at Alki and had Spuds for lunch. I seriously love Spuds, and really should have taken a picture of my delicious fish and chips. But instead I just took more pictures of  my kids playing at parks. Like this one.

Then we were off on the water taxi. I can't believe this was the first time the girls have ridden a ferry of any kind! They thoroughly enjoyed it, especially watching the "wavey waves" behind the boat.

I love that this ride is only about 10 minutes and they don't have time to be bored by it. And I love that no one fell into the water, since I had a horrible nightmare about that the night before and could not hold tight enough to Addi. Anyways, we arrived at the waterfront and wandered around, all the way up to Pike Place.

 Megan and Paul took a break from work and met us for a few minutes.

When little legs got tired, we found creative ways of giving rides. Like Amy Jo's way of attaching Addi to her back with her sweatshirt - living in Africa for a long time can help you in many ways.

Or fully utilizing your umbrella stroller.

Not sure it was made for this, but it did the trick.

The ride back was beautiful, and Addison had held up wonderfully without a nap.

Until we got back to the car and she cried hard for a few minutes before doing this.

Slip-n-suds

The big girls did the slip-n-slide "Black Diamond style", which means a huge sheet of heavy plastic, some dish soap and the hill in our back yard. Thanks to Sara for the idea and supplies given at Symantha's birthday.

 It made for lots of good, clean fun. I think the suds were just as much fun as the sliding.

Symantha's 8th birthday party

Date:  Sunday, July 11 at 5:00pm

Place: Peak Gymnastics, Enumclaw (decided on after much debate and Symantha not being able to narrow down who she wanted to invite. We loved this place and the nice people)

Who was invited:  A tough one, because we are entering the phase of not inviting all of our family friends of various ages. She chose 13 friends, and kept it mostly to 8-9 year olds from school, church and family (except for a few little siblings for the sake of Hailey).

Favorite part: This contraption that they hook kids up to and basically fling them around

It was so much fun to watch the kids do this. Nonstop giggling.

Other favorite parts:

 

It was a great party.

Two days later on her actual birthday, we were at VBS and then took a little trip to Chuck E. Cheese with our buddies.  I was told this day that I was the best.

Symantha doesn't look like she was that excited, but I promise, she was. That is why she called me the best:)

And a few days later, the birthday fun continued with a double bbq for her and Derek.

We still have one more family celebration... but I think she has been pretty celebrated.

Good thing we love her and she's worth it!