Summer is officially here!

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't been around at all. School got out and the kids and I started planning our summer activities. We try to plan things that will get the kids out of the house so that Daddy can stick to his night time work schedule. Last week we spent getting used to everyone being home, and tomorrow we'll start seeing what we can do around here.

Matt has been doing some riding lately, getting out there and trying to get in better shape. One of the blessings of where we live is it's literally right down the road from a state park with a lot of Mt Bike trails. The other day, he came in and crashed right on the living room floor. It was kind of funny, since he was still holding his camelback water system, with the hose right in his mouth. It took a lot of begging and pleading, but he finally agreed to let me post one of the pictures I took! I said it might help keep him accountable, since I plan on posting weekly on his summer progress. So for week one, here it is! Death by Bicycle!

Poor Eli! We've discovered that when an allergy to Mosquito bites runs on both sides of the family, at least one of your kids will have some kind of reaction. I don't know if you can tell from the picture below, but his left hand is swollen and bruised. He has the same things all over both his legs and on his back. At one point the bites were so swollen the poison was seeping out. Thank you Grandma Connie! The itchy stuff I was using was what our health line suggested, but the stuff grandma said to look for worked so much better! And, yes... the Benadryl made him sleepy, but after running around all day in this heat, the rest was well worth it and the swelling has already gone done! Yay!! :)

We can't leave Sissy out! She spent the day outside yesterday, enjoying the sun with her best friend Hong Ngoc, who just returned from a three week trip to visit her family in Vietnam. The two girls had fun just sitting and enjoying the chance to visit, giggle, and just be girls. :)

And what does poor Eli do when there aren't any boys around to play with? He pretends! And yesterday, he was pretending he was a motorcyclist on a camping trip. (The bike is the motorcycle and can you see the fire pit in the dirt?) Yup. Our lil man has quite the imagination!

I'm going to try and get back into blogging at least every other day. Not sure if I can keep it up every day, although I'm sure I'll have a bunch of stuff to share. Tomorrow we're going to have a picnic dinner at the river. When you live about a mile away, you should take advantage, don't you think? OOO and some of our other summer plans include going to the train museum to take pictures for Papa Mike, and to Mommy's favorite place, Snowqualmie Falls. It's a lot of fun to walk down to the bottom.... maybe not so fun going back up, but a great adventure none the less! Daddy wants to go to Leavenworth or Friday Harbor. He's leaning towards Leavenworth, although I'm kinda wanting to head toward Friday  Harbor... The kids came up with the perfect plan... Pull from a hat or flip a coin!

Guess what today is? Waffle Iron Day! AND Camera Day! Get out there and use those cameras!