Blueberry Picking

We joined the playgroup from church to do some blueberry picking!  I had no idea there was a huge blueberry farm just 20 minutes from our house! 

The boys hiking out to the start...

 Kate spent the time in the backpack on my back.  Every time she'd start to fuss - I would just hand her a blueberry and listen to her go "mmm-mm-mmmm" while she ate it!

 Taking a break.

 Going on safari in the tall grass.

 Hiding in the tall grass...

 We ended up with about 5 pounds of yummy fresh blueberries.  Not bad for about an hour of picking.  I'm just glad that didn't weigh us all before and after to see how much we'd had eaten! 

Great way to spend a summer morning!

2012 Garden

I totally failed at the garden this year.  Didn't plant a single thing!  I had good intentions, but didn't get far.  Adam did plant a few things - we aren't sure what they are, but some things grew up out of the ground.  He has faithfully kept the plants watered as well. 

 Jackson helped with the watering too!

 I'm not sure what this is - at first I thought it was just a leftover zuchini plant.  Adam has insisted that it's a pumpkin.  Last fall, he planted a pumpkin seed from the pumpkins we carved.  I didn't think anything would grow - I thought seeds had to be dried out and stuff before they could be planted.  I excited to see what really comes from these beautiful flowers!

 The leaves are huge as are the blossoms!

 Here's another little something that Adam says is a pumpkin.  No blossoms on this one yet.

 I did plant this rosemary last summer, and it made it through the winter (even with all that snow), and it is huge now!  I need to cut it back and offer fresh rosemary to my neighbors!

 Our raspberries are doing pretty good.  We have all been watching the little berries grow, and the boys spotted a nice red one this morning.  Can't wait to be able to pick and eat these babies!

 I wasn't sure we would get much from the raspberries this year.  Adam broke the fence we had built to protect them while playing soccor, and we haven't got around to fixing it.  The raspberries are leaning over quite a bit, and there are some dead stalks in there, but there are lots of blossoms and little green berries!

 Our blueberries are doing great again this year!  So glad we planted these bushes 7 summers ago!

 Our strawberries did super good this year!  It was a pleasant surprise!  After a disappointing showing last summer, Scott and I talked about pulling them out and starting over. I'm glad we didn't get aroudn to it, because we got lots of great strawberries!!  They are done now, but they were so yummy while we had them!

 This is another picture of the "pumpkin" plant.  See how big the leaves are?  Adam put the dump truck there to help with watering.  He's done a great job of taking care of this plant!!

  One last picture of Adam's helper!

I'm a bit sad that we haven't been able to enjoy fresh tomatoes, beans, peas, zuchinni, or potatoes this year.  I'm already planning for our garden next summer.  It's been a fun experiment for Adam, so I guess that's ok.

9 Months old

Kate is 9 months old today!  Crazy!  We love having this little girl in our family!!

 She is actually getting better at spending time on her tummy, and has rolled over a total of 6 times now!  Here's some tummy time proof!  A smile...

She's getting two new teeth, to bring her tooth total to 4.  Those top two teeth have finally popped through.  She is starting to actually giggle, and it's such a delightful sound!  We love this little girl!!

Skyhawks Sports Camp

This past week, Adam participated in a skyhawks camp.  Last summer, he did a soccor camp, and enjoyed it, so I thought it would be fun to do one again.  This time, we chose "sports camp".  They played basketball, baseball and soccor.  He learned lots of new skills and had a fun, exhausting week!  Today, the had "tournament day", so Jackson, Kate and I spent the morning watching his new skills!  We actually missed the baseball part because I had a meeting (Adam was a little diappointed with the baseball part anyway, because they had to hit the ball off the tee - he wanted someone to pitch to him).  We did get to see him play some basketball - which was fun to watch.  He's a pretty good basketball player, and told me several times during the week that it was his favorite sport to play each day.  Here are a few pictures:

This is Adam cheering after he made a basket...

This picture makes me laugh!  We signed up for the camp with Adam's buddy Xander.  He's the boy in the red shirt waving his arms in the air and yelling "adam, I'm open, pass the ball".  There was a lot of yelling about passing the ball.  Adam wasn't so good at that!

He was actually a pretty good basketball player.

Then they played a little bit of soccor.  It was fun to see how much he's grown since he played soccor last summer.  

The best part about the week was that there were 4 other kids in the camp that Adam knew.  He was excited when he got there Monday morning to see a boy from his Kindergarten class already there.  I had told another friend's mom about the camp and so she signed up her son, and then as the camp was getting started I saw Adam's kindergarten teacher walk up.  She had twins that were also in kindergarten at Adam's school, and they were also in the camp.  So, Adam knew 5 kids at the camp.  He loved that! 

One more thing done as we wind the summer up!  I may have to sign Adam up to play basketball this winter.

The long days of summer!

Jackson has refused to take naps since Adam got out of school almost two months ago.  At first, I struggled with him every day to try and get him to lay down - I'd lay down with him, and he would cry or jump all over me or (rarely) actually lay there and sleep for a few minutes.  But then I just gave up.  So, he goes and goes all day and if I can ever get him to sit down and be still for more than 5 minutes - this is what happens (usually in the car).

 Today, at about 5:00, Adam was at a friends house and Jackson was sitting on the couch playing with my phone.  He called me over, so I sat down with him and started scrolling through the pictures with him (that's his favorite thing to do on my phone - just look through the pictures and talk about what we were doing).  Within 2 minutes of me sitting down with him, his head started flopping back and forth on the couch.  Poor buddy - he's so tired - but so stubborn at the same time...  I tried to get him to lay down, and he wouldn't - he didn't want to sleep - so he took a little nap just like this on the couch...

It will be nice to get back to a routine once school starts again.  Hopefully, I can get Jackson back to a short nap routine too... Three more weeks of summer!  My feelings are mixed - sad for summer to be over, excited for Adam to start 1st grade, happy to have a routine.

Camping with the Terry's - Fort Lewis

We attempted one camping trip over the summer.  I wasn't sure how it would go, with Kate being just 9 months old - but we had a great time!  Our friends, the Terry's had never been camping before, so we decided to go someplace close and only for one night.  We had such a great time, that next summer, we hope to go for longer!

Scott had been to this great camp site with the boy scouts.  The site is right on Puget Sound - in fact it's right next to a ferry dock.  It's also located right below Fort Lewis, which is base from WWII.  I have fond memories of exploring Fort Lewis as a kid.  We used to drive up there as a family.  When my mom hosted her family reunion here in Washington, we even had family pictures taken at the fort.  It's a cool place to explore!  The kids loved it!!  Jeff, Quyen and I took the kids up earlier in the day, so we could scout out a camp site (it's a first come, first served site).  Once the site was settled on, we did some exploring up at the fort.  Warning - lots of pictures!!

It was a sunny day - but there was quite the breeze - hence the shorts and sweatshirts for the kids!

Not sure what Jackson is doing here...

 After exploring the fort, we headed back down to the camp site, and played in the sand while waiting for Scott.  He ended up having to drive around, because the wait for the Whidbey Island ferry was so long.  But, the kids were well entertained!  Adam and Xander built some sort of stick fort.

Kate enjoyed watching...

Once Scott got there, we set up camp.  The kids had fun helping set the tents up and exploring the insides.

Then we cooked some dinner...

 And sat around the camp fire...

And made a mess eating s'mores!!

It got cold as the sun went down!

The next morning started early with breakfast.

It was fun to watch the fog roll off over the water.

After breakfast, we did some exploring.  Scott found this birds nest...

And we watched this eagle, as well as a couple of other birds in the trees next to the campsite.  It was beautiful!

Then we did some more exploring at the fort.  Scott brought up the headlamps so they could go inside and see what they could find.

Before we headed for home, we took one last stop at the beach.  We found this cool fort, and the kids made a rock shop.  They collected tons of rocks and sold them at extremely high prices.  Too bad there wasn't more traffic - they may have made enough money to put gas in the cars!

It was such a fun little get a way.  We're looking forward to more camping next summer!