Take that!

Mike and I had a good laugh when we took some time to look through Owen's completed homework.

If you follow the lines to match the meanings, they are all right.  His teacher wasn't impressed!

Love my out of the box thinkers!

Birthday's, celebrations and camp, oh my!

I can't believe it, but our baby girl turned 11 on April 20!  Where did the time go?!

She wanted to have a simple {but fancy} celebration with her best friend Grace.

We started with manicures and pedicures at 8th Day Spa.

They have an amazing nail artist who did fancy artwork on the girls fingers and toes.

We had some time to kill so the girls and I did some "shopping" at Target.

They had fun picking out the same dresses and modeling them.

The girls even picked out an outfit for me. 

They said I looked younger in it. 

I was tempted to buy it, but alas, I am a child of the 80's.  I can no longer buy acid wash.

The girls aren't big eaters so instead of spending a lot of money on dinner, we went to Panera to get mac and cheese.

We followed dinner with dessert at the Melting Pot.

The girls were super excited when they lit the chocolate fondue on fire!

Happy birthday my girl!

We spent the next few days at YMCA camp Seymour in the Purdy area.

This is Bella's cabin.

They went to several classes led by the naturalists.

This one was on cephalopods.

They got to hold real squids

Examine them closely, and learn more about them

Before they dissected them!

They even got to use an old seaman's trick and use the vertebrae of the squid and it's ink sack to write.

Our next class was reptiles.

The turtles were Isabella's favorite.

She even held the snakes once she learned more about them.

We spent time in our cabin making a flag for our troop.

We even had a chant.

Our cabin was Trillium, and I made shirts that said "Trillium Troopers"

Our chant was "We are the Trillium Troopers.  We are not party poopers."

We ended up chanting loudly the whole way to dinner only to find out that we were five minutes late and being totally disruptive!

Oops!

After a not so restful night, the kids started out with a class on marine biology and then canoeing.

The naturalist did her best to teach the kids how to row.

Getting ready for lunch!

We followed lunch with a class on sustainable living

The kids are trying to make clean water after polluting the water.

My favorite class was co-op.

There were several obstacles or puzzles the kids had to figure out and work together on.

During Rec Time, Bella and I headed back out on the water.

It was such a gorgeous day!

That night, each of the cabins performed a skit that they had been working on.

We had a centipede that we had trained to do tricks.

One of the tricks was jumping over five humans.

One of the teachers is closest to the centipede.

Once the centipede "jumped" over the humans, the tail end of the centipede "peed" on the teacher.

"oops!  The cente peed!"  He wasn't potty trained!

Camp ended about three hours early for Bella and I.

Bella woke up on the final day not feeling well and ended up throwing up after breakfast.

Thankfully, she was in the nurses hut.

The rest of the morning didn't seem super exciting, so neither of us was too sad to head home early.

When we got home, we found the first installment of Aidan's paycheck from the House of Representatives!

I'm thinking we need to take out at least half for living expenses!

Archives

Finally found the archives for TVW.  

Thankfully I didn't miss Aidan afterall!

You can catch him at this link here.

Pretty boring stuff hearing the roll call, so you can skip to 6:30 and see Aidan present the flag.

He said that during the prayer he got a text from Grandma.

Thankfully his phone was on vibrate but he said he was standing right next to the speaker of the house!

Gymnastics and orientation

Isabella participated in her first gymnastics event this past weekend.

We hesitate to put her in team because the expense and the commitment.

I like my girl, I don't want her to be in the gym 12+ hours a week!

This was a little taste of what it would be like for her to perform in front of an audience at an event.

Beam dismount

Vault

A blur on the bars

Getting a participation medal

The next day was page orientation for Aidan in Olympia.

Waiting with the House of Representatives pages.

There are 17 for the week.

Senate pages were seated on the other side.

Standing in the House getting a view of what the Speaker sees.

A lot of desks are going to be needing a lot of papers this week!

Who knew there was a right way to deliver them.

This morning Aidan had the opportunity to present the flags to start the session.

Mike and I missed it, but we were happy that my Dad and Mike's Mom caught it.

Aidan reports that he has already met with his legislative assistant and will meet with his legislator later today.

He will spend the rest of the day in the page room making deliveries, so he shouldn't be seen on the floor today.  He gets his schedule in the morning.  If I get any important tid bits, I will try to pass them on so you know when to watch.

A sneak peek

We dropped Aidan off in Olympia tonight to get ready for his week as a page with the House of Representatives.

He will be on the floor in the House throughout the day.

They do break for lunch and are in page school for two hours, so he won't always be seen on the floor in the House.  But if you are lucky, you may catch a glimpse of him on TVW (click the link to be directed to the site).

Spring Break

This is a long post.

For your listening pleasure, I have included one of Bella and my favorite songs.

Enjoy!

The kids and I decorated Easter eggs.

I used some cool Silhouette double stick adhesive that they sent me to make the bunnies and chicks and polka dots.  Mike hates the glitter, but I think they turned out really cool.

We tried a new technique for dying eggs and used shaving cream and food coloring.

It's messy but fun.

Several years ago we started the tradition of planting jelly beans 

On Easter morning they bloom into suckers!

Mike thought it would be fun to hide the Easter baskets and do a scavenger hunt for the kids to find them.

This is one of the clues.

Yes, we name our furniture and our cars.

Here they are digging in to their baskets and seeing all their fun goodies.

It was really sweet that the kids even picked up thoughtfully prepared presents for one another and paid for those presents with their own money.

And yes, my Easter basket is lame (I got the leftover sucker (4 pack) and candy cane red hots).  Mike's was way better!  See his heart gift bag?  It was filled with awesomeness.

We had an egg hunt with our decorated Easter eggs.

The boys spiffed up for Easter service.

Can you see Aidan's knot on his tie? 

It's how he likes to tie it.

Super fancy.

What's the one thing you notice in this picture?

Yep, Aidan is obviously taller than I am now.

Dang puberty!

Our neighbor Amy was up early and happy to take some family pictures before church.

It was a beautiful Easter day!

Here are the cousins lined up(ish) before the egg hunt.

The kids were giving up on getting a group shot.

The empty lot next to Great Grandma's makes a great place for an Easter Egg hunt.

We knew the weather was turning, but I wanted to take the kids up to Seattle to be a tourist in their own city for the day.  

When in Seattle, we almost always stop at Brookstone.  Not because we love the store so much, but because Owen got a helicopter for Christmas from there that has a year long warranty. 

The helicopter works for about two days (if it's lucky!) then it's broken.

We just take the broken one in and exchange it for a new one.

We would do it more often if we lived closer!

The kids loved these massage chairs.

Aidan is wondering how he can save up $4000 to buy his very own!

Bella's like her daddy and isn't a huge fan of the massage.

Love me some junk.

Pretty sure I could make this.

If I wanted to.

After Brookstone the first stop was the Ferris Wheel.

Totally worth a spin in the Ferris wheel.

Don't need to do it every time we go into the city, but once was a cool experience!

My token "I was there" shot.

We walked the streets like a tourist

 After a picnic lunch we went up to the Space Needle.

All three kids have been there, but the last time Owen was there he was 1 so he doesn't remember it.

It's an expensive elevator ride, but the views are amazing!

We even went into the revolving restaurant. 

Notice I didn't say we ate there. 

We just peeked around.

Pretending this is the spot that Mike proposed to me over 15 years ago.

It's probably not, but we are pretending.

I'm thankful that we waited for the afternoon sun to shine through while we were at the Needle.

It was worth the wait!

 When we were in the needle the kids saw this fountain and wanted to explore it.

We've played there before, but that was years ago and none of them remember it.

Typical Seattle there are people in sweatshirts and pants bundled up and others frolicking in the water getting soaked.

Another thing the kids saw from the needle was this maze outside of EMP.

This random kid became our new best friend.  Pretty sure she would have followed us home if I hadn't screamed stranger danger.  I had enough kids of my own!

On Thursday we took Mike and Isabella to the airport to fly out with Carol and head to Santa Rosa to visit Geigy.  They had a wonderful trip and I enjoyed my two days at home with the boys.

We visited the flight museum.

It's changed a lot since we were last there.

A few things I learned:

I know very little about airplanes even though I have heard about them a million times

Owen had to explain a tail dragger to me

Parent fail: Aidan and Owen realized that I make things up when they ask questions.

Sue me.

We got to see the new trainer that the flight museum got.

Spoiler alert: it's lame.

I think this is a Blackhawk.

Or an F18

See, I make stuff up.

The cock pit on the trainer.

Yep, looks like an airplane.

Lame.

Owen was annoyed.

Aidan was getting to see what he wanted to see but Owen didn't get to go to see what he wanted.

There is but only one of me.

Suck it up and smile with the NASA suit.

Yep, that's it!

Sorry, no pictures of our first annual jammie day even though it was epic.

Still can't believe that I've been a mom for nearly 15 years and never stayed in pajamas the whole day.

Things are going to change around here.

And now, the kids are back at school.

If you want an update on my epic public school battle, here it is.

Chris Ingles from King 5 news is totally on my team.

Even though I've said the same thing 6 different times in 29 different ways, it took one phone call from him to get the district superintentants to see the error of their ways.

Our elementary school is failing to meet state standards and are missing out on 6 days of school and 36 instructional hours.

Solution: file for an emergency waiver.

Nothing will change, but at least I got nearly a full 24 hours of being able to walk around doing a happy dance and saying "I was right!"