Camping and Kelby's Birthday

The girls had a great time at the soccer vacation Bible school last week. They made new friends and enjoyed running around in the field, although they had to miss Friday night so we could go camping.

On Wednesday afternoon we went over to the spray park again and then visited Great Grandma at her home. They serve ice cream there on Wednesdays, so we shamelessly take advantage of that. I hope she doesn't mind!

Here's the girls playing in that little $60 investment we got last week. It will pay off big time if the sun would come out again! It comes out one day and the next it is gone.

That is why we decided to go to Leavenworth to camp for the weekend of Kelby's birthday! As soon as we crossed the mountains, there was the sun!

Mike took Friday off so we could venture there in time to get a good spot, but apprently you MUST reserve a spot to get one in our favorite campground. So, we drove back down the canyon to find a spot at the Tumwater campground. It was OK, but not by a cute little creek and a little too near the highway for Michael's liking. However, there was beautiful enchanted area in the woods nearby, so the girls loved it.

I don't have that many pictures because my camera is out of commission. All I have are from my phone!

We just relaxed a little and I loved just being away from the house. We also went in to Leavenworth and shopped a little bit before we went down to the park by the river. We especially like the candy store (got some taffy) and the toy store. We want everything, but don't buy anything. The water was running a little too high to play in the water, so that was a little sad.

Funny thing was that we ran into Kelby's best friend's family over there! They were just heading out of town as we got in.

On Saturday we got up and went into town to the ranger station to find a hike we could do as a family. We settled on a long one to a lake, and got all suited up and ready to go. (The girls had earned their hydration backpacks the  last time we hiked.) However, when we got to the trailhead...an hour out of the way...we found out that "no dogs are allowed"! We were so bummed. They should have had that information on the pamphlets we picked up.

Oh well, we drove back to Leavenworth and found a shorter, closer hike to take. I found 2 geocaches there though, so that was fun! I'm loving geocaching again because it is so much easier with our new phones.

This trail lead to an old tunnel that used to hold a pipeline. It was cool to see the dark, cool tunnel!

After the hike, we went to town for an ice cream cone treat.

Then, we went to play at the town pool!

Then, nice and clean and cool, we headed back to camp for the night. Of course, we had our fire and smores too! I LOVE camping.

Sunday morning was Kelby's eleventh birthday! We went out for breakfast at Sandy's Waffle Haus. I even found Carmel Cookie Waffles from Billings, MT there. Whoo hoo...my favorite.

I had no idea what to get Kelby this year, so instead we said she could pick her own present in Leavenworth. That made shopping more fun for her! We found a super secret toy store that had all the best stuff. It is only secret because it is downstairs and tricky to find. She picked out some cool magnet stones and, of course, some horses. We also found her a "Scratch and Sketch" book where you scratch off the black color to show the pretty multi-color paper below. She loves that!

Then, in a blink of an eye, it was time to go close down camp and head home. We watched a movie that evening at home and ate some strawberry cheesecake that she wanted. I was feeling a little like a camping birthday was not as much fun...but she seemed to love it.

I made up for it the on Monday by making homemade apple fritters for breakfast and having her friends over for a campout in the backyard sleepover. We watched "Pete's Dragon" and made cool bottles of dragon potion as a craft. After a campfire and smores, we ate some more cheesecake, then the big girls did MadLibs until bedtime.

I feel satisfied with the birthday celebrations now. If the sun would only come out, we could go do something wet! I hope that we can have an easy going rest of the week and find lots of fun summery things to do. We'll be headed to the library for sure because Tegan has already read about 800 minutes already! She'll get some free paperback books for it.

On to the Fourth of July!

Updates are Few and Far Between

I'm sorry that the updates are few and far between on this site. I hate to not have this blog public because it makes everything about it harder, but I guess that I'll still keep it private. (This is a long post…sorry!)

We've been fantastically busy through May into June. The end of the school year had lots of activities going on. It just flew right by! Time is just going way to fast for me these days.

 

May

I continued to spring clean the house and even did the garage. Here is a before picture:

I don’t have an after picture, but it is lookin’ good now. It had even stayed pretty clean for the last four weeks!

Girl Scouts

I had a Girl Scout Encampment meeting on Saturday, May 15th. On Saturday, May 22nd, I spent 6 hours at a Girl Scout Outdoor 3 Course. I promptly my dutch oven after that because I had so much fun cooking with it. Then we had our troop fieldtrip to Build-a-bear on Tuesday the 25th.

 

We had one weekend to the family (though the weather was lame), then on June 4-6, the troop was at Encampment at Camp Kirby (Where I became a professional dutch oven cooker for cooking 14 ovens at once).

Then, on Thursday, June 10th, we had our end-of-the-year potluck and ceremony. (I even cooked a dutch oven meal for my submission into the potluck!) And beyond that we had our regular troop meetings in there too. Yikes! The end of the year is always busy for Girl Scouts, but just writing it out like that makes it sound crazy!

 

To top it all off, just last Sunday I took another course so I could become a “Getting Started Coach” which allows me to teach a class for brand-new leaders.

I designed a bead loom for my workshop for Girl Scout Encampment. I took cute pictures of it to also post on the GS of Western Washington site. I was surprise that the girls ended up loving this workshop and doing great at it. All but one completed their project in one hour.

End Of School

In the middle of all that was the end of the year stuff for school. Anika’s class got to go to the Children’s Museum for their fieldtrip. This was her very first fieldtrip for school (She’s been on plenty of her sister’s fieldtrips!)

Kelby’s fieldtrip was the next day. She got to go to a nearby park and learn science all day. I guess I didn’t any pictures of her and her class, but let me tell you that her native habitat of 5th graders was actually a little scary. The other kids in her class are so much different than her and Taylor. They all seem a little more grown up. I would highly recommend viewing your child in their own social environment. It will help you know what to prepare them for! Tegan’s fieldtrip was in the middle of the year, but they had a pizza party on the last Friday of school.

 

On the last Monday, Kelby’s class had an “open house” so you could come and see all their projects, but I think it was really so I could take all this stuff home for her.

On the second to last day, there was a school BBQ, so I went and had lunch with the girls. Then there was an awards assembly for the older kids. Kelby got on the honor roll. I think she legitimately earned it this time!

Then there was the last day…I always try to get the kids with their teachers, but Kelby’s was out having surgery on a broken foot, so we missed her.

 

Races

On Saturday June 13th, we went to the Tesoro Run. This is a family favorite because of the kids' half mile and the hot dogs afterward.

 

Michael even placed in his age group (and got a trophy)!

The sun was out and it was a beautiful day. I even got a sun burn! Gramma and Grampa Wright were with us.

On Saturday June 19th, we went to the Berrry Dairy Run. This is another traditional one for Michael. Kelby and Tegan ran the two-mile too! Anika and I watched from the sidelines….maybe we’ll run next year.

Summer Fun

Now we are on to summer fun. We celebrated on the last day of school with Chinese food out. That’s my favorite and I think it is a tradition now. We’ve done that the last couple years.

Then we ran a couple fun errands, like going to the dollar store. We tried to find Great Grandma because, rumor has it, that they serve ice cream on Wednesdays at her place. We didn’t get a hold of her, but found a fun spray park to play at. The weather hasn’t been cooperating with summer, but it was still nice enough that day to let them get a little bit wet and play at the park.

  

Then we picked up some ice cream treats and took them over to Gramma Wright’s house were we got to see Grampa and Great Gramma Wright too! It was a great last-day-of-school celebration day!

On Thursday we jumped right in to our summer schooling plans. I’m glad we did too because otherwise we never would have started. I’m having the girls do a math page, a journal page, and some reading to keep up over the summer. We plan to do it in the morning as often as we can.

I took them to the library and signed them up for the summer reading program. They have never really stuck to that program, but this time, they read their first 400 minutes in just two days! They were super motivated to earn a little stuffed animal. It was quiet around here I’ll tell ya!

On Friday we went to the church pool because the sun came out. They LOVED that! Then we did our Costco shopping and they didn’t love that!

This Weekend

Besides the Berry Dairy Run, we didn’t do too much this weekend. We enjoyed Father’s Day by serving Dad a breakfast in bed and giving him all the cute things the girls made him at school. It was a laid back day. We were hoping to do the zoo or a hike, but the weather didn’t cooperate.

Coming Up

The girls are doing a Soccer Vacation Bible School for a local church this week. Tegan was up for it on Monday, but Kelby and Anika didn’t join in until Tuesday evening. They go from 6:30 to 8:30 and play all kinds of drills and games, then they also have some lessons about God. It is an impressive way to do VBS! They are really enjoying it.

I got the girls a little pool today. We had to get rid of the one from the last two years. That is $60, that is well worth the investment! They were so happy and occupied this afternoon. Now let’s hope the weather gets nice for them to continue to play in it! When not swimming, they were reading. Anika is sure figuring it out!

 

We hope to camp in Leavenworth this weekend. I have the tent trailer all ready to go and we have spent the night in it a couple times while it was popped up in the yard. I can’t wait for our first camping trip! Camping is my favorite thing about summer.

 

My camera’s focus died this evening, so I am sad. I hope to get it fixed somehow!