Washington vacation--the ferry

Friday morning we went to see Inside Out to take advantage of free A/C and mostly because it was fun for everyone and they had Baby's Day at the Movies where everyone under 5 gets in free and everyone else gets the matinee price. And it's ok to take toddlers or babies that can't sit still or that might cry. So Megan did. She spent almost all the time walking up and down the aisles, or protesting that I wasn't giving her what she wanted (freedom to eat everyone's popcorn off the floor and steal their straws from their drinks). I got to see most of the movie anyway and I enjoyed it. Everyone else who got to sit to watch it seemed to enjoy it, too. :)

That afternoon we headed north to ride on a ferry. About a mile out from the ferry the cars were backed up waiting for their turn. I'm sure the fact that it was Friday and the day before Independence Day didn't help traffic any. Thankfully we were riding the ferry as pedestrians and got to bypass the long wait and go park our cars in the parking lot and walk on.

 Our family riding a ferry for the first time:

 Megan is enjoying her new walking skills more and more lately. She didn't particularly like having shoes on, but she forgot about them as long as she was walking on them.

 After the ferry ride we found a picnic table in the shade and ate dinner.

 We took a little time to go wade in the ocean water, but not too far in. There was a dead, half eaten crab floating in the water that helped me dissuade the kids who wanted to go get their swimsuits on.

Annie spent most of her time here, and at the beach on the lake front searching for seashells. She has been asking to go to "the beach" for probably a year and a half, so when I told her we would get to go to the beach when we were in Washington she was so excited to be able to find seashells. She has a rock collection and up until this trip had maybe 3-5 shells as part of the collection. Now she has probably more than 30-40 shells and is so happy about it.

Ben and Ryan found someone's sand toys and happily played with them.

The tide was coming in and by the time we left 15 minutes later the water was all the way up to where Ryan is in this picture.

Here we are in our rental car:

I had reserved a standard size 5 passenger car, planning on Rachel or Annie riding with Todd and Savannah, or taking turns riding in their car because reserving a car that seated more than 5 people cost over $1000 for the week. Jacob got talked in to upgrading to this SUV that fit our whole family for just an extra $15/day. But Rachel still rode in the other car the whole time. It's not until just now looking at the picture that I realize we could have moved Ryan's car seat to the middle row and saved ourselves a little trouble getting him buckled. Oh well. It probably saved us a lot more trouble that would have ensued with him and Annie fighting.

Washington vacation-getting there

We went to visit my brother, Todd, and his family in Kirkland, Washington, near Seattle, for a fun summer vacation. We had a blast. 

The kids were all excited about flying in an airplane. Earlier this year I had this brilliant idea that we would fly to Washington, stay for a week, rent a car and drive to Idaho to see my grandpa and everyone else in Salmon, then fly home from Idaho. Then we drove to Utah and back and I decided we weren't doing a long road trip until Megan is at least 2 years old. I'm glad we stuck with a 3 hour plane ride; it was plenty. We haven't flown since Annie was 6 months old, so neither she nor Rachel remember flying before. They couldn't wait to get on the plane, so to burn some time in the airport we went on a walk and found the shoe shine station.

 Are these actually used ever? I've never seen one in use except on the recent Willy Wonka movie.

 Megan did pretty well on the flight, though she didn't fall asleep like I'd hoped. Jacob held her most of the flight. And the other kids watched a couple of movies. I love technology on airplanes, road trips, and at the doctor's office. :)

We got to Todd and Savannah's house in time for dinner and bed on Wednesday night. The next morning we got up and got to work playing with cousins. They have lots of scooters and bikes and a long enough driveway to make a decent track for riding them, so the kids had some good times during the week out playing on bikes and scooters.

 Once we had a lunch packed and everything gathered we headed to see the fish ladder and the locks. We had no idea what any of this meant, but went along for the ride. The kids were excited to see some seals out in the water.

 We checked out the fish ladder. Basically there was a canal built to connect lake Washington to the ocean, some of it along an existing river. The bay where the fresh water meets the sea has a dam, but the salmon still need to swim upstream to where they were born to lay their eggs so more salmon will be born, so they built a ladder of sorts for the fish to swim up from the sea to the fresh water, like jumping from one pool to the next slightly higher pool with water flowing like a fountain from one to another because the salmon's instincts are to swim upstream against the current.

 Some of the pools had windows for us to see the salmon as they made their way upstream. Some were as big as Ryan's whole arm.

 After seeing the fish ladder we crossed the bridge and saw the locks where they lower the boats from the water level above the dam to the level of the ocean, or vice versa. We also went to a little museum they have explaining how it all works.

 They sure cram a lot of boats into the locks before they let the water down. Maybe it was higher traffic because of the upcoming Independence Day weekend.

Soon enough hunger set in, so we found a shady place to eat lunch before heading back to the house.

 Lucky for us (or not) Seattle has been having unseasonably warm temperatures this summer. Like in the 90s. Which is fine for us in Tucson where everyone has air conditioning, but in Seattle only the movie theaters and other such businesses have A/C. Luckily there is also a lake really close to Todd and Savannah's house, so we spent a lot of time there. Ryan called it the pool with the waves.

 We also spent a good bit of time in the back yard, sometimes jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler going.

 We also got to hang out with our newest nephew, Samuel. He's a cutie.

 We were lucky enough to get to sleep in the basement where it was at least 10 degrees cooler than it was upstairs, at least when the sun went down. With the windows open everything cooled down pretty quickly and by morning it was a touch cold until the sun hit the house again.

Our little monster turns 1

Megan doesn't actually turn 1 until July 4th, but we got some celebrating done yesterday before we go on vacation.

 Annie suggested monster cupcakes for our little monster. I thought it was appropriate, and went with the patriotic colors, since she's our Freedom Baby. :)

 We went swimming with cousins until the lightening got a little too close, then came home and had dinner and cake with the Tucson family.

 Megan wasn't a big cake smasher, but did make a big enough mess with her feet in the frosting that she got a good bath before continuing on to presents. Which she wasn't at all interested in.

 The other kids unwrapped her presents for her since she couldn't be persuaded to touch the paper most of the time, let alone tear it off.

 She was a fan of her stroller, but prefers sitting in it to pushing it. Though she does like to push it when the whim hits her.

 Bubbles were Annie's idea and Megan got a kick out of those.

As Megan turns one she is just starting to walk. She signs and says water (wa-wa), more, all done (dah duh), and says Mom, Dad, hi, and boo. She might say Ry-Ry (Ryan) and Nannie (Annie). Or she might say the same thing for all 3 of her favorite siblings. I can't quite tell sometimes.

She's got a sense of humor and likes to make us laugh, and likes to laugh with everyone else for no reason whatsoever. She LOVES the stairs and can go down them pretty well on her own. She will stand at the baby gates by the stairs and wail when she wants to climb on them. She loves watching the kids play, but especially Ryan. He may be her favorite person, even though he is getting more territorial about his toys every day and isn't always all that nice to her. She loves him anyway.

She likes phones and remotes and the ipad and the computer. Anything forbidden is a must-have item. She is not a picky eater, but prefers to eat off the table rather than her high chair. We call her high chair and her car seat both "the chair of cheer." She cries almost every time we put her in one. Usually it only lasts until there is food in front of her or the car starts moving, but neither one is her favorite place. And the car happiness only lasts about 20 minutes and then she is DONE. Unless there is some creative entertainment going on. Or food.

Megan can bring a smile to everyone's face and gives awesome hugs. We're glad to have her in our family. Happy birthday, little one!

June Fun

As the month draws to an end here's a look at some of the things we've been doing with our free time.

Grandma Knight was crazy enough to invite all the in town cousins over for a sleepover (except Megan).

 They all stayed up later than usual, then got up well before normal wake up time. Ryan napped every day that week (not a regular occurrence since March), either trying to catch up on sleep from the sleepover, tired out from the heat and all the swimming we've been doing, or perhaps slightly anemic or some other side affect from the gluten-challenge we're doing right now. We'll do the blood test in a couple of weeks to see if Ryan is ok eating gluten or if he really does have Celiac disease.

Megan has become more adventurous this month. She likes climbing on these little chairs.

 She is also finally trying to walk. May 31 Megan took a couple steps a couple of times, then decided she had had enough of that idea for a while. 2 weeks later I looked outside where Megan and Ryan were playing and Ryan moved a chair Megan was holding onto away from her and she took 3 steps forward to get to the chair. But if we tried to get her to walk she would just sit down. Then last Monday she finally decided she was ready to start walking and has been having fun practicing this week. She is our latest walker and it has been great not having a little one who can get into everything quite as much as she could if she were to walk everywhere. She'll be 12 months old on Saturday and she's just starting to take steps, probably 2 or 3 more weeks before she can really walk well. The other girls started walking at 9 months and Ryan at 10 months. I guess she's more of a sit back and watch the entertainment kind of girl, rather than a join in and chase everyone kind of girl.

Annie found the camera and caught the two clingy kids on camera one morning. Sometimes mornings can be tough. 

 Annie also caught Rachel on film... um, memory card.

 Rachel was reading her Book of Mormon. You can see her Reading Rewards calendar from Chuck E. Cheese in the foreground. I decided that my kids needed to see me reading my Book of Mormon every day so they would know it is important, but thought the only way that would happen is the kids helped me remember and read at the same time as I did. Which would help with my other goal to get the girls in the habit of reading every morning before they go to school (a habit that is easier to start when school is not in session).  So we set a goal of reading individually every morning for 2 weeks. With the rewards calendar from Chuck E. Cheese as incentive (they each get 10 free tokens for completing it--and there are a ton of rewards calendars to choose from), Annie did a great job at reminding everyone every morning, and is still doing it even now that the calendar is full and tokens are redeemed. Success so far. We'll see how the transition goes once school starts. For now Ryan and Annie watch a scripture story video online for their BOM reading. We tried other things, but everything else required me to be there to help them, and then I didn't get any reading done myself.

We went to Chuck E Cheese for Family Home Evening once everyone's rewards calendar was full. The kids had a ton of fun doing a few rides and playing the games.

10 tokens was just about perfect to occupy the time that it took for our pizza to be made, then we ate, the kids used their last few tokens, got their prizes and we headed home. They even have gluten-free pizza, so it was a win for everyone. The kids are still asking to go back.

Once summer started I tried to convince Rachel to join the swim team or the synchronized swimming team at our neighborhood pool. She resisted at first, but after days of telling her how much fun she would have, and finally showing her some videos from the olympics and some from kids her age that were much less skilled she gave in and agreed to do Synchro. She is one of 3 kids on the team, one of the other girls is in her class at church, which was also a selling point.

 They had a skills meet a week ago where they got to show off their pinwheel, sailboat and oyster. At noon on the hottest day so far this summer. Those of us watching were cooking.

 Rachel did a good job and got 8th place in the beginners group out of 14 or 15 girls. The water show is coming up in a few more weeks.
Annie is so looking forward to joining synchro next year. I told her she had to be able to swim well and tread water to do synchro. She has been improving a lot this year and can swim an okay freestyle well enough to be able to go 20 or 30 feet with taking several breaths. After showing me how far she could swim one day I commented on how great she was swimming and she got all excited and asked, "Can I do synchro now?!" I told her a few more things she needed to work on and we've been working on treading water and swimming backstroke since then and she's catching on pretty well. It's a little hard to have a decent lesson with Megan in my arms and Ryan trying to swim to me with no regard for his safety, but we manage a little bit every time we go swimming.
Ryan is really a great swimmer for a 3-year-old and can swim about 10 feet no problem, but can't get his head out of the water for a breath to save his life. Literally. But he doesn't care. A little water never scared that kid. We try to stay in the 2 1/2 feet area when we go swimming so he can touch and not drown. So far so good.

 As we've been systematically cleaning the house room by room and reorganizing and getting rid of stuff we don't need, we finally made it to the under the stairs closet that we use for some of our food storage. When we moved into this house 2 1/2 years ago a friend that has the same floor plan said they cut a hole in the back of the closet to use the space under the landing on the stairs for extra food storage. I've been meaning to do the same since we moved in. I finally got around to it.

 

 Not the prettiest of jobs, and the placement of the studs makes access kind of a pain in the neck, but it works. The kids, especially Megan, love the holes. 

 Because it's hard to access, I just put stuff that we won't need for 20-30 years unless for some reason we need to live off of our food storage: white rice, potato flakes, sugar, etc. We'll rotate it in 15 years. :)

While I was busy with the saw and Megan was sleeping, Ryan was painting outside. But not painting what I thought he was painting.

 The boy was covered in blue and after his bath, so was the tub. Some of our cement in the back yard, as well as a spot on the stucco of our house also have blue paint.

For Father's Day we made Jacob a t-shirt with a picture of his favorite kids on it. Here are a few from our photo shoot.

Last week we went to the Children's Museum with Grandma again. There was a dancing dinosaur. Megan was grooving to the music and McKenzie was intrigued with the dinosaur costume. She couldn't keep her hands off of him.

 This random kid was climbing all over the dinosaur and his mom was no where in sight. He joined our family for the picture.

At the little kid play area Ryan and Megan had some fun while the bigger kids did crafts.

 Overall it's been a really fun June. I appreciate summer more now that kids are in school. It's fun to have no schedule (besides Megan's nap schedule) and stay home and do nothing some days and get out and do things we don't normally do other days. And knowing that school will be back in session in a few more weeks and I'll have a break from the constant fighting that happens some days helps me endure the bad days. :)