Strike!

--- this is the best kind of strike, well maybe not if you talking to the baseball guys around my house, but we sure had some fun.  Becca was pretty excited anyways….

This is how Spencer spent his time at the bowling alley.  At first when a ball would come up he would just help roll it to the back, but by the end when a ball would come up he would push it back in the hole and wait for the ball behind it to push it out again.  It was harmless and kept him quite entertained. Sometimes Abbie used the ramp, and sometimes she would straddle the ball and give it a good push.  Watching….watching…. Abbie’s balls never went fast, watching….

Spencer loved carrying his own ball. High fives! Jessie wasn’t having the best time…her silly ball just kept going the wrong way (thank goodness we had the bumpers up).  She still got at least 5 pins by the end of every turn, it was just slow getting.  One bowl near the end she finally knocked over most of the pins. This is us walking back to the car – not a terrifically interesting picture, unless perhaps you happen to be my dad and love pictures of the family.

After bowling we went over to the bell tower waterfall for the kids to play in the water and to take a few more pictures of the girls.  When we got there a mamma duck and her babies were right by the trail and all the kids, and the teenagers wanted to hold one of them.The kids took off their shoes and rolled up their pants to enjoy the water.  I didn’t touch it, but they said it was pretty stinkin’ cold. The kids tried to corner the ducks in the water, but instead of getting a duck we got a SOAKED Spencer.  When we got back to the hot car I just stripped him down to his undies and that’s how he rode home.

That night was pack night and Mark got to be the caller for the flag ceremony.  I’m not sure if that job has a real title, but he did a super job and was happy to have been picked.

Spencer’s new trick…

We picked my sisters up at the airport a week and a half ago and have been partyin’ ever since.  Since all the rest of us have mailboxes we got the stuff for them to make ones too.

One afternoon we did a little slip n’ slide.  I don’t have a good picture of Jessie sliding yet and so she gave me her best….but every time she slides she has this face that looks like she’s in huge amounts of pain.   We finally got a “I’m having a great time” face, but then she started holding up one of her arms like she was riding bull in the rodeo. Here is her spectacular splash. I’ve had some fun taking pictures for my sisters.  Here are a few….

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And last of all Spencer’s new trick!  Check out this boy.  He’s only THREE years old.  I didn’t learn to ride a bike until before first grade!  Look at our sweet Abbie chasing after him catch it all on video.

Oreos, Candles and Day Camp

A little bit of FHE treats can be kind of fun…

One afternoon about half the neighborhood kids ended up at my house…and we had a blast together making little beaded creatures. Abbie is so creative with the Magnetix – here is her 3-D Utah sculpture.

And can you guess how many candles are on this cake…..THIRTY!!! how scary is that?  All day on my birthday Mark and Jessie kept telling everyone I was 21; it was rather sweet of them.   Abbie on the other hand was a giggly reminder that I really was 30.  She laughed every time she said she said, “thirty.”  But she’s so sweet that it made me laugh too.  My cake wasn’t fancy, but boy was it tasty, homemade chocolate zucchini cake with homemade fudge frosting! And here’s a few pictures of Day Camp.  Ken was able to go with Mark which I think was a ton of fun for both of them. 

Mark was SO VERY excited that his arrow went right in the bag!

The rest of vacation and the 4th of July

Do you think I can finish this post before midnight?  Our blog is our homepage when we launch internet explorer and today Mark said to me, “Mom, you really need to update our blog.”  Which I am interpreting as…, “Mom, I’m really tired of seeing that same picture of us playing checkers that I’ve seen for the last two weeks!” So Mark, here we go….

Just a few last vacation pictures…Spencer playing Calvin Ball.  He made this up all by himself too.  Mark in the back is the catcher, Spencer is the main player and of course he needs a runner to chase the balls he throws and a pitcher – that’s Ken.  So when Spencer yells that’s he ready the pitcher throws him the ball and he tries to catch it by clamping the little chair shut.  Then he “throws” the ball back to the pitcher by heaving the chair in that general direction and unclamping the chair legs.  We got to take turns playing Calvin Ball on several different days.

Next up we have a video chat with Uncle Douglas in Tennessee.   So fun that we came home and got a new toy for ourselves and one for my parents.  This should be fun!

One other thing that the kids took great interest in, this year, at Grandpa’s was the pull-up bar.  Abbie was the only one of the kids that could do a full pull-up.  Mark got soooo close!  But they all had to have a little help to reach it. On the morning we left we caught the 4:50 am ferry across to Seattle!  Wow, that was early!  But we got to see the sun rise over Puget Sound and that was breath taking!

A few Fourth of July Pictures

For the 4th we had brunch with Ken’s family…yummy!  Brunch worked out great since we were able to put away most of the vacationing stuff before we had to be over to eat.  Man do I LOVE coming home from vacation on Friday – it left us a whole day to recuperate before real life took off again.

After brunch we came back home, cleaned up some more, mowed the jungle of a lawn that had grown while we were gone and Ken and Mark taught Steph and McKay our new favorite game, St. Petersburg.  Then we headed back to his parents for a BBQ!  Yahoo!

For fireworks this year we got together with a few neighbors and played with sparklers and glow sticks…and the camera settings.  Boy was it fun!

We started out simple enough… Then got a little fancier… with a double flame….OK this is where the camera playing begins…using a longer shutter speed and no flash.  We had to set up the tripod to get the rest of these shots…

I love this one of Ken with his ghost in the background.  I’m not sure I could do this shot again if I tried.Then we broke out the GLOW STICKS… my new favorite “firework.”  Hey, they glow, you can’t burn anyone with them and they last a lot longer…. so here’s standing still trying to get both the glow and the people with a flash at the end of a long shutter speed. And here’s our wiggly crew….the long streaks that start on the right were Mark running from one side of the photo to the other. Then we tried some without the extra flash at the end. Spinning a string of glow sticks.

Jessie doing a cartwheel….

Jessie running away…And finally we started spelling our names with the glow sticks.  I think the shutter speed on these was about 20 seconds.  But don’t forget to write the letters backwards for the camera!