Silverwood!!!

Silverwood opens at 11, so our plan was to get there right when the doors opened, to maximize our day of fun.  We finally arrived, however, at 11:45--this was the year that I forgot the tickets in the cupboard at home and realized it when we were HALF WAY there already...sigh.  But we had an awesome day, even if it was cut short by 45 minutes.  This year Josh and Kai braved Tremors, Grace and the girls loved the Log Ride and water slides, and Micah was brave enough to do everything that he was tall enough to ride.

Labor Day Errand #1--Haircut for Josh!

 Don't you think he needs a trim?  :)

Long hair, bye-bye!  School short, here we come!

When not in the classroom...

While the kids were at G'ma Camp, we spent our days in the classroom (and in meetings!) yet found a few hours to have some kidless fun.  First up was the tree removal!  Jeff came home from work at lunch on Tuesday to see how the progress was coming along.  Our lumberjack did an excellent job.

  

Tuesday night the girls and I finally found a night to go out to dinner to celebrate making it through LAST school year!  Melissa and Cassie and I went out for sushi--and I snuck in a pedicure!

Afterwards I met Jeff to finish his last 3 holes of golf at Downriver.

And the second night we had a hot date night--nap in the car (he just needed a 20-minute refresher!) before we headed into the Nordstrom Rack for school clothes and then to the Flying Goat for dinner.

Cracking up at the receipt from NR.  Shopping is not my forte.  But maybe deep down I'm truly a shopping genius!

G'ma Camp (Papa Camp, Too!)

We took the kids down to the farm on a Monday afternoon.  They were excited to have THREE NIGHTS at the farm!  G'ma kept them busy...an afternoon at Mary Druffel's pool, visiting G'ma Trudy to celebrate her birthday, and making paper chains that reached from the top of the deck to the ground!

All tuckered out!

Manito with Dad

August was peppered with a few days here and there where Jeff or I went into school.  But the last week of August was the beginning of the end of summer.  Meetings were starting and teacher-parents were searching for places for their kids to spend the day.  Jeff had gone to Leadership Camp on Sunday, so he agreed to take the kids on Monday, allowing me to go to work.  He snagged the Van Sickle kids and made a fun day of it--Rockwood Bakery, Manito, and the Used Bookstore!  That afternoon, we took them to the farm for Phase Two of The End of Summer...

Nerdy Reading Parents

Jeff hit his yearly reading goal only half way through the year this summer!  His summer reading included The Wild Children, and In the Lake of the Woods.  Eleven books this summer!

I found some time to read too--12 books in all.  My favorites included the Nathan Hale graphic novel series and The False Prince trilogy.

Playing "Piano Lessons"

Grace and Josh did a lot of game playing this summer--house, office, etc.--but my favorite happened in late August:  Piano Lessons.  Grace taught Josh how to play Ode to Joy and he was on fire!  I then taught him Twinkle Twinkle and Mary Had a Little Lamb.  We're planning on starting him in lessons with Sarabeth this winter--we think he'll be ready!

YMCA Return

Near the end of August we returned for swimming fun at the YMCA.  We took Ellie with us once, and then we remembered how fun it was to swim there and returned a few times in the month.  Micah is now a FISH.  He wears his floatie, but the time that Jeff took the kids, they'd forgotten it, and at one point, Micah was found SWIMMING out to the rest in the deep end.  In this particular picture he wanted me to capture how silly he was being...

Solar Eclipse 2017

This eclipse has been quite the news in recent days.  In parts of the States it was a Total Eclipse--Salem, OR, for example!--and we'd toyed with the idea of going to see Kaitlyn in order to view the Total Eclipse, but in the end we were scared away by the prediction of mass chaos that was going to ensue in those areas.  Here in Spokane, we saw 90% of the eclipse, but we all agreed that next time (in 2044) we would make the trek to see the full eclipse.

Grace started our viewing by using sidewalk chalk to copy the eclipse diagram that she found in the newspaper.  Daddy helped the kids make viewers out of cereal boxes, and then we started lingering outside, waiting to see what we could see.

 

I was amazed that a glance at the sun didn't look any different!  I also LOVED the shadows.  Look how feathery they appeared!

Also take note of our big pine tree in the front yard...we're in the process of arranging to have it taken down...

Cheers!  We thought this was the only total eclipse in their lifetime, so we toasted.  But upon further research, we now know of 2044...in 27 years we'll toast again...at the ripe old ages of 65, 36, 34, 30.  Perfect timing to celebrate our retirement.  Bwa-ha-ha!

Lingering Summer

This is what happens when Jeff and I sleep in on summer days:

We'd been pretty good about getting up before the kids at the beginning of the summer, but our bodies are soaking in every bit of sleep as our summer comes to an end...

And this MONSTER cherry tomato plant is my favorite thing!  It's a Micah snack machine...and I planted it back in May just imagining this picture happening.  Also, notice the pants on in 90 degree weather.  Micah's been excited to "dress my whole self" each morning.  This baby of ours needs to slow down a little!