birthday buds

 

Our good buddy Luke turned four. They held still for long enough to snap a picture!

masking…just in time for Halloween

 

spell check

Wow, second grade words have gotten tougher than I remember. Little Missy got 15 out of 15 on these words: suburban, restaurant, mayor, city, community, Americans, citizens, museum, rural, statues, library, occupation, neighborhood, urban, surprises.

Have fun

Cindy and I are taking a vacation...sans children. We're going to Greece! While we are wrestling with pangs of guilt, we know the kids will be just fine without us. Both sets of grandparents are sharing the daily/nightly care, and a few of our friends are taking them during different times. Still, it's hard to leave. But, come on, we couldn't take them out of school, it just wouldn't be right!

Last night Kenzie threw up so she had to stay home from school today. When we came home she had made us this interactive and very creative card.

Indoor gym

Mason shows off his moves...



and, not to be outdone, Kenzie proudly displays her newly perfected one-handed cartwheel...

new cousins!

I canot believe that David learned how to ride a bike but they are borroing Mason`s bike`s I think they are having a great time on his bike`s!

Biking

 

Fraol and Behayelu came over on Sunday. The four kids rode bikes, then we enjoyed an interesting dinner of corned beef and pizza, complemented with Puyallup Fair scones and chocolate angel food cake.

Kenzie told me that she wished that she was either Sarah or Janel so that the boys could be her brothers. To make me feel better she assured me that she still wanted the same parents.

News of the Day (by Mason, via school)

Tonight I'm going to a campfire with Casey and Liz and Josh and Luke. We'll do s'mores and we'll learn about what kinds of trees they are and I'll light my marshmallow on fire. Today they are starting to build Grandma and Grandpa's house. I'll go watch! It's on the other side of my house. A tractor was there today. The tractor banged down the trees. There's gonna be a clearing when I get home and a big truck will have part of the house. They'll move into it today! They're gonna be right next door so I won't miss them.

Cousins

 

progress, at long last!

They told us that once we got our permit the process would go quickly, but they didn’t really quantify it. This morning we took this picture.  Notice the dense wooded area…

By about noon all the trees were cleared out for the house and the gravel pad was installed. You can’t see it too well from this angle, but there is a path to the new circular driveway just behind the big tree.

This angle shows it better. Imagine a little house right in that spot! They’re telling us that the house will be delivered in about ten days! If only the city had been so motivated to get paid…

To Mom with Love, Mason

 

Farm hands

A friend from church is a master gardener and invited us to the Bellevue Harvest Festival, which is a celebration of all the great food that is grown and donated to charity.

Even though it rained most of the time, we spent a couple of hours sampling food and walking through the gardens. There was a potato counting contest. Two sets of potatoes were grown in containers and you had to submit your guess of the count and weight of potatoes contained in each. All the adults guessed high…4 pounds, 6 pounds, even 12 pounds. Mason said, “um, one pound and um, two pounds.” Kenzie marked her own as “1.5 pounds and 2.5 pounds.”

When it came time for them to harvest potatoes, guess who were front and center. Soon they had the tools out of the hands of the master gardeners and were helping in full stride.

Turns out that there weren’t too many potatoes in either bin, so both Kenzie and Mason won one of the contests! So, we went home with about three pounds of potatoes, a nice mix of reds and purples.

In celebration, we all helped make a yummy vegetable soup for dinner. Mason scrubbed veggies, Cindy and Kenzie diced, then Kenzie and I cooked. It was a fun family event. Every once in a while we realize that it’s sometimes nice to slow down a bit. Maybe I’m just trying to settle into the fact that summer is almost over and the rain is coming, like it or not!

New cousins

Kenzie spent the day at work today with me. I took her out of school so she could go with me to the airport to meet their new cousins, Daniel Fraol and David Behayelu. She went into the copy room and made this picture all by herself. Pictures are a bit fuzzy, but it says:

 

WELCOME!

David and Daniel!

We are your new cousins!

How cute is that?

She spent the day with me at work which was, by her assessment, quite cool. She says that I talk way too much. But, she was great. She read her book as I went through the day.

When it was time we went to the bus tunnel and took the new light rail train to the airport, and snuck in just in time before they arrived.

The boys are so sweet and cute. We’re excited to get to know them. Mason and Behayelu seemed to hit it off quickly, tickling each other and throwing paper airplanes.

I love these pictures. The first one shows the boys studying the escalator. The second is their first elevator ride.