The saddest goodbye

We got to have Katie for seven whole weeks this summer and the boys think she is theirs, so saying goodbye was a sad, sad affair. The good news...we will see her again in 10 days in the other Washington!

7/11

Whew! We made it just in time for the free slurpees from one of the boys' happiest places on earth. Once again thank you Uncle Tom for introducing them to 7-11.

Meet Mr. Slithers

Rafal and I were just outside the living room doing some much needed yard work when the boys opened the french door to this....

Rafal yelled for them to close the door and we had a little stare off with the snake with two boys and Katie peering out the windows of the door. Finally,  Rafal poked him with a pipe and he turned right around and slithered his way through a crack between the back of the steps and the foundation of the house. Tavish ran right upstairs and found his snake book that Grandma Pat had given him last year and updated us on all the particulars of rat snakes. Later, Katie and I found him in the exact same spot but this time he raised his head, took one look at us, and slithered right away through his crack. He appears to be a relation to our dead snake on the top of our chimney.  Now when I go outside I've got one eye peeled for Mr. Slithers...he could be a unwelcome surprise for those coming in this door!

fun family activity

At the military family retreat we attended right before Katie's arrival one of our tasks was to plan a fun family activity. We decided to plan something to celebrate Katie coming to visit but plan #1 and plan #2 got pushed aside by cruddy weather. So we went bowling instead...who knew they made such cute little bowling shoes?

Field Trip #2

 Tavish's second field trip was to an outdoor nature center where he learned about squirrels...

 did some pond-netting...Tavish didn't catch anything in his net but some others caught a few shrimp and tadpoles and only one kid fell in...

 they hunted for bugs in old logs...

and got to pet a snake (I passed.)

Little Shopper

A couple of weeks ago I caved and finally let Paxton push the little cart at Trader Joe's and he is in heaven. He insists on putting as many of the groceries as humanly possible in his cart while I am pushing a mostly empty large shopping cart. And he loves having access to whatever he can reach...he wanted corn on the cob, purple grapes and the ever popular fruit leather this shopping trip. He is actually a pretty good little shopper and only manages to clip my heels with slightly less frequency than Tavish does. (of note, I find it completely ironic that the background of this photo is of the wine section)

Back to the river

Three cute bums...with some goofballs in the background.

One of our favorite things to do on summer Sundays after breakfast-for-dinner is to go down by the river. The boys got new bug nets from the Easter Bunny with which they were anxious to catch fish. None were caught which was very disappointing but many rocks were thrown in the river and much exploring done which alleviated the disappointment. Paxton managed to climb up on a stepping stone without any assistance and was very proud of himself. We were just missing Katie...