Daddy's Goes to the Sounders Championship Game

Something that has not happened since the 90's, is that a major sport championship game would take place in Seattle (and never has happened outside).  Thanks to a friend, Austin (who Daddy coaches soccer with), he located a ticket for Daddy to be able to go.  He also tried to get the kids tickets without any luck.  

In the end, the Sounders came away with the championship, beating Montreal 3 to 1!  It was the Sounders second championship in 3 years.

Pumpkin Carving and Halloween

Since we're actively looking to move, this was probably the kids' last Halloween in this house.  That is really weird to think about.  This year the kids each only got to carve one pumpkin unfortunately.  We were also unable to make it to the fun pumpkin patch.  One not so awesome thing about me working.  The boys still aren't real fond of the gooey insides.  Though they're starting to have a little more fun with it.   They're all starting to make more intricate designs on their pumpkins too.  That's fun to watch.  We watched a show called "Halloween Wars" where they do elaborate carvings combined with cake sculptures and candy decorations.  It's really cool, and also inspires the kids to be more imaginative. 

This was the first year we split up for Halloween.  Dillon went up to CJ's to trick or treat.  That ended up being a mistake, CJ got tired (it's really hilly up there) and so they stopped way early.  Kayda walked around our neighborhood with Ivy.  We went around with Carson and snagged his best friend Kailey.  They ended up with matching costumes, coincidence or design?  I have no idea.  Unfortunately in the chaos of kids going to different places I didn't snag a picture of Kayda or Dillon in costume. 

Our lovely town's candy generosity never disappoints!

 

Heads up

 Anything posted after 9/3/2019 is written with a HUGE delay!  Playing catch up so some information may be missing.  

First Day of School

This year is unique.  I'm going back to work.  I'm working at the middle school teaching 8th grade math and the advanced class.  It took a while for me to decide to go for it, but after covering a maternity leave for 3 months I realized that I missed having my own classes.  Anyway, working meant that, for the first time ever, I was going to miss dropping a kiddo off at school on their first day.  Fortunately for me, Carson was willing to get up and ready early so I could take a picture with him and give him hugs and good vibes for the day.  

 Starting 3rd grade this year!

 Starting 7th grade!

 Starting 6th grade!

 My kids are so stinking cute!

Daddy did a good job documenting the drop off.  I'm still a little heartbroken that I had to miss it.

Summer bowling

 A bowling alley near us offers free bowling for kids during the summer.  I've signed up for it before but never actually gone.  This summer we were invited to go with Ty and Carter.  We went ahead and did it a couple of times.  The kids had a really good time.  I paid to play with them once and was reminded how much a don't like bowling.  I am not good at it...but that's not all...it's just dull in my opinion.  All that mattered was that the kids had fun though. 

Lake Chelan and Carson's 8th Birthday

Once again we ended up with Jen, Rene, Ryan and Ethan at Lake Chelan.  It's usually warm and we love to spend the time in the water.  

 As always we spent a LOT of time just at the lake near the campground.  It's easy access and the kids have a blast.  We don't have a picture but we bought another floating pad that attached to the other.  So we had this floating island we were playing on.  There is a floating dock there but it gets really crowded.  This one we were able to tow around wherever we wanted.

 This year Kayda chose to bring her best friend Ivy with her since there is no one to be her buddy in the group.  She introduced Ivy to Pokemon Go and they played a lot of volleyball.  Fortunately Ivy was able to keep up with Kayda's water loving habits.

Rene brings their propane fire pit along every year but this time we actually took it out!  It was really nice to sit around a fire, we've never done it before because there are no fires allowed in the park (unless they're propane).  Every year Jen has us make smores at one of the stoves but this year we got to use a fire instead... just FYI, it is surprisingly difficult to toast a marshmallow well using a propane stove.

Carson wanted to spend his birthday at the water park so that's what we did.  It gets more fun each year because the kids keep getting more independent.  We definitely go on rides together still but it's nice to hang out as adults too.  I think the all around favorite is a tube ride that has multiple pools you work your way down.  You can slide down and splash each other and bump people over the edge of the pool.

 We added a couple of new activities this year.  One was floating the Wenatchee River in Leavenworth.  We bought our own tubes and parked a car at each end.  Our friends rented tubes so we had to wait for them but it ended up being a really fun day.  It took me a while to be less paranoid about snags and such.  Eventually I relaxed and we were able to play more.

After our tubing we did a quick look around Leavenworth while we ate ice cream.

Our other new activity was renting a boat.  We rented the boat for a full day (8 hours) which, by hour 2 seemed like too much.  We stopped and ate some lunch and then the time flew by.  Unfortunately, Dillon spent a lot of the time feeling sick, despite medicine (I didn't give it to him before our day).  We got a lot of tubing in and stopped to swim in some of the deeper sections.  It's really neat to swim down 10 feet and still be able to see around you.  The water there is really clear.