Summer Vacation!

Wednesday was Alexis' last day of school. She's on summer vacation now!
Thank you Ms. G for a great first pre-school experience.
Here's Alexis outside of school. The sign is so big, Mommy had to go across the streat to take the picture.

Breaking in the sprinkler park

The sprinkler park in Auburn opened Memorial Day weekend so we went for our first visit of the summer on Tuesday. It was supposed to be 70 degrees on Tuesday, but it was no where near 70 when we went. The kids didn't care. They had the place almost all to themselves. Alexis, Siah, Sammi and Kaitlynn- Alexis got pretty cold after a while. This is how she kept warm-

Fishing Derby

On Saturday, Alexis was in a fishing derby just for kids. It was at Steel Lake in Federal Way. Each kid had 20 minutes to catch 2 trout. The rules said NO parent participation but Daddy couldn't help himself- I think he wished he was a kid. There were some huge trout to be caught. Checking out her fish-

Alexis got a certificate that listed the length and weight of her biggest fish (which wasn't very big) and a good luck hook & power bait as prizes for catching 2 fish.

After Alexis was done fishing, we played at the playground for a little bit before heading home.

Getting a lesson on how to clean fish-

The girls decided they wanted to go swimming in the backyard that afternoon. Brrrr! Even though the sun was out, it was not very warm. They didn't care!

A couple of things we did last week

On Tuesday, we went to Target and played on the train toy at the mall. We love playing on the slide here.

On Thursday, we went to the kid's museum again. Playing in the water is definately our favorite thing to do there.

A Memorial Day weekend to forget

For the Memorial Day weekend, we went camping with our friends the Lewises. We went to Rainbow Falls which is near Chehalis. It poured all day Friday. The 2 daddies set up this great shelter to keep us dry (but not warm- it was like 10 feet away from the fire).

The shelter was great but a little too late. We were all soaked by the time it was up. Our camp ground turned into a giant mud pit and the kids were falling down constantly.

One set of muddy hands-

Two sets of muddy hands-

Four sets of muddy hands-

Rain water pooled up on the back side of the shelter. It didn't take the kids long to figure this out. As if they weren't wet enough! Taking a break from sloshing in the mud to eat dinner- Roasting marshmallows in the rain. You can see how wet the girls' pants are-

We woke up the next morning and it wasn't raining! Our campsite was still a giant mud pit but at least we were dry (well, maybe not dry but not as wet as the night before).

Helping out a friend-

These babies got very muddy. Sammi's even went for a swim in a puddle but the they kept the little girls entertained.

We walked to the "falls" on Saturday.

The kids played at the campground play toy on the walk back from the falls.

We headed home on Sunday. We pretty much woke up, ate breakfast, packed up and left. Here's Sammi playing hide and seek at Wendy's on our way home.

Some of the things to forget-

We didn't leave home until about noon on Friday even though Daddy told Josiah we would be leaving around 9:30. They got to the campground around 9 and had to wait in their truck until we got there. Right when we got there, the dogs got in a fight (exactly why we usually leave our dogs at home). Bailey was bit in the ear and bled a lot. Between the rain and mud (and without going into too many details, the bad chocolate milk the Lewis kids drank) we were running low on clothes by Friday night. The kids didn't seem to mind being wet but when Alexis started shivering and the mud was layers thick, we had no choice but to change them. Mommy woke on Saturday morning and her hair was still wet. Even though things were looking up on Saturday morning, things weren't great. The kids kept falling in the mud and Siah & Kaitlynn were still sick from the milk. Daddy invited a guy he knows (but never met face to face) to come hang out on Saturday. When the guy showed up Daddy thought he was some random guy walking around the campground and totally blew him off. That was embarrassing once he figured it all out! He chased the guy as he drove away and apologized but the guy wouldn't get out and stay- I wonder why!! Siah fell hands first into the fire. Thank God he was barley hurt- only a tiny scrape and a very small burn. It could have been so much worse. Even though it wasn't bad, it really scared everyone. It took both Mommies many, many days to clean up all our muddy clothes and muddy camp gear. No more blue tarp camping for us!

On Monday, Memorial Day, we went to Grandma & Papa Bob's house for a BBQ. We did what we love to do there...dress up in Ba's clothes and put on a show.

Meerkats

On Monday, Mommy checked the weather report and saw that it was the only day with sun in the forecast for the next 10 days so we decided to skip nap and head to the zoo to check out the new meerkat exhibit. The meerkats were very cute but way smaller than we expected. Right next to the meerkats is the komodo dragon exhibit. We had never stopped to look at these before. They are gigantic and Alexis thought they were pretty scary. Another animal that we had never seen before- the kookaburra. Sammi really liked the birds.

And always one of our favorites, the penguins.

Fishing

Last weekend, we went on our annual camping trip to Sun Lakes State Park with Papa Bob and his friends. We had fun hanging around camp, going for walks and bike rides but the highlight was definitely fishing! Saturday, we all went fishing on Papa's boat.

Here we are looking for the perfect spot to drop the poles-
Guess who was the first to catch a fish! Alexis with her pink Barbie pole! If you remember, she caught a fish out of the trout "pond" when we went to the pumpkin patch last year but this is her first real catch.

On our way home, we stopped in Easton to get lunch and fish some more. We took our lunch to the ponds there and did some fishing. The Barbie pole out-fished the others yet again.

Uncle Jeff, Sammi and Daddy-
Sammi took a couple turns with the pole-

Sammi's first catch (Daddy did most of the work though)-