On May 27, Shane left for a business trip to California, he was gone for 16 days!! CRAZY! We've never been away from each other that long, and he'd never been away from the kids that long. We did all survive :-)
Mom & Dad Visit!
My folks had been toying with the idea of coming to visit since November... my dad is an electrician and my brother has put him to work in all of his places of residence, so frankly it was my turn to get good use out of my dad's mad skills. Ceiling fans, new porchlights, etc. I was itching for them to visit. I hadn't seen my parents since February 2013 when I went out to Maryland and Ohio and visited Grandpa Twining on his 86th birthday. So, longer story shorter, with Shane being gone they made plans to come visit, both to help me out with the kids and to help out around the house :-)
My folks and my teen-age cousin Rhys (who was staying with them for part of the summer) got here June 11. Funny enough, not planned but alas it happened this way, Shane came home on June 12. The last day of school was June 13.
Prep work for the folks coming was me going to Home Depot and Lowe's, taking pictures of stuff I liked and asking Dad what to get. I made a spreadsheet of projects and emailed it to him, we talked back and forth. When he got here, we all went to Home Depot the first night and spent waaaay too much money on all sorts of stuff. His credit card got us a nice discount :-)
Over the next couple days he really worked his tail off! Here's a short list...
- Ceiling fans for all four bedrooms
- New ground fault plugs -- with nightlights -- in both upstairs bathrooms
- Created actual lights in my bedroom (not a switch to a plug -- bleh!), including dimmable recessed lights
- Added a dimmer to my bathroom
- New light in my pantry
- New light in my laundry room (awesome!
- New light in my garage
- Replaced the outdoor light fixtures, adding motion sensors
- Added a plug on our kitchen island
- Added this cool plug on the kitchen counter that has USB slots for cell phones!
- NEW (dimmable) LIGHTS in the family room!!! (not a switch to plug -- bleh!)
Basically, he did a ton of stuff and it's AWESOME. Thanks, Dad. Of course, I made sure everyone was well fed :-) We had an afternoon out at Z's Burger in Mukilteo, which we love, and I made lots of home cooked meals.
Laurel's half birthday was June 12 and we got to celebrate with Grandma and Grandpa :-)
We also got to spend Father's Day with both Shane and my dad which was so special. I made them both candy grams! Plus we gave them gifts. I gave Dad a Seattle pocket calendar, which now is a little sad, sigh.
When all the hard work was done, on Monday the 16th, we took our big touristy trip to Seattle.
We did the Great Wheel... which was so fun...
Laurel likes to say "selfie!"
We did Pike Place Market and got some treats there, big cookies and such :-) To save for later.
We had lunch at the Space Needle... we're lucky we got in because we neglected to make a reservation but I had the hunch to call that morning. Whew. They got us in right before they transitioned to dinner, a 3:45 PM lunch.
One waitress accidentally spilled a glass of water down Mom's back. She was surprised and probably cold but it wasn't that huge of a deal... they gave us a free dessert though :-) It was just vanilla ice cream with some caramel sauce and wafers, but the dry ice effect was the main attraction. A lucky ending to an unlucky incident!
Of course with the SkyCity reservations you can go up top and hang out for as long as you'd like. We went around a couple times. Wesley was in heaven. We LOVE the Space Needle in our house.
We let the kids run off even more steam on the ground.
Laurel was happy to show Grandma her awesome Space Needle lollipop.
I caved and let them open their lollipops, but someone fell asleep in the car, practically mid lick. Her carseat was pretty sticky for awhile.
I said goodbye to them the next day, Tuesday morning. It would be the last time I'd get to hug my dad. I guess I'll talk more about that when we get to our August installment. I'm really glad they came to visit. I love my parents. I loved staying up way late talking to my dad about life. He is such a night owl and a chatterbox.
Strawberries! and Cherries!
Ahh summer, the time for fresh produce. I got my garden going back in April or March, and things were going OK. I will admit I was very discouraged at first.... let's see, the first strike were the moles. My planter box that Shane made me last year had cardboard underneath it, but this year the cardboard has disintegrated so it's open to the elements. We've had some moles in our yard, and one of them went through my garden and ate all the radishes I planted. I was mad. Shane loved radishes, and they're so easy to plant in mild, early summer weather. Alas, we had none. Even after replanting, none. The second strike was cutworm, which cut down my replanted radishes and something like two zucchini plants from seed. I was in a bad mood that day. The third strike were slugs, which murdered one of my pumpkin plants. Sooo we had a mole stick (which has only somewhat worked), diatomaceous earth, and Sluggo to the rescue. I wasn't even bothered at all by the tent caterpillars. At one point I went around the neighborhood cutting them off trees and bagging them for trash, but I kinda lost my gusto when I read an article saying your trees will most likely survive the season. I guess it's all part of Mother Nature doing her thing.
Well...
Our cherry tree had MASSIVE amounts of cherries. I hung old CDs from yarn to scare away the crows (strike four?). I picked a bunch, washed them, pitted them, and made cherry pie filling. It was lovely.
Unfortunately, my cherry tale has a sad ending, because at one point as I was pitting a whole bunch at once to freeze or something, I noticed some tiny white worms :-( I was just crestfallen. I took a sample to the Washington State University extension, which is an AWESOME place that has helped me a zillion times in the past, and they identified the bugger as a spotted wing drosphilia larvae. It's basically a fly, some type of fly that lays its eggs in soft-skinned fruits, like cherries, plums, strawberries, raspberries. The only way to fix it is to spray :-( I don't know what to do, and I don't know if it's worth it to spray or what. I was just so sad. I went on a ladder and picked the rest of the cherries and threw them away.
Fortunately, the ladies at WSU told me that the little worms aren't BAD for you, like if you eat maggots or something you'll get sick, but these things are no big deal. If I managed to cook any with my filling it's not a huge problem so I shouldn't be worried about health issues. A friend of mine even picked a bunch of my cherries and said she didn't care and she froze the cherries anyway. What a good friend. I'm just kinda mad at Mother Earth and her pests this season. It's been tough.
I DID get to take the kids strawberry picking. One Monday in June after swim lessons we drove all the way up to Monroe to go to this organic place, but when I got there it was closed. I was so upset. I think I cried. We drove all the way up there, I'd have no other chance because of our schedule, etc., bleh. I was sad. I sat on my phone and called a couple other places with no luck. I was on my way home when BOOM, there were signs, "U-Pick Strawberries, next right," or whatever. I followed the signs and found this fantastic little off-the-beaten-path place with strawberries and ripe raspberries. It was wonderful!!!! We were the only ones there for some time! I turned music on my phone and the kids ate berries as I picked. I had enough to make several pints of strawberry jam (which is FANTASTIC!!) and some freezer raspberry-mango jam. Plus, I pureed most of the strawberries and put them into ice cube trays so I can put them in smoothies and recipes later. It was great. I had wanted to go so I was pretty happy about it.
Activity Day Girls Camp!
Once again this year I helped at Activity Day Girls Camp. This year I was in charge of random things... like the icebreaker games and the flag ceremony. The theme was "Be Loyal to the Royal Within," and all the groups of girls were names of gems, like white diamonds, red rubies, green emeralds, etc. It was set up so well; my friend Traci basically planned it all and she's a rockstar.
I didn't help in the nursery this year like I did last year... that was a relief for me, but I also saw how the nursery folks struggled. It's a tough job. I helped in the sewing room which was SO FUN. There were something like 20 sewing machines and a woman and girl at each machine. The girls are just so sweet and good natured. One girl, for example, her kit for her bag was missing a piece of fabric so she needed to find another piece to match the handbag she was making. The fabric left was slim pickings... if it was me, I would have probably cried and been really upset. But she found something she liked and she sewed it up, and she never complained or even looked upset, even though her bag wasn't as uniform as it could have been. She rolled with the punches and it was no big deal. What a sweet thing! She was a good example to me. Other girls were just so excited when their pillowcases came together or their pocket sewed on right. Their eyes and smiles lit the room. I hope they had fun, because I certainly did. After swim lessons one day a week or so later we were at the park and a girl came up to me who remembered me from camp! She gave me a big hug! How adorable is that? She didn't know my name, I'm not sure I knew hers, but she recognized me and knew we shared this super fun summer experience.
Stake Campout
Our first family camping experience of the summer was at Cascade Park with the Stake. The kids had fun. They LOVE camping. There was a river we could walk to and throw rocks in. There was a play area with huge swings and a seesaw. They loved running around with their flashlights, and of course, roasting marshmallows. I stayed up after they went to bed and played Boggle and Set with some people -- my go-to camping games at the moment.
The tent was soaked after the night-time rain. We ended up setting it up in the backyard to air out when we got home. Then we could camp in it again :-) More on that in my July installment, hehe.
Fun Outside!
And lastly, stuff like this happened in June. Summer was off to a good start.
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