more summer fun

a quick update and pictures of the most recent summer fun......

a little hike with good friends mel and lani.

a little county fair fun. the rides, the 4-H kids and their various animals, the fair food....oh what fun. todd loves 'carni watching' and muses often 'we could be anywhere in the country right now and this scene would look the same.' probably true, but we always have fun.

a little swimming in the lake at papa's lake house. lots of jumping off the dock, again and again and again!

that's it for now.....we are squeezing as much fun as we can out of the summer, and only a few weeks left so we are off to play more!!!

happy birthday todd!!

today is todd's birthday..... his last in his 30's. we had a great day and spent the morning cruising down the alpine slides.

then we had some friends over for dinner and cake (i didn't manage to get a picture of that, so you'll just have to imagine todd blowing out candles happily).

happy birthday todd!!

baby chicks!

one of our hens hatched some chicks a couple of days ago. the way todd and i are jumping around and fussing over them you'd think we had something to do with the process.

they are so cute and fuzzy.... it is very exciting and we'll keep you posted, but wanted to share the new additions in our life!

summertime!

well summertime is (finally!!) in full swing. the kids have been busy with summertime stuff. i took time off and have only been working 2 days a week for the summer (glorious!!) and so have been around more for playing.

they have had swim lessons and day camps (science camp, art camp, soccer camp, baking camp...etc).

riley has been playing soccer, which he not only loves but the boy shows some skill! it helped that we were world cup crazy for about a month and there was very nearly always soccer on.

his buddy gianluca....

lucy and her buddy alesandro...

we celebrated the fourth of july with the iconic small town parade. in hood river half the town is in it and the rest watches. we were in it this year, and riley and his cousin ashley rode their bikes.

some naked slip n' sliding and pooling with friends on hot days...

we spend each thursday evening at the farmers market, which todd continues to make into an amazing community event.

we even went backpacking for a couple days. it was lucy's first backpacking trip, and she did great walking the entire 2 miles into the lake we camped at. what a great weekend.

and this week some more swim lessons...this time across the river at the community pool in white salmon, which is a great old outdoor pool. it even still has the old school diving board which both kids bravely jumped off this year!

the grown-ups have been tackling the age old summer project of painting our house (uuuugggghhhh). mostly the prep of scraping (so tedious). we don't have any grand plans to change much of the color (can't go wrong with the big old white farmhouse look) but it still needs a fresh coat of paint. todd is hoping the kids will be old enough to help next time it needs painting.

hope you are enjoying your summer so far too!!

school is out!!

the end of the school year was last week, but with the chaos that is the last week of school and then riley's birthday immediately following i just didn't get around to this post until now. plus it continues to rain and it just doesn't feel like summer yet.

so the last week of school was very full, and included field day...i loved field day as a kid, and its so fun to watch riley get to experience this great elementary school tradition. todd was able to be one of the parent volunteers and captured a couple shots of the classic races.

this is riley's last day of school picture. he has grown so much this year in so many ways. he got off the bus that day and said "i'm a first grader now!"

then lucy had her last day of school....

her school had a little graduation cermony which was very sweet...

and just in time for summer we got this great new (new to us, but probably over 10yrs old) play structure for the kids. in the spirit of reduce, reuse, recycle we moved it from some folks down the street (with the help of about 10 guys) whose kids had gotten too big for it.

the laughter from the back yard is so sweet. now if only the weather would start acting a little more like summer and a little less like "june-uary".

happy birthday riley

riley celebrated his 6th birthday yesterday. can you believe it....six years old!! he requested a "dragon" birthday and had a few of his buddies over for a party. the weather was finally gorgeous and they had a grand time doing some dragon crafts, playing "dragon tag" and a little pick-up game of soccer (the world cup started and we are all about soccer at home now).

...the boys making dragon masks

....riley's friend zac all masked out

.....riley and his friend gianluca sporting their soccer game beads






i made him a dragon cake which turned out pretty good (gotta love the internet).

....make a wish!!!

....yeah for cake!!!





and opening his gifts.....he got some fantastic presents.

...a new drum

..... his very own camelback (now maybe he'll let me have mine back)
also some legos, new art supplies, a big squirtgun, new soccer ball, some new tools for building......lots of great new things to keep a six year old busy!

he was smiling all day basking in the joy of being six!!

happy birthday riley....we love you so very much!