One of the things I love about Washington

Is picking fruit in the summer. On Saturday we drove 20 minutes and arrived at the this fun strawberry patch. We picked for half an hour and ended up with 8 lbs of strawberries which cost us $8.00.
There were lots of red juicy berries. We were told we could eat as we picked but they were a little too dirty to eat right off the vine.

We all gathered a basketful of berries.

Scott was there to help too. In this photo Megan was picking a little bug out of her hair.

Nathan pretty much just ran around. But since the vines were low we could always see him.

Here we are with our two boxes full of strawberries. Needless to say I spent the rest of the day making freezer jam, freezing berries, and eating lots and lots of strawberries. YUM. We are hoping to pick raspberries in July and blueberries in August.

Today I am thankful that

*Holly is at girls camp this week hopefully having a wonderful time

*a beatiful purple flower regrew from last summer in our yard

*My mom tended my kids for 3 hours today so I could shop by myself--priceless

Free Lemonade Stand

My daughter had been begging to do a lemonade stand, but I kept resisting because I always feel a guilty passing by lemonade stands and I didn't want to make other people feel quilty. Then the idea hit me that she could do a free lemonade stand and then everyone could stop who wanted to and they wouldn't have to pay anything. For kids it's just fun to hand out lemonade, they don't really need the money. So Holly and Emily made wonderful signs.
Then they made two types of lemonade and set up their stand with a friend's help.

We all enjoyed testing the lemonade.

The girls waved signs at cars as they passed by and sang the cutest little song. There is a video clip of them singing below. It is short and sweet. At the end of the day they had $4--some people wouldn't take it for free--go figure.

summer fun

Today marks 1 week of summer for us. We have been having mostly rainy cold days but today is beautiful and 76 degrees. Yesterday we went to a local bounce place. For just $6 a kid you can bounce in 10 things for 1 hour and 15 minutes. We went to the first session of the day and had only 6 other kids there with us. The second session had over 50 kids. The early bird definately gets the worm. Of course the blowup slide was my kids' favorite thing to do. I even went down it a few times.
Melissa would climb to the top and then chicken out and slide back down the stairs. That in until the worker lady said "no sliding down the stairs!".

Nathan was content to play with the baby toys. Of course the trucks were his favorite. He loves trailers too, me not so much as they are always coming unhitched.

Last night I went with the YM/YW in my ward to a Where's Waldo acitivity at the mall. Six adults from our ward dressed up in disquise and our job was to find them and get their signature. The youth were divided into groups of four and given 6 cards (one with each of the adults name on it and room for their signature). The 6 adults were just roaming around the mall in the common areas (no going inside stores). I think I walked the mall four times with my group of girls. The seven girls below are some of the girls I am a church leader for. We have 12 in our Beehive class. What cuties---this is at a park outside the mall that we had treats at following the activity.

My girls are outside swimming in our inflatable pool right now. Notice only thier feet are in, it's too cold to get your whole body wet. Last summer we had 2 weeks of 90-100 degree weather but since we don't have AC it was miserable. I'd be happy with 70-80's like we have today.

Today I am thankful that

*Scott has fun friendly co-workers with his new job

*my mom has a pool in her neighborhood that we can go to

*we are having a 3 week break from piano lessons---I don't have to remind them to practice each day and hear them complain.

Two Graduations

My little Megan graduated from Kindergarten this week. She has had a wonderful year in afternoon kindergarten. Everyday she would catch the kindergarten bus on our street with three other girls from our neighborhood. Megan was in a class with just 16 kids and had the best teacher around. I couldn't have asked for a better experience than she had. Now she is onto first grade. I will miss having her hang out with me each day and Melissa will miss having her to play with. Megan is glad that her days going visiting teaching with me are over.
Holly graduated from 6th grade. She also has had a great year with an awesome teacher. Next year she will be at junior high. How do I have a junior high kid already? In some ways it seems like I was just there myself. This is Holly and her good friend and teacher.

The carnival games I made were a big hit at Megan's end of school party. Look at the cute hats, balloon animals and face painting that were done by the other moms. Wow! Megan's teacher is the young lady in the back.

I tried to be creative like some of the mom bloggers I read about by posting this sign and streamers on the front door for my kids to see as they came home from school the last day. These are my silly little girls posing for me. My husband Scott said "who is Summer, is she coming to visit?" I guess men don't appreciate this kind of thing as much as women.

Today I am thankful that

*some people comment on my blog--that is why I have a blog--I LOVE COMMENTS C:

*our backyard neighbors planted a tree to shield their sliding back door from us--Yeh!

*Emily is on a waterpark adventure today with a friend

Carnival games

I am helping with Megan's kindergarten class party this week and I volunteered to make 2 carnival themed games. The first is an elephant peanut toss game and the second is a fish pond. I found a cute elephant picture online and then added some banners above and beneath it and some cute circus clothing.
Then I divided the picture into four parts and copied those parts onto this piece of cardboard. I know it is hard to see.

Finally, I painted in all the designs and outlined them with black sharpe. Holly and Megan both hleped me with the painting. Total cost=nothing. I had the cardboard and borrowed some craft paint from my mom. Here Megan is attempting to throw a peanut to the elephants trunk.

I used the rest of the cardboard box to make this fish tank. I covered it with blue tissue paper from my gift wrap box and then attached these fish I bought a few years ago. The fishing lines were made from sticks out of our backyard, string and a clothespin at the end.

I can't wait for the party!

My Little Musicians

Last week Emily performed in her school talent show. She sang a 2-minute solo to the song "this is me" from the movie Camp Rock. She really wanted to participate and so Scott helped her find a chareoke song on itunes and then he cut it down to two minutes in length. It took several days to find the right song and then several hours for Scott to shorten the song. Not all of the talent show participants cut their songs like they were supposed to and the end result was a show that was 2 hours long. Yikes! Scott just came for the first half of the show with the three little kids and then took them home after Emily performed. Here is Emily at intermission enjoying a cookie and happy to be done with her part.
My parents live closeby (7 minutes away to be exact). They got to attend the talent show too and brought Emily a beautiful rose from their garden.

A few days after the talent show Holly had her final band concert of the year. She is in the second row second from the left. You might be able to click on this picture to see her better. She is in the 6th grade band with members from the 5 elementary schools in our area. They practice twice a week before school at the high school with the high school band instructor.

Here Holly is with some of her band friends. She has really enjoyed being in band these past two years.

My mom got to attend this concert too and she took this nice picture of Holly and I.

A new kitchen for us

Six years ago we moved into our first house and bought our first play kitchen. We never had room for one in our apartments. It was a nice kitchen and cost $15 at a garage sale. But on Saturday I went garage saling again and found us a new kitchen for $10. I just couldn't pass it up. It is more updated than our old one and has a stainless steel fridge. Notice the shelf up on top. Perfect for putting the creations you make so Nathan can't mess them up.
Here is the opposite side of the kitchen complete with a BBQ and pass through window. Emily who is 10 was having just as much fun with this as the little kids.

Just to reminise, here is our old kitchen. Now empty and lonely. I would like to sell it but the girls don't want me to. So I guess we have 2 kitchens now. NICE!

The awesome feature of our first kitchen is that it folds up for storage.

Speaking of new things we also recently bought a new bench. I had to buy it new and Scott spent an hour putting it together but it looks great too.

The bench replaced the two white chairs below. My mom bought them for me at a garage sale 5 years ago. They served us well and made excellent home teacher chairs but they kept getting water on them and becoming more and more stained(if you click on the picture you'll see what I mean). Now they are in the upstairs hallway as my kids won't let me get rid of them either. They are fun to hide under.

Today I am thankful that

*it is Scott's birthday--we can't wait for him to get home from work so we can celebrate

*Nathan is happy watching TV with his sisters for short amounts of time

*our snapdragons are blooming--such a fun flower.

FHE goal and reward

I'm sure this isn't a problem in your house but it is in ours: complaining, not helping out and being unkind. So I planned a FHE lesson last week about following Jesus. We read some of the cute stories from the friend magazine about following Jesus and then talked about what we could do in our home to follow him. I told my kids that if they did enough good deeds to fill this jar in one week then we would go to Baskin Robbins ice cream as a treat. We have never taken our kids there, we are that cheap, so going there was a big deal. After you did a good deed you would write it on a strip of paper and then fold it and put it into the jar.
Megan did the most good deeds by far. I'm sure she filled half the jar herself. Here she is sweeping with the play broom. She is such a great kid.

Here are a few of the good deeds done last week:
Made each others beds and mom and dad's bed
Shared toys with Nathan
Emily shared candy with her cousins
someone dusted a set of wooden blinds (I just pulled this one out of the jar--what blinds did they dust I wonder?)
We loaned some Barbie DVDs to a friend for a few weeks
Got blankets and stuffed animals for each other when someone was sad
cleaned up messes that Nathan made
tended Nathan (best service ever c:)
called grandma on the phone
helped to clear table after dinner
read stories to little girls
cleaned the chairs at church (activity day girls)
cleaned up whole downstairs and even swept
organized clothes in her drawers as a surprise for me
Now how do we keep up these helpful habits I wonder?

Needless to say we met our goal of filling the jar. Here are the four girls at Baskin Robbins.

I made sure to take a picture of Scott too as I often don't have pictures of him. He shared his cone with Nathan.

Now who would buy ice cream cones like this? Is it just me or do you think clowns are creepy too?

Today I am thankful that:

*our downstairs carpet is cleaned--I used a professional carpet cleaning company (first time ever--another sign of my cheapness) and now there are no brown spots leading from the front door to the kitchen

*Melissa has two friends over to play--friends are the best!!

*our backyard neighbor is getting their yard redone and it is so fun to see the progress each day