three of 'em

Rysen stayed with us again today. It took a couple hours for Mason to warm up to the idea, but once he did we ended up having a fun day together.

The boys dancing to The Wiggles.

This ball popper toy has been the best toy ever. The boys played with this for quite a while.

The boys decided on rain boots for today.

Rysen having fun with our huge styrofoam plane.

There is something about this picture that I love. There's a chance it could just be that I think he's cute.

welcome, summer!

We got to go to the beach tonight!! And it was even warm enough for Andrew and Matt to go swimming. I think summer may have actually found it's way to our area!

ugly Christmas sweater, summer edition

Brooke had us over for another ladies night on Saturday. This time, instead of an ugly Christmas sweater, she suggested we dress for summer. But she didn't really mean it, she meant "be a huge summertime dork".

Ryean-Marie was pleased with her Northwest look - the wool socks were a treat on the first real day of summer weather. : )

It was so fun to sit around the fire! It got me excited for our camping trip this weekend!

Two classy ladies right here.

Thanks again for a delicious dinner and fun night out. And for the surprise birthday celebration. *wink*

our last garage sale

Sweetest picture ever.

The crew, minus Owen. Such a cute group of kiddos if you ask me!

We had a garage sale on Saturday. Today Matt sold our freezer on craigslist. We made twice as much in a craigslist sale as we did at our garage sale. We're done with garage sales. : )

shower curtain

I had to put these up for my friend Amy and also just because you can't go wrong with a good tub picture! Amy posted a while ago about closing the shower curtain to let her girls splash around, and she needs to know I think it's genius. I let my boys splash with it open because it's just too much work to try to stop it, but it's been fun for us for other reasons. And now a new reason - it makes for cute pictures. : )

bounce

We took advantage of the Jump Planet deal I got on one of those daily deal sites today. I knew it would be crowded since it's raining here, but we went for it anyway. It was packed, but still worth it. It was a much better choice than having me pout about the rain all day.

It took Mason a while to warm up to them this time, but eventually he got the hang of it. He was loving this thing. He'd bounce until he'd fall off and then ask to get back up.

I just had to show sweaty-head Andrew, having a blast like usual.

fun times...

Our friends (the McPherson's) moved to Wisconsin last year. Luckily for us they're on a Washington tour and they were able to make it over to our place for dinner last night! They picked a great night to come over thanks to the sun that finally decided to show up around 3.

It was fun watching Sora play. I've seen her a good few times in real life, but mostly I know her virtually through their family blog. She literally has about a 10-second attention span. It was so funny to watch all the effort it took her to climb up on the swing, all to swing once (or maybe a half of a swing) and immediately start to get off and move on to something else. The swing example is my favorite because Mason is the exact opposite. He doesn't have a long attention span in general, but if you put him in his swing he'll hang out there forever.

Thanks for making it by our place! Next time we're in Wisconsin, we're totally stopping by. : )

a friend for the day

Rysen spent the day with us today. I'm pretty sure we did 147 things today to keep everyone happy and entertained. Rysen is a calm, full-sentence-speaking little guy; Mason is not that. : ) In order to keep some peace in Mason's world, I chose to keep him entertained.

Rysen's favorite activity was definitely jumping on the bed.

Andrew was here too. He actually had fun playing with Mason and Rysen, but also did his own thing a lot of the time (mainly because his attention span is longer than the little guys). These pictures just make me laugh. He's really using his imagination and is quite a goofball.

The first picture is him showing me his trick of tossing the sword from one hand to the other. Be amazed. : )

beach in a bucket

When we went to the beach last month, Mason really wanted to bring his bucket home with some sand and all the shells he found. Today he found the bucket.

Meanwhile... Andrew is 100% back into He-Man! He can't get enough.

:::

friends

On Saturday we went to our friends' house to enjoy their wide open living room. They're getting new carpet, so right now it's just a huge play area!

{the boys}

Then we headed over to our house for Darin's delicious rib dinner!

The kids do such a great job of playing with Mason. At one point he was driving the gator and the rest of them were running away so he wouldn't get them. The battery was almost dead so it was going slow - it was a safer game than it sounds.

We ended the night with some sno-cones. It's debatable if it was really warm enough to eat and play outside as late as we did, but we did it anyway. And compared to today, I'd say we made the right choice. This summer is all about pretending it's hot out I guess...

visiting

We went to Bellingham for a quick visit on Thursday. We got to my parents' house in time to unload, say hi to my dad, check out some new toys and then hop back in the car to have lunch with my mom. We were going to have a picnic but ended up eating in the car because it was raining...

After lunch I had to stop and pick up some steaks for dinner. I told my dad I'd make him a steak (that I mentioned: here) back in April, and I finally got around to doing it. They had this fun little cart that was basically a park bench for the boys to sit on. Right as I was taking a picture Andrew stood up. I asked him if he'd sit down so I could take a quick picture and he decided to put his arm around Mason. : )

{my old chair}

When we got in the car to head home, Andrew said "well, that was fun". They both had a lot of fun and used up a lot of energy. They were both asleep before we got on the freeway. Perfect!

looking for a whisky bottle?

This is part of the whisky bottle collection that was given to Matt from his grandpa. He's keeping one and getting ready to sell the rest. He's been researching to see how much they're worth and finding most to be between $5 - 10. He has one tub full of bottles that range from $25 - 100. Crazy.

Although these bottles are cool and were from Matt's grandpa, we do not need multiple tubs of them sitting in our house. Instead we'll take the advice we got from one of those 'don't be a hoarder' shows and take a picture to remember them by and then get them out!