Fun in August

Continuing our carpe summer diem plan August was a fun month.  The girls will probably never again have such a long summer vacation (probably a good thing 😁) so we lived it up with lots of fun weekday activities as well as fun time with dad on the weekends.  We felt really blessed to land in an area with so many kind people who were willing to include us in their fun.  We spent a good part of the summer just riding bikes in the court in front of our house.  When we got here there were two 5 year olds and an 8 year old already on the court which was fantastic. Ready made friends! By the end of the summer a 4 year old had moved in next door.  We spent so many fun hours riding bikes and drawing with chalk.  Another set of neighbors doesn't have kids but they do have a big, friendly chocolate lab named Buttercup who quickly became a fan favorite.  Multiple people in the court have told us how it's so nice to have kids in the neighborhood.  The funny thing is that there already were kids before we came but since we have all the ages when we go outside it brings all the other kids out to play so we brought the party to the court.  

We went to the Salmon ladder at the Ballard locks which was cool. We only saw one salmon leaping out of the water up above, but down below in the viewing area we saw them resting and changing from being saltwater to freshwater fish, which was fascinating. We also saw the eclipse which was exciting.  We toyed with the idea of making the drive down to the Greens to see the total eclipse but ultimately decided that we'd just stay here and see a 96% eclipse. In order to insure safety the girls had to wait in the garage and I bought them out one at a time, while holding on their eclipse glasses. Leona kept yelling, "The moon is a banana!" It was pretty funny. 

The summer reading program at the library offered free tickets to a Seattle Storm (WNBA team) game if you completed a certain number of hours of reading.  The girls did that no problem and earned us tickets to a fun night.  We met up with some friends from the ward, the Langtons. (They jokingly refer to our family as Ishmael's family to their Lehi's family. They have 4 boys.) It was a really fun night. Lastly we went on the "Rice's Rainy Campout" and broke the curse. It didn't rain at all. The Rices are in our ward and since the ward didn't host a campout they have taken it upon themselves to host a campout for the past several years.  This is the first year that it didn't rain.  We had a great time roasting marshmallows, getting to know our ward better, taking little walks, and Eliza's favorite part sliding down the giant slipnslide. The campgrounds are owned by the church and there was a big hill dividing the upper from lower camp with an enormous, permanent tarp slipnslide built into the hill.  The kids were undaunted but their blue lips and shivering bodies.  They kept sliding down even after the sun went down and the temperatures dipped into the upper 50's.  They were then back at it again right after breakfast the next morning.  Leona couldn't be convinced to try it but Clara did go down a couple of times.  They had a good time running around with buddies while the sliders did their thing.