B.S.C.

best thing/worst thing

we went camping last weekend. on the way home i asked the girls what their favorite think about camping was. gracie's was making s'mores.  annie's was going to the beach. both girls unanimously voted that their least favorite thing about the weekend was being stung by a bee.  yes, both girls, in the same day, were stung by a bee. gong show. 

 we spent wednesday in cresent bar and headed to lake pearrygin thursday morning. it was a sweet way to do it and it really broke up the drive.

gracie helping daddy set up the tent.

gracie working, annie supervising

annie, becoming one with nature

testing the water

at first glance, you might think she's flipping me off which really is a possiblity since she's so sick of me taking pictures of her. she's asked me several times WHY ARE YOU TAKING SO MANY PICTURES?????  karen says to keep taking them so your family gets desensitized.  we're clearly not there yet.  anyhoo, this is so annie. standing off on her own talking to herself or singing.

i wish i'd backed up to get more of the background for this pic and put her in the far left or right. sigh...

i realized last night that i am completely forgetting to scan my entire view finder because i continue to cut off feet and hands.

pure joy.

one of the twins showing annie how to plug her nose when putting her head under.

a sweet moment, ellie sharing her kite with gracie. this, of course, was right before gracie got it stuck in a tree.

i tried climbing the tree and then decided that flips flops would not suffice. mildly freaked out, i reminded eric that the life insurance policy was not very big so he'd better catch me if i fall...

a dad's sacrifice. johnny climbing the tree for his daughter.

do you think it will come out?

gracie, feeling terrible, worked patiently on that kite and she pulled it out of the tree.  just call her "the kite whisperer."

annie watching the action

avery's kite was not working well. i tried to help. you can see how that ended.  

apparently the apple does not fall far from the tree.  but hey, the bright side is that it actually got high enough to get stuck in a tree.

this picture just kills me. could she be any sadder? terrible exposure

ellie's kite got stuck in the tree again.  and when everyone else had given up gracie continued to stand there, with great patience i might add...get it out of the tree.  everyone has to be successful at something right?

that evening we discovered our electrical outlet was not working. we promptly discovered that none of the outlets in our row were working. then we discovered that the entire towns of winthrop and twisp were out of power. note to self...the sensor toilets won't flush when the power is out...

having had enough of the sun and trying to distract annie from her bee sting we went into winthrop for some ice cream.  love this door. wish i'd had more time to do some more interesting shots. they looked thrilled don't they?

after being really sad that her ice cream choices had melted from the power outage, gracie chose chocolate. one lick and she didn't like it. she stood up to get some candy with me and put her hand on..a bee. yes, she got stung too.

after a lot of thought gracie finally decided on gummy bears.

 annie doesn't like

ice cream so her treat of choice was a ring pop.

trying to get the girls and the sign in the same photo.  really hard to avoid other people being in the photo too. like that lady in the pink shirt.  she was selling tickets to woodstock. eric and i didn't know what the hell she was talking about and it kind of seemed like she was on something.  now she's forever immortalized on one of our photos.

most of the gang on a deer sighting walk.  there were hopes they'd come up to us but let's be honest.  10 kids on a walk together.  quiet wasn't really an option.

look at that dirty face

the last day, trying to rope the kids into a group photo.

i quite like this photo. notice the little man hiding in the back.

a family photo

a little cuteand back in cresent bar...a little funny.

what a great weekend.

what a morning

annie cried A LOT this morning. she did not like the breakfast i made her. went on and on about not wanting the toast i made because it wasn't white bread. she didn't want the nectarines. and she only picked out the marshmallows from the last of the lucky charms, without milk of course. i served the lucky charms (i RARELY buy sugar cereal) because i was trying to ease the blow of the whole wheat toast. umm, yeah. it didn't work. she finally chose something to eat, an organic cliff z bar, and she took maybe three rabbit bites of it. yeah, that didn't really work for me so i made that little turd sit and eat half of it.  she was not allowed to get down until she ate half of it. cry, cry, cry the whole time. anyway, she finally ate half and i sent her upstairs to brush teeth and make her bed. she did.

this is where the tooth brush ended up

that would be the floor.

this is her made up bed. not bad.

i wish i'd had my camera when she was sitting on the floor against the wall by my scrap room after she finished her chores. the look on her face was the saddest annie face i've ever seen. but i didn't. i got these instead.

another photo proving how much annie likes to stick her toe-toes out of her blankie

and a take a picture of my blankie request.

meanwhile, gracie was quietly perfecting her drawings of horses.

we finally got out of the house at about 10:30. ran a few errands in millcreek-namely went to the library and signed up for the summer reading program and checked out some books. then we came home and spent an amazing afternoon at home. lots of playing, momma's school, crafting and playing a couple of boards games. 

after being so good all afternoon they got to watch a movie while i cleaned the den in preparation for a little scrapbooking this evening.  it's amazing that the day turned out so well after such a crap morning.

here are the little jars the girls are putting their tickets in.

night-night.

catching up

i wonder if it was a jinx to give gracie a name so close to grace. the other evening she tripped while walking and managed to scrap each leg and each arm.  today, she fell off her bike...on her face. totally scraped up her poor cheek.  so interested to see what it will look like in the morning. she was unsupervised. actually eric and i weren't outside with the girls but playing wii tennis in the toy room with the window open so we could see and hear them.

tonight i asked annie if she wanted to bowl.

huh? she says

do you want to bowl, i say

what she says?

BOWLING, DO YOU WANT TO BOWL

oh, i thought you said BOWL, do you want a bowl. like a bowl you EAT out of. 

she tickles my funny bone daily. 

shortly after (she made a complete mess with the kitchen toys) i said "annie you leave a path of destruction everywhere you go."

to which she replies " but i HAVE to destruction"

grandma and grandpa, gram and papa and uncle todd came over for a father's day bbq this afternoon. annie and gracie prepared a music show.  

it was hard to get annie to stand still to get a decent photo. gee, imagine that.

as was getting a photo with all three dingos looking at me and smiling. i chose to post this one b/c i think it's good of gracie AND that is a look we see on daddy's face A LOT. again, i can't imagine why. sadly, i have been known to be the cause of that face too. 

and working backwards, here are some photos from the last day of school.

one with mrs. park (gracie said she was sad school was over. when i asked her why she replied because she was going to miss mrs. park. i may have already blogged that.) sweet mrs. park was not exactly thrilled about having her photo taken in her last day outfit.  but she's so dang cute, that she'd look great in a paper bag. 

after taking gracie too the bus in the morning, annie wanted her photo taken. scrunch face anyone?

and a photo of gracie on the first day in september

and the last day in june

lots of changes that first grade year. sigh...

and i would be remiss not to post THIS photo

on friday my BFF, jen gave me CUPCAKES!!!!!!!!!! for my birthday. not just any box of cupcakes, but cupcake royale cupcakes. and a big salted caramel cupcake AND two of the petite rainier cherry cupcakes.  let's not talk about how long they lasted.  jen, i  you forever. 

this and that

gracie drew this picture of herself in her dance costume after the recital.

i don't know why it inserted like that. i flipped it and did a save as.  sigh. sometimes i really HATE technology.

here's a photo of janette, reisha and me at the 5 k run on mother's day.

why do i even try?  i had flipped that one too. 

gracie had the day off for a teacher work day. we went to the gym, then to her school (jen and i put on a lunch for the teacher's from PTA), home to clean while ellie and avery came over to play, then the girls headed over to jen's while i ran to the grocery, made a salad for tomorrow, wrapped presents, cooked dinner, celebrated e's birthday (it's really tomorrow), went through the  past week's mail, paid bills, filed papers and put the kids to bed.  i got a lot done today. it feels good and the house is totally clean save one load of laundry that needs to be folded and put away.  i was secretly glad that it wasn't blazing hot so i wouldn't have to take the girls to the pool. i was yearning for the afternoon at home so i could get all of the above accomplished. 

tomorrow gracie has a t-ball game and then it's off to olympia to celebrate great grandpop's 95th birthday.  eric has family that came from ohio and chicago to celebrate!

funny

THIS is funny.