Summer in the beautiful Pacific Northwest

Ty went to a conference in Seattle in mid-July so we all flew up to visit friends.

Plastic cup worked for at least 5 minutes of distraction on the plane, hurray!

We didn't really set anything up for Saturday in Seattle so I ended up just taking the kids to the park while Ty went to the conference. But it was a new and different park so all was great.

Saturday night we unfortunately didn't get any pictures, but we got to go over to Mara and DJ's beautiful new house. Toys for the kids and dinner/hang out time for the adults. 

On Sunday we invited a bunch of friends to a park for lunch and got pizzas. It was great to see so many friends, though of course would have liked to have more time with each of them. I think I at least got a few minutes of catch-up with everyone. Thanks all for stopping by. Really didn't take pictures here either, until the very end. Chris, Steph, Loretta, and not-yet-born Oscar shut down the party so we got a few pics of them. Ada got along great with Loretta. They had never met but are really close in age. Ty and Rachel were friends with Chris and Steph in Seattle but they moved to Switzerland for a few years and Loretta was born over there. Lots of fun to see the girls together. 

On Monday I headed down to Portland with the 2 kids to stay at Deirdre's rather than at a hotel in downtown Seattle. The conference went until Wednesday, so Ty took a train down then. Before leaving Seattle we went to the zoo with dear Jen, Everly, and Grant, plus April and her son Ty. 

Everly and Seth at the African exhibit 

Made it to Portland! With the zoo trip they were tired and slept most of the drive, whew. Deirdre nicely picked us up at the airport so we could return the rental car, despite my arriving at some silly hour like 5pm.  

It's always easy to find cooking help!

Ada might have liked the apron a tad. 

Cousinly love

Cousinly crazies 

Claire's car? Might be a tad small...

WATERING CAN!!

bubble water table was lots of fun. 

Naked art seemed like a reasonable idea.

 On Tuesday I kept all 4 kids at the house for part of the day. Mark fortunately was able to come home and help me with lunch and nap, so it wasn't too bad. I took them all to the park, which seemed like a great idea and was pretty easy until a bunch of 6 year old boys showed up and I got scared Seth and Claire couldn't hold their own on the play structures. Fortunately I had granola bars to bribe them back over to the picnic table and stroller so all was well. 

Chatting on the way to the park. 

Happy and contained babes on swings!

Pink and purple matching sand diggers

Seth and Kira, not in pink and purple, built their own big hill on the other side of the sand box.

I kept the kids happy and intact. The house not as much.

Yay! It was warm enough for the pool! Seth's turn not to match, though he doesn't seem to mind. 

Mark decided to enjoy the aftermath of his work in pool assembly.

Waiting to go outside

 Seth at some point decided to get sick in July, boo. We ended up at urgent care but all was ok. Mark and Ty took all 3 girls to the zoo while I stayed with Seth and Deirdre worked for a bit. 

Mountain goats at the zoo!

Claire was apparently scary

Pretty new to coloring, but having fun. 

Dave and Nancy agreed to take all 4 kids on Saturday so we could go mini-golfing. Afterwards we decided to track down some Hawaiian ice and this was the result:

Kira and Ada enjoyed the artichokes. They came up with a "dip, dip, tap, tap, eat, throw it in the garbage" strategy that seemed to work well

Delaying bedtime... bye Portland, see you soon!