Summer things II

Here is another list of our summer adventures.

1. Tracing our bodies. The girls had fun with this, it was cute. i hung these on a couple of doors in our house. Penelope's creation (hanging in the kitchen) has given bryan the creeps on a number of late night snack runs.

2. Performances. We have many song and dance performances in our house. in this picture the girls have turned their chairs into a stage...

3. Goofing off. in the picture below the girls are being zombies.

4. Visiting dad at work. Microsoft has family day on the 1st Friday of every month. We usually go and enjoy the free activities, but the girls LOVE to visit Bryan any time they can, free activities or not.

5. Kindergarten Prep and coloring. P has been working on reading, writing and arithmetic. I can't believe that she is going to Kindergarten in the fall! Isla is coloring. We make a lot of art in our house :).

6. Naps. Whenever I can I try to take naps and the girls try not to take naps. It doesn't work out.

Summer things I

 I have been slow with the blogging lately. Summer has taken its hold on us and our schedule and we have been busy having fun. Here is a list of summer things that we have been up to. I will endeavor to try to be more punctual, so that these things don't pile up, but i don't want us expecting too much of me.

1. Swimming. p has been in swimming class. She is now swimming independently over short distances and is overly confident about her new skills... Isla is scared of the water, but she will stand on the steps and hold onto the side or the rail and jump up and down.

 

2. Roller derby. For my B-day I went to the Rat City Rollergirls.  It was loads of fun and I am hoping to make this a more regular event for the Sparks fam.

 3. Da Beach. We have to take advantage of all the lovely lakes in the area. The kids loved to go to the beach when we lived in SD, so it is nice that we can still get our fill of sand, sun (usually) and water.

 2. Berry Picking. We picked raspberries last week. Penelope was a great helper and isla mostly just ate the berries and collected treasures (flowers and sticks mostly). We made jam, froze berries and still had plenty to snack on. YUM!

Good quilters will need to close their eyes for the following pictures.

i made a quilt.I cut out the pieces for this quilt in san diego and decided to pull them out and finish it off. i think i was i little scattered when i cut out the triangles, because they were all different sizes and i didn't figure it out until i'd sewn them all into rows and tried to match up the rows...didn't work so well. it was a learning experience. Made mainly with Kona cotton and bound with kelly green.

i still like my little quilt and i am excited to use it more when the weather cools down.

fourth of july 2013

Here are some pictures from our fourth of July. Is was really nice. In the morning we ran a fun run, had a pancake breakfast and a kiddie bike parade at our church. It was fun. we had a really chill afternoon. Bryan made ribs-yum. In the evening we went to a friend's house for a fireworks show and a civil war reenactment (this is where the men shoot fireworks off at each other and set themselves on fire...)

 Bryan is down there somewhere trying not to burn off his hair.

15 weeks

This is me at 15 weeks pregnant with baby #3. Slowly, but surely my energy is coming back. This pregnancy thing isn't so bad after all. I know this our third baby and i should be used to how terrible trimester 1 is, nothing can really prepare you for how bad it is. The only downside to being in the 2nd trimester is that I am sleeping really badly, but i don't expect that to change for a year or more...

Hats not to make

Lion brand yarn has one of the best collections of free knitting and crochet patterns. I have used many of their patterns and I am grateful for the service they do for yarn artists all around the world. That said, sometimes while sifting through their massive collection I find myself  thinking, "????". Here are a few very questionable designs that i will not be making.

Fourth of July Prep

I decided to make the girls some patriotic skirts. I found the fabric on the cheap and couldn't pass it up. I made these with french seams, but they ended up shorter than planner, because I hadn't planned on using french seams.  I think they turned out nice and will look good for our Fourth of July activities.

 

The girls beaded some red, white and blue necklaces. I was really impressed that Isla could do it. She is really starting to develop fine motor skills. 

sleep shorts, heat and other things

 The summer is upon us! I know many places have been enjoying (or not) warm temps for a while now, but Seattle has just gotten the message. today is hot. There are a few factors that make 80 degrees hot.  Most homes, ours included, do not have air conditioning. So, dealing with heat is quite strategic. We open the windows at night and turn on the fans. we cool down the house as much as possible at night and then we lock down the place in the morning, shutting windows and curtains. The second factor that I will mention is that we are experiencing a lot of humidity....i don't know if this is normal for the area, but we are at 60% humidity and I can feel it.  I made the girls sleep shorts with some scrap cotton fabric I had and I am hoping that they will help with the heat through the summer.

A new trend that has popped up recently in our house is playing, "The Jungle Book". Basically, Mowgli is the bomb and has my kids running around in their underwear/diaper and find caves to hide in... it gets cute.  On top of this crackers are Isla's new favorite snack, but she can't say "cracker". What she says sounds a whole lot more like, "the queen mother of dirty words," as Ralphy calls it in A Christmas Story. So, my baby is scampering about naked, shouting profanities and trying to find the "cave" that her, also naked, sister is hiding in.  Like I said, it gets fun.