Oh, What Do You Do In The Summertime...

Growing up, we often sang a fun little song about summer that began, "Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green..."  Since we lived in the "Golden State," I could only shake my head incredulously at the ridiculous idea that summer meant green.  Now that we're living in Washington, we can sing the song without reservation!

So, here's a glimpse of what we did last week as we enjoyed our green, warm summer:

Monday - Our sensational, talented neighbor and friend Kelly has been giving the kids bi-weekly tennis lessons.  Despite my limited tennis skills, I get to "help" by listening to her instructions, then feeding the kids balls and reminding them of what she taught.  

Aubree took a few lessons last summer as well, and doesn't love it but has a better attitude about it this time around.  This is Bryce's first year and he is really enjoying himself.

After tennis, we hopped in the car and met friends at Newcastle Beach.  The weather and company couldn't be beat.

I thought the kids would enjoy playing for a couple hours, then be more than ready to return home, so I planned an afternoon of Finishing School (that's a topic for another post).  I was totally wrong.  After 2 1/2 hours, I had to drag them away.  

They claimed they were mermaids...

Tuesday, as Aubree already did a great job reporting, we spent the day with friends at Mt. Rainier.  I just wanted to add a couple thoughts...

I think it must have been BYU day at Paradise, because it seemed like every other hiking group we passed was wearing BYU shirts.  That led to a conversation between Ashlee and I about how we sometimes act differently (better) when we're wearing a BYU shirt (or have a Y sticker on our car), because we know what we're representing.  Shortly after we finished that conversation, a gentleman approached me, enthusiastically yelling, "Go Gators!"  I'd forgotten I was wearing a University of Florida shirt, a hand-me down from our time in Florida.  Haha!

We had quite a large group on our hike.  They'd chosen this hike specifically because their friend, Al, from Haiti, had never seen snow before.  At the first sight of the cold white stuff, Thane and Bryce thought it was their duty to yell repeatedly, "Snow!  Al!!  Snow!  See the snow?  That's SNOW!"

Aubree mentioned playing in the freezing Ohanapecosh River.  She did not mention that many areas, even right near the shore, were quite deep.  Thane had no fear.  He was climbing up, over and around the slippery rocks.  He'd return my words of caution with phrases like, "it's not cold to me!" or "it's not too deep!"

When he saw Gracee and some of the older kids and adults jumping off the cliffs, he asked if he could join them!  "Maybe you should learn to swim first," I responded. 

That night my sleep was tormented with nightmares of children falling off cliffs and into deep, cold rivers.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I watched my neighbor, Kelly's four kids while she was at Girl's Camp.  My mother-in-law used to tell me stories of how she only asked people with lots of kids to watch her five kids.  When I only had one or two kids, I thought that seemed quite unfair!  Now that I have four, I totally understand her reasoning.  Adding four more didn't make much difference at all!  Of course, it helped that her oldest two are 13 and 11, so they don't need much "watching."

The biggest challenge was that I couldn't fit all the kids in my car, so that meant we stayed home.  After the constant busyness of this summer, days at home were just what we needed.  We even managed to get a bunch of housework, chore challenge work, and projects completed.  

Additionally, the kids paired off and played remarkably well together.  Thane and Finley play like brother and sister.  Asher and Bryce spent their hours building and creating.  

Aubree and Brandt hosted their own chess and checkers tournaments (Brandt rules in chess, Aubree had a slight advantage in checkers), and spent significant amounts of time reading comics.  

When they tired of being inside, we stepped into the backyard for sprinklers and otter pops.

On Friday, with carpool help from another friend, we set off to spend the day at Rattlesnake Lake.  The views were breathtaking, the water refreshing, and the friends perfectly wonderful.  Days like this I'm pretty sure we couldn't live in a more gorgeous place.  

This time around I made sure not to plan any other activities so we could stay as long as the kids were happy.  After four hours, they decided they might be willing to head home.  

lunch break!

Bryce would want me to document that he got his shirt stuck climbing down from one of the tree stumps and ended up falling and getting scraped up nicely.  Other than that, the day (week!) couldn't have been better.