The Anderson Family Update

Holiday got her cast off on Friday, but now has to wear a brace for the next 5 weeks. Hopefully the PE program won't be too strenuous when school starts. She did have a little incident where she ran into a tree and bled quite a lot from the top of her head. She didn't need stitches or anything but it freaked everybody out. So she's okay now. Johnny started preschool on Monday and is doing fantastic. He's been in underwear all day long without any accidents (knocking on wood). He really enjoys the new place, new friends, new teachers and new playground. He hasn't been napping though so he's been major tired and cranky in the evenings. But I think that will get back to normal when school starts and everybody is back from vacation and the new normal begins. Holiday has all her school supplies now. She just needs new shoes including dance ones plus a new leotard. But dance class doesn't start up till mid-September so we have time for that. Johnny will be in a sports class at our nearby community center, so that will be fun to see how that goes. He's still a little young to start the First Tee. :) So school's about to start and I feel like there's still tons to get done before then. They grow up so fast.

Our Summer So Far

Sooooo...what have we been up to lately? We did go to the Museum of Flight during SeaFair weekend with my sister Kelly, her fiance Wade, his son Gage, our nieces, Jessie and Jillian and my mom and step-dad. Quite the family event. We saw a lot more of the museum this time plus a lot of special features involving SeaFair and the Blue Angels. We saw the museum in the morning hours and then ate lunch outside in the picnic area in the shade (is was 90 degrees that day). There was a pretty good breeze going too which was heavenly. Definitely the coolest place I've ever watched the Blue Angels from, my pictures do not do it justice. Holiday also lost a tooth that day. Then we all got really sick with a flu bug. Thankfully it only lasted a day. On Saturday our family participated in the Rainier Heritage Parade just like we did last year representing Rainier Dance Center. Holiday actually did the dance along with David as they marched along Rainier Ave. She would take breaks to help pass out candy and business cards to onlookers with Johnny and me. David was one of the wagon pullers. Johnny would give big fat hand fulls of candy out to people and would try to get every single person. Usually you try to give the candy to the kids but Johnny does not discriminate and loaded this one older gal with tons. She was laughing pretty hard. We had a lot of fun and I think it went a little smoother from last year since most of us have done it once. I do have to hand it to the kids though. They held out till we were done with the parade before diving into the remaining candy with all the other dancers and thus decimating the remains inside 5 minutes. Holiday gets her cast off this coming Friday so that's exciting. Johnny starts pre-school on Monday and that's exciting too. We've started back to school shopping so I'm making use of sales and freebies where I can. The kids have their new backpacks and lunchboxes. School supplies will be next weekend. Some where in there we'll do our vacation, it will be pretty local this year.  The kids also finished up the reading/science program via the Seattle Public Library so we scored free passes to go to the zoo. Grandma Claudia seems to be finished with surgery and has to do radiation treatment next which starts on Wednesday. Hopefully that will work as intended. David has been keeping up with golf as our schedule allows and has been enjoying shooting hoops when we pick Holiday up from day camp. Actually the kids like that too since they get to play on the playground just a little longer. I've been doing more canning. A couple weeks ago I did strawberry jam and this last weekend I did pickles. I still have a lot of cucumbers left so I might do more. Our grapes are just starting to ripen so grape jelly will be the next thing on the list. I'll probably do more applesauce and carrot cake jam as time allows.

Summer time cruising

Little playhouse daddy found. It's now nestled between the flowers and vegetables.

Working in the garden.

Close up! I was working on the grape vines.

Roses.

Peonies.

Holiday at the Georgetown Carnival.

Mommy at the sand box during the carnival.

Daddy daughter day.

With baby seal.

New park by EMP.

That looked pretty cool.

Up in your own secret pod like thing.

I kind of want to try this out.

That's exciting stuff.

(snicker snicker)

Well the Anderson family is simply cruising along right now. If we weren't looking at that cast every day we'd forget that Holiday had any kind of injury. It really hasn't slowed her down. Her caregivers at Summer Camp are vastly impressed by her energy, while David and I are not surprised. She didn't need the pain medication past 36 hours of resetting the bone. She didn't get loopy while on it like we've heard a lot people usually do. Instead she got REALLY talkative. I mean, she's talkative normally. It was like Holiday at 100 mph. So it was after 11 pm when we drove home from the hospital. Really dark so you can see any electric light that was on. "Oooooooo look at the lights!" "That's amazing!" "Hey Daddy isn't that amazing?!" "Mommy that's amazing right?!" "How come nobody's talking except me?!" And she flitted like that all the way home. Now she's keeps asking to do this or that so it's hard to reel her in to a safe zone so she won't reinjure herself. She's had a lot of birthday parties and play dates this summer. Johnny is progressing on potty training. He does pretty good at home he just needs to be able to do it at daycare. He's going to start pre-school in about a month so he's pretty excited to start. They agreed to work with him on the potty training. I see a lot of back to school stuff out already so I guess I need to go through the kids' closets and see what I need to get. I did an initial purge on Holiday's already. I knew by the time cold weather came along she wouldn't fit any of that stuff so I got rid of it. I've made strawberry jam this summer and probably the next thing will be pickles. I've been trying to follow what is in season but that can be a challenge to keep up with that since it's been hot lately. Not really motivated to do canning when it's that hot. So I closely watch the forecast and plan ahead. David and I got to see Rush in concert and had a real date night. We ate at 10 Mercer (that's the name and the address...clever) and it was great there. We'll happily eat there again. Rush was an awesome show, so glad we sprang for that. Otherwise we spend most of our time with the kids, playing board games, and watching Stephen Chow movies. 

More pictures and the little mishap

Playing by the well at The Secret Garden in Sumner.

Little Fairy Princess

and the little scamp.

Here's Holiday's tea party lunch.

Here's Johnny's tea party lunch. He was adamant that he didn't want any tea. 

Holiday and Grandma Claudia.

Holiday had lemonade in her tea cup.

I think the little goblet had sorbet or jam in it.

Grandpa got a kick out of Johnny slinging it back let it was full of grog or something.

At the school carnival.

Practicing their tap number.

Johnny at Golden Gardens.

Well our summer is moving along right now. Unfortunately Holiday had a little mishap last Friday. After coming back from her summer camp field trip she was climbing on the big rope spider web climbing structure at the school and she fell off and fractured her arm near her left wrist. We got the call from her caregivers and got to her as soon as we could. We took her to Seattle Children's Hospital after picking her up and was there till after 11 pm. I know it took a long time but it was certainly a better emergency experience than going to a non-children's hospital. They had snacks. They gave the kids toys and crayons. We watched Frozen twice (and they had 100 other movies and shows to choose from in their movie system). They gave Holiday something for the pain and she was able to calm down enough to cooperate with the exam. She kind of had a fear of the pain thing going so she didn't even want to try to move her fingers at first. It was enough of a break to need the doctor's push it back together so they knocked her out for 10 minutes so they could do it. She has a temporary cast on at the moment. She gets the real one tomorrow and is way excited about it. Like her friend Simon's mother said, "If you have to wear a cast, may as well be proud of it." Well said...and that's our silver lining. If she's textbook she'll get the real cast off in three weeks, so we'll have to wait and see.

San Juan Island Pictures

Driftwood fort.

Johnny explores.

This was the beach outside of our cabin.

You can see Holiday behind us.

View outside our window.

Inside our cabin.

View of the kitchen with bunk beds to the right.

Better shot of the bunk beds.

I think this was False Bay.

Lots of tide pools to explore.

The lavendar farm.

At Friday Harbor with a ferry coming in.

At the sculpture park, this was the kid's area.

Johnny liked the puzzle piece.

We saw several deer there and a couple foxes too.

At a nearby park waiting for our departure time for the ferry.

We had a lot of fun on that trip.