Beach Day

Another day trip we took on John's week off was to go to the beach.

We found a small beach in Salem that is not over crowded and perfect for the kids. It was a hot day so the kids jumped right in.

Katie is really picked up the bogey board fast this year. She is good at many things when it comes to the water thought, unfair advantage over her brothers that way.

They had a great time making castles, and digging in the sand.

Katie was a good sport and let her brothers pile sand on her legs.

Poor Aaron was only on day 3 from breaking his collar bone so he was still sore and not able to do much with it. He was a good trooper thought and had fun walking around in sand. Even with a broken child we had a great day together as a family and that was what we wanted out of this week.

Painting

John had a week off from work so we had a stay at home vacation. With Aaron breaking his collar bone we had to change some of our plans. We ended up painting our bathroom and our great room which is our kitchen, living, and dining room area as well as the hall way.

The kids had a fun time helping us with our big job and they did good not getting covered in paint as well.

Some spots were a challenge but after 2 days we got all of it done.

Here is our bathroom once we got it put back together. It is a small room so it is hard to get a good picture.

Our living room came out a bit darker than we had wanted but after a day or so it grew on us and now we are enjoying it.

We have lived here for 18 months so it's so nice to have color on our walls. All we have left are the 3 bedrooms so when John has his last week of vacation we are hoping to get that done. Painting is not a fun job but once it is done it looks so good.

Playing in the Rain

Growing up in Seattle it is still strange to me that you can go out in a rain storm and not be cold.

Last week we had a huge rain storm come through our area and for about 25 minutes it poured down rain and Kaite couldn't wait to go out and play in it.

It took a little longer for Zach to join in but after we got him out the door he had a blast as well.

We love our summer storms, nice and warm and a great time to get soaked. I love the rain and I'm so glad my kids do as well.

Rounding out our bad luck... we hope!

Our car is now fixed and working like it did before and that is wonderful, it was a long 2 weeks in a small car with all 3 kids in the back seat together.

They say things happen in 3's, well we are hoping so. We went to mow the lawn last week and our riding mower is now dead. We think it is the engine and will be more to fix than it is worth. So we are now back to the push mower and a 3 hour job to get it done.

3 day's later John put the Kids to bed but were much too excited to sleep because we were going to Six Flags the next morning. Aaron climbed up in the bunk bed with Katie and somehow ended up falling out while they were playing landing on his left shoulder.

That night after calming down he fell right to sleep, but in the morning he couldn't get up out of bed. Later that day we ended up at the ER with a fractured collar bone. He now has to take it easy and wear a sling around his shoulders (which we call a cape so he would put it on) for 6 to 8 weeks. He is a very tough guy and has not complained much since. We had to change our plans a little for the week to make sure Aaron was not doing anything that would need both his arms so no Six Flags. We had a fun week and Aaron is doing better every day. So with these 2 things happening we are now at 3 bad things too happen in only a few weeks. We are now waiting for our luck to turn around and maybe we will start to see a change.

A Walk in the Woods

This week we had a break in the hot humid weather and I wanted to get out of the house so we went for a walk. There are many lakes in our area with many trails to hike on.

There is one trail I have always wanted to check out so that's were we headed. Only a 5 minute car ride and we were there. It is on a hill leading down to a lake so there were many water falls as we walked the trail.

Zach was a wonderful big brother and helped both his brother and sister when they needed help getting up and down the rocks.

We had a fun afternoon walking around the river and checking out all the different water falls.

It was so nice to get outside and not be so hot that you feel rushed to get back inside again. We had so much fun we plan on going back again.