Blogging Again!

Okay, so I am a blog failure. I always have good intentions and then it just doesn't get done. I am trying once again to start my blogging back up...a new goal for me.

Well, summer is fast coming to an end. It seems like it took forever for it to get going here in Washington, then it just took off and I can't believe it's almost over now.

The beginning of the summer I sat down and made a list of all the fun things we could do and tried to plan some out. Well, we didn't get to a lot of the things listed, but I guess there is always next year. Here are some of the fun things we did do.

*Camping trip with friends to Cape Disappointment. The kids had a great time as always playing on the beach. We saw lot of wildlife; deer, a baby seal and a brave and pesky raccoon who wanted to steal our garbage while we were siting around the campfire. Unfortunately we had to cut the trip a little short since the rain was going to be coming in.

My friend Angie demonstrating a new way to keep the smoke from

getting in your eyes while sitting around the camp fire.

*Abby celebrates her 13th birthday at Ocean Shores with a few of her friends.

*End of June my parents came for an unexpected visit, it is always great to see them.

*Abby and I did the Down and Dirty Mud 8K Mud Run. This was a total blast, we can't wait to do it again next year.

*Fourth of July we spent with friends on Long Lake. Turned out to be a nice day even got the Seadoo in the water. Lee, Vanessa and their 3 boys were here for a visit from Australia, it was great as always to see them.

*Spur of the moment Mom's camping trip with the kids at Cape Disappointment. The weather was awesome. The second day it was about 85 degrees on the beach, which here in Washington is very rare. It was really warm so we had bought 1.5 gallons of ice-cream and cones, brought it back to camp and told the kids they had to eat it all because we couldn't save it. The kids were so excited, "This is the best day ever" was one of the comments made. They did pretty well, there was only a little left after everyone had there fill. We even offered some to the neighbor campers.

Kids eating their ice-cream

*We enjoyed some of the Parks and Rec. kids series concerts in the park.

*Took the kids to Dirty Works. A local community garden where the kids can help out weeding and harvesting in the "children's garden". The food then gets taken to the local food bank. Every week they have story and a little talk about something garden related and then have a craft project to go along with it. I enjoyed going almost as much as the kids, it was so inspiring for me to walk around and see how they created all their wonderful garden areas.

*Fun with friends at Lake Sinclair

*Banks Lake, Steamboat Rock camping trip was great this year. We enjoyed the boat in sites once again this year, I truly think it is paradise. We decided to stay a little longer than we had planned it was so nice. Saw the laser show at Grand Coulee Dam and also hiked up to the top of Steamboat Rock just in time to see an amazing sunset.

*Lake-fair the boys got to drive/ride go carts for the first time...the had a blast.

Fire Power!

*Thurston County Fair

*Steven celebrated his 9th birthday with friends at the movies and then a sleep over

*Relaxing day at Volunteer Park, topped off with a Shakespeare play "As you Like it" put on by 

Green Stage Theater

*Boys went to football camp

*Goodenough Family Reunion

If everything works out we will be able to get one last trip in to Banks Lake before the summer end.

Then we are back in the swing of things with Classical Conversations will starting on the 2nd for Abby and the 9th for the boys. Wow this summer has flown by.

The End of Summer

Everyone starts back to school tomorrow so I guess thats it, summer is officially over! We actually started easing into school about three weeks ago. We did two weeks and then took a week off to go camping at Lake Chelan State Park. The weather cooperated for the most part, the day we got there we had just finished setting up our tent and it started to rain. It continued to rain for the rest of the night and was sunny and in the 70's the rest of the time. We took one day and went into Chelan and enjoyed the waterslides, the kids had a blast, and so did I. It was pretty windy, but once you were went on a few slides it wasn't so bad.



For Labor Day we went to Burfoot park with some friend and had a BBQ, walked down to the beach, played games and had an all around good time. A great way to finish the summer.

Summer

Summer is definitely here and we have been busy as usual. I thought I would just do a big group of pictures that have been taken so far this summer, as a way to catch up:)

As some of you know we have had exchange students in the past and so I guess once you have hosted your name must go on a list of people that will host. We were contacted 2 times to host this summer and I had originally said, "No, we don't really have room right now, we are going to pass right now. However, if you are in dire need let me know." Well, they were in need so we couldn't say no.

The first two exchange students were two boys from China, Raymond and Rudolph, (obviously not their real name, I think they let them choose an easier name, so that we can all pronounce it.LOL) They were placed with a host family, but the host family was going to be on vacation part of the time, so we took them during that time, 10 days. We picked them up June 27th, and it was pretty quiet as it usually is when everyone first meets. By the time they left on July 6th they were anything but quiet...they fit right in. They had a great time playing with the kids, especially with the Wii. Pete and I would hear them all cracking up and teasing each other. We really had a great time with them and hated to return them to the other host family. They had really enjoyed our loud chaotic crazy family.
During Raymond and Rudolph's stay with us we also had Aratte from Spain join us on July 2nd. She stayed with us until July 29th when we sadly had to say goodbye to her. She will be greatly missed. While the 3 students where with us we celebrated the 4th of July which was a lot of fun for them. They all thought the fireworks were great fun. Here is short slide show of pictures taken from the Lacey Fireworks and fireworks we did at our house.


We went climbing through the Ape Caves http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/NatMonument/PointsInterest/ape_cave.html which was a good time for most of us. Raymond and Rudolph didn't like it so much, they had said that is was hard, dark and scary. We felt quite bad or them by the end. We all laughed about it at the end, trying to image what they were thinking when we said, "we are going to climb in this cold dark cave and it's going to take us about 2-3hours, and it's going to be fun". They were good sports though. Aratte on the other hand seemed to really enjoy herself. Our kids along with my sister's kids loved it and took off way ahead of us. Putting my boys to bed that night I asked them if they liked the caves and they said, "Yes, can we go again tomorrow"!
Here are some pictures that turned out okay. It was about 40 degrees down in the caves and extremely dark as you will see. When we turned out the headlamps it was pitch black you couldn't even see your hand right in front of your face.


We also enjoyed going swimming at Stewart waterpark in Tacoma. It was nice to go on a really hot day.

While Aratte was with us we went camping at Cape Disappointment. Hiked up to the North head Lighthouse, played on the beach (it was too cold to go in the water), roasted smor'e (Aratte's first time having them).

Pictures of our camping trip to Cape Disappointment


We also went to Ellensberg for Pete's best friend Andy's 40th birthday. It was really nice to see everyone we haven't seen in awhile.

Well, now that the exchange student are all gone, life is somewhat returning to normal, if there is such a thing.

Ending of Summer

Wow, where did the summer go? We didn't have much summer weather here so it seems like summer never really started and not it is ending. We are officially starting our school year tomorrow, I am really looking forward to this year.

Abbigail will be learning about Children Around the World and will also be doing the usual Language Arts and Math. Science she will be taking "Featuring Animals" and "Nocturnal Animal" through Olympia Regional Learning Academy (a homeschool program put on through the Olympia school district) she will also be following along with the boys in their Animal Worlds program which has quite a bit of science. A couple of other classes she will be taking through Olympia Regional Learning Academy (ORLA), are Creative Writing and Drama Lab. She is signed up for Art, P.E and will be starting Power Tap. She has a very full schedule this year, which I think will be good for her, she tend to get in trouble if she isn't busy.

Steven and Austin will be studying Animal Worlds, learning to read with Hooked on Phonics and Explode the Code (ETC), they both will be working through Math U See Primer. Steven will supplement math u see with Singapore Earlybird Math. Steven will be taking a couple of classes through the ORLA program, Story Theater, A Little Math and New Readers. Both boys are trying out Taekwondo this year and they are both very excited about it.

I feel a bit sad for Austin this year, because it seems as we keep saying, "when you are 5". He wants to do P.E and he has to be 5, he wants to be part of the ORLA program and he has to be 5, and so on. He has always been able to do what Steven does and now he isn't able to.