We dropped Spikey Lu off as well as met Mom and Rong for dinner at Cho Dang tofu to do an early celebration of Christian’s birthday. The food, cake and company were excellent! We went back to their house for cake and ended up watching half of Top Gun.
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| Christian is VERY excited for this nice basketball! |
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| QFC cake is quite delicious. The fresh fruit is so nice too! |
We are in the midst of celebrating Christian's 14th bday a little early since we will be en route to our Maldives destination on his actual birthday. Happy Birthday Christian!!! We love you so very much! The stars aligned in that he participated in his first piano competition, expected nothing, and came out with a 3rd place medal out of 6 middle school competitors! He ended up playing first, since the first person on the program didn't show up until later. He played really well and he was happy with the outcome.
Meanwhile, Olin and Babz went to Moses Lake for his soccer spring opening game and they pulled out a 3-2 win! What a nice start to the season.
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| Amateur self-tanner mistakes |
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| Found this old craft from Olin and put it up since it's hilarious |
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| Gifts! A new watch, a small Bose speaker, an electric shaver, some books, and a pair of Vans from Safranskis and Adidas from Robertsons! |
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| He's totally stylin' now |
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| I guess there was a week and a half debate over who would get to bring this Lit Circle project home. Toss up between Sadie and Liam. Finally Sadie took some of the homes home and Liam took the board home. |
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| CK tennis is at Leslie Groves this year because RHS had to use Howard Amon. Score! |
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| The Columbia river is so low right now |
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| A nice perch |
We celebrated the first part of Christian's birthday with a sleepover with Kincaids last night. It was a hilarious evening of an RV show at the mall parking lot as well as a book signing by Brandon Mull, author of kid favorites such as Dragonwatch, Fablehaven, and Spirit Animals. We were in line at Barnes & Noble and waited about an hour. There were a surprisingly large amount of people there. He was so nice, and his illustrator, Brandon Dorman, was also there and was so nice and turns out he's a dentist in Kennewick and used to be a full time children's book illustrator. He has illustrated for some really famous series (like Goosebumps, Land of Stories)! Side note: The publisher person (PR rep) was also there and the kids asked for his signature and he said it was the first time he had ever signed a book.
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| Christian got elastics to wear every night to pull in those maxillary incisors |
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| Brandon Dorman, Troy Butcher, Brandon Mull |
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| Usual suspects |
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| Settling in to watch "Free Guy" |
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| First time making this type of (non fondant) cake. I made the buttercream frosting. Things I would do differently next time: Try making Swiss Meringue buttercream frosting which I read is smoother to spread. This buttercream was a little bit grainy/gritty looking. The color also turned out much brighter than I expected as I was going for a Tiffany robin's egg blue. haha. |
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| Kids and I actually went to the RV show twice. It was so much fun. Our favorites were this Black trailer and a 24 ft Four Winds Class C RV. |
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| I chaperoned a very fun and quick outing to Amon Creek reserve where Dirk & Stan had set up flags for the kids to plant their sagebrush pods and such. |
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| Isn't this nice? They got headshots of all the kids and then had everyone sign everyone else's photo. |
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| Christian said this moonlight was unbelievable last week. I am glad he took a photo! |
Megan and I met up for a 3 nighter in Phoenix and had a nice time eating out, hiking Camelback, laying by the pool, and riding the hotel's bikes around the multi-million dollar homes...
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| On our hike a guy got airlifted out because he had broken his ankle/leg. The helicopter was so efficient and fast. Just clipped him in and pulled him right up. |
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| Camelback was just as hard as I remembered. A lot of steep rocks. |
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| We had some great dinners out at Rita's (in our hotel), Sumomaya (asian mexican fusion, my favorite) and Chelsea's Kitchen (pictured above) |
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| I think the Grand Canyon? |
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| Hotel has Electra Townie bikes so we saw lots of nice homes in nice weather |
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| A Timbers loss (3-2) but cute fans |
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| Hiking Badger on a very sunny Sunday with mom! |
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| This parachuter (?) took off while we were up there. That was cool to watch. |
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| Lucky to have a neighbor who said the kids can use the basketball court "anytime" |
It was really fun to watch Christian out on the stage a bit during his Moana middle school play. He didn't have any individual lines but it was still fun to see him on the ensemble! They were instructed to arrive wearing foundation, blush, eyeliner and mascara so I did the makeup for both boys. It was hilarious. They kept asking 'what is foundation'?
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| School sends photos daily and it's always nice to see them in action during the day |
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| Gross but accurate ear wax removal by Babz - this is Olin in a particularly heavy session |
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| Make-up for Moana |
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| Olin was the only one with the day off Friday so he set about getting all his chores done. Look at how neatly these are folded. He said he went back and re-folded ones that weren't as neat. |
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| Call time 5pm, show time 6:30pm. Time to spare. |
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| Onnie came! |
One boy went to camp Lutherhaven for the week (4 nights) and the other went to a track meet Wednesday, suffered an avulsion fracture, and is...
