Two members of our extended family came into town earlier this month. Then two more came to see them. They all happened to come on the weekend we'd already planned Naomi's birthday party, an event three more came to. I was able to see ...
... my sister ...
... my dad ...
... my nephew ...
... my sister-in-law ...
... my bonus mother-in-law and bonus sister-in-law.
Plus a bonus niece, who is only in the group pictures from the party. So fun!
Also fun? Heading to Dollar Tree with these two. So much laughter!
Naomi is now in her last pre-teen years! Her birthday was over two weeks ago, but I've been waiting for pictures from her birthday time with Tim. Found out they didn't take any, so I'm finally getting the other pictures up.
Here's one of the birthday girl's pretty face after she and Tim spent a chunk of the day scoring birthday freebies together all over own.
She pulled a group together for a dodgeball party the day before her birthday and we took a group picture.
More kids showed up later, so we took another group shot.
And a silly face pose, in which the birthday girl hid behind the giant teddy bear she was just given.
Lots of dodgeball and candy with siblings, cousins, and friends made her pretty happy! We took a picture in the birthday outfit later in the week.
The boys and I went on a spontaneous trip out to Salmon Falls Park today. Silas has been wanting to cliff jump there, so he suggested we head out for a bit and offered to drive. Deal! We snapped a quick group picture upon arrival, then dispersed to do whatever we each wanted to do.
This is the view of the swimming hole and cliff from the rocky beach where we left all our stuff. Isn't it pretty?
I took a few minutes at the start to just relax. Sunshine. Fresh air. Trees. Water. Bliss.
Silas, on the other hand, got straight down to business. He did a couple regular jumps, but his primary goal was to do a back flip and gainer. The gainer didn't happen because of logistics with space on the rock, but he did do a few back flips. This video is of his first one. Subsequent jumps happened quickly, but you can skip ahead to about 1:50 in this video to avoid the boring warm-up to the first jump.
Tyler found a crawdad and wanted to show me, but didn't want to actually pick it up. Devon to the rescue! Teamwork, right?
Silas had to come off his adrenaline rush after that first jump, so he headed back to shore for a bit with nothing but smiles.
Silas and Devon spent a bunch of time on the cliff, but Tyler and I had only been down in the lower part of the water and beach. So he and I headed up the path for a view from the top. Of course, I insisted on some brother shots once we were all up there. And, of course, they goofed off the whole time. Squashing Tyler's head.
All trying to get down to Tyler's level.
Picking Tyler up.
I asked them to move so Tyler would be in the middle, but then both Tyler and Devon moved, which was pointless. But funny. So there was a mirror image picture of the previous one.
I wanted a shot with the big boys holding Tyler up, but this is as close as I got. A bunch of laughter is a good substitute for the perfect picture, right?
I took one last shot of the swimming hole before we left, but this one was from the top of the cliff. There were several little pools of water up there. The first scenery shot was taken just outside of the top right corner of this one.
Super fun way to spend part of the day, especially since parenting has been a little less than awesome lately. I'm glad we went!
Last Friday a friend sent a message to a few gals asking if anyone could get together that day. Her family moved out of the area a couple years ago and were back in town for one last day after visiting relatives. My kids all had a previous commitment that lasted all day, but we managed to plan something for later in the evening. I kept it a surprise, though.
Naomi, who was beyond exhausted from a full week of church activities, started crying when I told her she'd have to leave again after being home only a few minutes. She just wanted to go to bed. Normally I wouldn't have scheduled anything for that evening, but it was the only chance she'd have to see her friend and I knew she'd feel like it was worthwhile.
But, still. She was crying from exhaustion.
I asked if she wanted to know who was important enough to stay awake for. She wanted to know. I told her who it was and her eyes, rimmed with tears, lit up! She agreed it was totally worth it, but crawled into bed for a 30 minute power nap before we left.
Then she and Ivana spent nearly two hours together at the park. Lots of playing, talking, smiling, and laughing. So fun!!
Plus I got a bunch of time to visit with Jessica and meet McKay, which was great.
Three more of her and my boys were also there, but I didn't get a picture of them. Oops. It was mostly all about the girls this time around anyway.
I'm so glad this quick friend reunion was able to happen and Naomi totally agreed it was worth staying up just a little bit longer for!
We spent Monday at home, a mellow day of recuperating from a busy week. Tuesday, however, was a different story. It was non-stop all day long.
A friend asked if we wanted to pick plums from her tree, so Devon, Naomi, and Tyler took turns climbing the ladder to harvest from the highest branches. We brought home at least 30 pounds of plums for our family, as well as leaving behind about the same amount for our friend to use herself and give to other people.
We're eating a whole bunch of them plain, but we're also using the stash to make some other things. I baked plum buckle this morning for our Wednesday night dessert and made plum freezer jam for the first time. There's no doubt loaves of plum bread are in order and the food dehydrator has been pulled out for drying some. We've never had homemade prunes, but I think dried bananas and apples are phenomenally better when made at home and anticipate plums will be the same.
We ran errands later in the afternoon, then stopped by Costco for a nutritious dinner of hot dogs and soda (my treat) and churros (Naomi's treat) on our way to drop Devon off at church.
We wrapped the day up with the final Music in the Park performance at the library. This is our eighth summer of enjoying weekly free concerts out on the grass in Library Square, but there were only three Ws at most shows this season. The big boys had to quit coming when youth group switched from Thursdays to Tuesdays last year, then Tim missed for various reasons this year. Naomi, Tyler, and I were loyal fans, though!
