4th of july

Okay, I'm going to attempt to blog about July (so I can get to august) over the next few days. So here goes:

On the 3rd of july we went to Chad's parents house for BBQ. All his family was there plus some neighbors. Anthony did most of cooking so of course it was awesome food! Unfortunately, Anthony also made us some awesome mojitos and that is a whole 'nother story, which I will not go into. Later that evening we went down to my parents boat and watched the fireworks display from there. My cousins and aunt & uncle were also there, as well as Pat & Kristy who sat with us on the dock.

Kate (such a nice expression!):

Walter and neighbor girl:

Independence girl:


Aiden (before his cheeks got too big for his face - don't worry, Aiden, you're still cute!):

Amalia (too pretty!):

Jamie finished almost the whole thing:

The yummy chicken skewers:

Okay, this is making me hungry!

The fireworks, which I didn't really get to enjoy much since Abby and Jamie were freaking out:


Cousing Gabby and uncle Rick:

On the fourth, we went over to my parents in the evening to do a few fireworks with the kids. They didn't even really like them, I just wanted some pictures for a scrapbook page, which I got, so mission accomplished (is that wrong???).

Sydney and dad doing a sparkler:

Jamie did a sparkler too but really didn't like it when it started to "pop" at the end:

Hey, I like sparklers!


The kids did like trying the pop-its!

Trying to stomp on them (they didn't work so well)!

Ocean Crest

Back in June, we ventured out to Ocean Crest, a hotel a bit up the coast from Ocean Shores, in a "town" called Moclips. We went with my sister and her family and stayed in a room that slept 8 and had a full kitchen. The kids loved playing in the pool and the hottub (all indoors), but there are no pictures because my camera always fogged up with the humidity. But we did go down to the beach too, and although it was too cold to play in the water, it was a beautiful and I got some good pictures. The Carrie&Jason left on Sunday, but we stayed one more day and went to see the sunset Sunday night down at the beach (which is where my "cool edited pic" was from). Here are the pictures from our trip:

this is the stairway that we take down to the beach:
it was a bit windy....
so we flew our kite (don't ask me what Chad is muttering to the kite):
the engineers are trying to figure something out...they determined that the string was not tied off...I determined that it was (now who is the real engineer?!)
our $9.99 costco kite, it was fun for about 5 min then looking at got pretty boring...
Sydney tries to show Abby the kite but Abby only thinks it's about her unkempt hair...
(also notice the difference in the size of feet in the photo above - they are only 9 months apart!)
Jamie tries out the kite:
No more fluffy hair please...
Carrie takes Abby for a walk out to the water (which was aways!):
My favorite pics of Jamie:

failed family portrait:
the best of the lot:
Pics from our view of the sunset:


Here's a pic of the little duplex we stayed in. My family used to stay here when I was a teenager so I was a little scared of the quality of the room, but it really wasn't bad! And for only $150 a night it was actually a really good deal considering how many people it slept....we may be looking for someone to share it with us again :)
More of that unkempt hair...

a cool edited photo

Okay, so this photo originally looked like this:


I tweaked a few things (like saturation) then saved a copy. To the copy, I changed the exposure to reveal the sand, then saved that. With both copies open in PSE, I put the lighter one on top of the darker one, then with the brush tool, I "revealed" the darker sky underneath, and finally blended the water's edge to get rid of any harsh lines. Pretty cool huh?

Fritz, Great gramma's b-day, family portrait

June

I watched Sydney a few times so that Carrie could pack for their move. I took her and Jamie down to Fritz one afternoon (notice how Sydney has ALL the sauces).

Great grandma turns 92 (my grandma). She has very bad dementia so it is always a little entertaining (and a bit sad). But she does love to see the kids and thankfully she still remembers who they are! The best part? The kids love the wheelchair rides!



...and of course they loved cake too!

...but mostly the frosting:

Down by the lake after the party:



Playing with Gramma & Grampa's train:
Here's a family portrait we got done back in May while we were in San Diego. It was supposed to be my mother's day present but it was pretty much a disaster. Both kids were grumpy (at 10:30 in the morning!), but we finally got a decent shot.

a bunch of unedited photos for you

I'm trying to be more consistent with my blogging, and seeing it is almost midnight, I am going to put off editing these photos to another day (since they are like, so 2 months ago anyways). So here you go.

Abby trying out the woolies from G&G neigh-neigh:

Wow, our grass was green at one time:
Jamie insisted he needed a hat one day when it was clearly warm outside (and notice how he wears it like his dad?):
Miss pigtails:
My neighbors flowers (hey, I've been gardening lately!):

I thought this was funny how they were sitting, but of course I couldn't get them both to look at the same time:

Jamie and Chad had a campout in the backyard one night. Jamie was so excited, he helped set it up and then they read a story or two before going to sleep. In the morning, Chad sent Jamie in the house when he woke up (about 7 am) while he (Chad, who else) continued to sleep for another few hours. But Jamie kept talking about his campout for several days after this, and was a bit confused when I told him we were ALL going to sleep in the tent out at Belfair (nevermind we have another tent!).