Balloon Animals

'Nobody can be uncheeredwith a balloon.' - A.A. Milne

Or so they say...a few things I've learned about parenting in my six short years of experience:

1. You try new things because your kids ask you to. 2. Sometimes you suck at those things, & your kids get bummed out. 3. They still love you, even if you sucked at it.

Animal balloons. Ry was so excited to try them out. Balloon after balloon popped- then we got one inflated, & Mike managed to twist it into a dog. A dog, that Ry informed us, was upside down & backwards...or something like that, a.k.a.not right. Then a second balloon remained inflated, but resulted in a very small dog. More disappointment. 'It's Pretzel!' I declared, attempting to provide some cheer, relating his dog to a favorite book character. 'Nope,' both boys agreed, 'definitely not Pretzel.' Ry attempted to untwist the make-shift Pretzel, but it popped. Covey's upside-down & backwards dog also popped. Lots of little balloon pieces, but the kids quickly recovered- & I think Mike might get a new balloon animal kit for Father's Day.

June: 10-on-10

The past couple of days have been ridiculously gorgeous. This means lots of outside time- lots as in all day & all night. We don't get any kind of regular weather here, so when it's good, it's really, really good. It's also hard to end the day, so one recent evening, Ella & I headed out to enjoy some 10:00pm sunshine. As a result, I'm breaking the rules a bit with this 10-on-10. One of Ella's new talents is signing bird; which also results in some very sweet expressions (picture number 3- that's one of her many bird faces). She puts that thumb & pointer finger together to sign bird, puckers her lips up like a little beak & (I'm pretty sure) wants to kiss any bird she can find. She's also been saying 'ch' for chicken. Much to her dismay, she's yet to actually kiss a chicken.

Keep the circle going, with Jill's blog- her girls just graduated, a big congratulations to them!

Kodiak Crab Festival

Every single year, on every single Memorial Day weekend, the Kodiak Crab Festival takes place. It's a big deal, regardless of your age. The kids talk about it for about 360 days, & then it's here, & then it's gone. We managed to get by only going two days. It's also a money pit, so two days there is pretty darn good. My sister lives almost downtown, so it's an easy walk, as well as an easy tease. The boys tried so hard to patiently wait, staring at the moving rides through my sister's porch railing. We somehow managed to forget about all those years we could barely withstand the waiting, & kept the boys a little longer. But then we journeyed down, passed the zooming cars, along the docks, through the maze of festival-goers, to the ticket line. Almost exactly where the boys had dreamed of being for the past 11.5 months, but not quite. They wanted the rides- the Indiana Jones obstacle course, the spin-the-apples, the flying cars...& the games. The balloons to pop, the bottles to ring, the fish to catch- so much excitement for these guys.

After a couple hours, we headed home. The boys were heavily armed in their new pirate-ninja gear. We were heavily armed with seriously delicious Mexican food (& a sweet buttercup bouquet, courtesy of Covey). It was a very fun Crab Festival; & the weather was gorgeous. How could I forget the weather?! The weekend is usually a rainy, wet one, but somehow we managed to get two nice, sunny days. One big win, all the way around!