Lil Dawg Soccer Camp

Grace has been in a soccer camp at UW all week. And she has been LOVING it! The women's soccer team does an amazing job. This is Grace's second year doing it and it's a for sure for the years to come!

Next time you see Grace ask her to do a Husky Jack for you! You will not be disappointed!


Here she is with her coach, one of the UW players. SO FUN for these young girls!

The Freemont Troll

On Sunday evening we had to run an errand to UW...so to make the most of it we headed on a family date too. I had heard about the Freemont Troll when I was researching Seattle before we moved here, 3.5 years ago. I always wanted to check it out...and it was right near UW, so we decided to see what it was all about.

It was actually pretty big. It was dirty and there were a lot of people there too. Grace wanted to climb on top of it's head and reluctantly Garrett helped her. It is clutching a full size VW bug in it's hand and Brady thought that was pretty cool.

It was a fun Seattle-ish thing to do for our family date!

Checking out the VW.
Grace up on the head posing for her picture! (Sorry for the random person in the pic...there were a lot of people and I didn't want to wait for him to leave while Grace was up so high...it was scary)
The nose profile...HUGE nose!

Camping at Mount Rainier National Park

We spent this past weekend camping at Mount Rainier. It was a blast! The park is only a 2 hour drive from our house, so we loaded up friday afternoon and took off. The campground was great and packed though. Glad that we reserved our site online the week before. We stayed at Cougar Rock Campground. We just hung out by the fire that night and the kids LOVEd sleeping in the tent!

It was a cold night. We had hot cocoa and even built another fire in the morning. But it warmed up to near 70 during the day. We went on three hikes on Saturday. We stayed lower in elevation though because there is still a TON of snow. We did the Carter Falls hike, the Twin Firs hike and the Trail of the Shadows hike...all totalling 3.3 miles of hiking! The kids did great and were totally wiped by the end of the day. We also explored some nearby towns and got a treat during the afternoon on Saturday. We saw some really old, HUGE, trees on the Twin Firs hike. We also crossed the river, during the Carter Falls hike, our longest hike 2.2 miles up the mountain. And we saw some beavers' handiwork on the Trail of the Shadows hike.

We had a great weekend and will for sure be camping again this summer! Enjoy our crazy pictures!

The kids wanted to build a rock statue. We had to cross the river here and it was really scary with the kids. We didn't want anyone to fall in.





At the top of our longest hike. The trail kept going another 4 miles up to Paradise, but we were done after our 1.1 mile uphill trek. I think we are at 3600 feet.
Potty break!!!!

Tough boy!

Happy 4th!

This year the weather on the 4th was fantastic! Last year it rained and we didn't even see any fireworks.

We decided to head to the city of Carnation for the parade in the morning. It was a small town parade, but the kids LOVED the firetrucks and the candy. It is always great to have Garrett in town to do these things with us!

We got there an hour early to be able to get a spot along the route and the kids were MORE than ready for the parade to start...


Brady opened up any candy he could get his hands on...he LOVES sweets (and diet coke)!!!
The kids were perfecting their parade waves here! And the firetruck didn't disappoint either. One super loud HONK!
Brady was glued to the firetrucks!

After the parade we just hung out at home and swam in the sprinkler. Then later that night we were invited to our Bishop's house. His wife is a firework FANATIC. We are talking $$$'s worth of fireworks. So we headed over to their cul-de-sac and watched a super fun home town firework show! Brady was so tired from the day that he fell asleep mid-show! It was a great day!





Happy 4th Everyone!

Strawberries

We loaded up the car and headed out last week for some summery strawberry picking! The kids LOVED finding the bright red berries (and even some not so red) and throwing them in our basket. Two of my very best girlfriends and their kiddos came with us as well as a very sweet neighbor girl, Telsie, who helped keep an eye on all the kids!

Here's the crew (minus one little 3 month old, Parker): Grace, Lucy, Sophie, Cami, Anabelle, and Brady.
Somebody was snitching strawberries. The evidence is all over his FACE!





We already made some jam and homemade strawberry shortcake! This is what summer is all about!