Dear Lucy, I really hope you never need glasses. Or at least you learn to walk with them if you do.

This weekend we spent enjoying our lovely grass outside...and Isak hit around his golf ball. On Friday we went to Cirque du Soleil in Spokane with Kevin's grandma and parents. I had never been and really enjoyed it, especially all the acrobatics. The most impressive act I thought was the set of catortionist sisters who could pretty much touch their belly button to their back bone. Inspired me to do more yoga. After getting back late Friday, we woke up early Saturday for my race in Richland. My wonderful parents came to my house super early so Kevin could drive me to the race and they later met us there. Crystal's husband, Scott, was running his 1st half-marathon...a bet he was trying to win. Apparently making your husband run long distances to get things that they want is very popular :). Anyway, it was along the riverfront in Richland and started at the marina.

Scott did much better than I thought and finished in under 2 hours. I still beat him, but that is neither here nor there...I have to give him props, I dealt him a lot of trash talk about finding him on the side of the trail somewhere. I felt pretty crummy the last half of this race and then continued to be sick the rest of the day. I am not sure what was going on but I am still feeling a little under the weather today too. Anyway, I did run a PR and was excited about my time. I know I can do faster though.

Saturday night was the BSU vs OSU football game and we had friends over to watch the game with us. Somehow I forgot to take pictures though. Picture tons of small children running around screaming and some adults sitting trying to watch a football game, also screaming. And lots of orange and blue paraphenilia sitting around. Thanks to everyone that came, it was tons of fun, sometimes I forget how much I like to be social.

Then today was my mom's birthday! We celebrated at my house with some very yummy salmon and strawberry cheesecake from Costco..delicious! Its great having family close so we get to celebrate birthdays and holidays together. It was a whirlwind weekend, I think an early bedtime is in order tonight.

The grass is always greener....

Wednesday was one of the great days of my life, right up there with my wedding day and the birth of my children. Because Wednesday, 8 very lovely pallets of sod were delivered to my driveway. I was so excited, I started laying sod for over an hour by myself before Kevin even got home for work. People, there has been dirt in my house since March. Dirt on my children, dirt on my carpet, my floor, my table, and it has never really gone away. Everytime I would clean my carpet, my floors, my kids, they would get covered with dirt the next day. Usually the hose would also be involved and then mud would be tracked throughout my house and the lovely white carpet. There was a pool to fill in, which took several loads of dirt and a skidster parked in my front yard for months which broke down at any given time. (but it was free and courtesy of the farm, so I was grateful :). Then there was cement to jackhammer up and old yucky grass to dig up and tons of weeds to clear.
Oh and do you remember the broken water main that had us tear up all the cement out of the front yard and leave a 4 foot ditch out to the road? That was fun too.

Kevin also put in sprinklers which I am so grateful for now but took a little while to get sorted out. Anyway, there were many days when I thought I would never see the likes of green in my yard.
Above is the back of our house when we moved in. Below is our backyard with sprinklers and grass! So much better! It still needs landscaping around the edges but it looks a TON better than it did.

We were lucky to have Kevin's cousin come help us lay the sod and Grady came along too. They pretended the sod pallet was a pirate ship and were quite upset everytime we would come take some of their ship away.

Kevin's dad came and helped us too and was nice enough to also entertain Lucy at the same time. Turns out, she fits perfectly on a wheelbarrow full of sod. We are so thankful for the countless hours of service extended to us by family and friends to help us complete this enormous project. Now we have a safe backyard for my kids to play!

Wednesday night we took our kids to the fair here in Othello. It was our first trip there and our kids first experience at a fair. They LOVED it! I dressed them appropriately in "farm" attire, made Isak wear a plaid shirt and overalls. I have yet to see any farmers wear anything like this, but I made my point :). Our kids loved being able to pet all the animals and Isak was very interested in finding a brown rabbit that looked just like his hop. Lucy loved baaing at all the animals, see video below, and was quite suprised when some started baaing back. She also moooooed at some of the cows. It was very endearing.

"Hey, is this where the milk comes from?" He would make his grandpa proud.

I was suprised how much our kids like the rides, being so little. Above is Isak at an amusement park I took him to last August in Wisconsin when he was 2.
Above is Isak on a similar ride at the fair, obviously much braver. He especially loved the bouncy house/slide that we had to pay a $1 for him to go on and each time we didn't catch him come out and go back in. I am pretty sure that's how they make all their money.

Isak really wanted to go on this huge pink slide and the only requirement was that they could walk up there by themselves. I thought, no way, this is way too big, but sure enough, he grabbed his little blanket and marched right to the top and came down.

He loved it...and went twice.

He also loved this spaceship ride which I thought was too scary but it put him up in the air and up and down and he really liked it. We also took Isak on the ferris wheel and sat him between Kevin and I. I forgot how much I dislike heights and I also forgot what a parrot I have for a son. So as we are sitting 50 feet off the ground I hear Isak..."Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, we shouldn't be up here..". Yea, way to pass my fears on to my kids, I know.
I put Lucy on this little goldfish ride and she Loved it...she was yelling "wweeee" the whole time and when they had to stop to pull off some crying kids she kept yelling "ready, set go! ready, set, go!"My sorry attempt at a family picture that I conveniently cut myself out of.
There was a cute little play area near the goats that had sawdust chips and some toys for the kids. By the end we were pretty tired and our kids were pretty cranky. It was the perfect size fair though, not too big, and had everything you needed. And the best part is that we went on dollar day so everything was only moderately overpriced. And we get to go again tonight because Kevin signed us up to work the elephant ear booth for the Boy Scouts from 10-11:30..AWESOME! (insert sarcasim).

Lucy the Sheep Whisperer....

We went to the fair tonight and Lucy was especially excited for the sheep. Here she is talking with them, if only we knew what they were saying.....

Things we are up to this week...

Isak finger painted today when he got up from his nap. He asked me, "mom, what animals like to finger paint?" I said, "just humans". He said.."I'm not a human, just a little boy, sorry!". We picked some leaves off the ground at the park this morning and colored on top of them on paper. Isak is loving using my camera now and wanted to take a picture.

We attempted to make cinnamon rolls yesterday but they didn't quite turn out. Isak was kind of enough to document the experience...I love when I upload my pictures and there's about 10 extra that I don't recognize that Isak has taken, always interesting.

We are working on learning to use scissors and so far Isak still wants to use two hands when cutting instead of one. He is very stubborn, I am thinking he would take direction better from his teacher than from me.

Lucy reached an all time naughtiness...while I was working with Isak she got into the cinnamon roll dough and rubbed it all over her face, and then proceeded to start biting the tips off the markers. She loves to color, but she also loves to eat all the crayons and draw all over the walls so its difficult to find the right balance....

Sunday night I had some old friends from High School come over...I say "old" as in I have known them a long time, because we are all not a day over 18...Callie was in town from Utah for the day so it was a good excuse to see everyone. Crystal now lives conveniently down the street and Emily lives close too so now we just need Katie and Lacey and everyone else to move close too... Emily had her wisdom teeth out on Friday, so if her cheeks look a little swollen, that's why. My cheeks just look swollen because I eat too much cookie dough, I don't have a great excuse! Anyway, it was fun to catch up, in between chasing kids and changing diapers.

Lucy loves to pose for the camera and if she sees it out, will come over and yell "cheese!" over and over again. She's a giant ham.

One of the things she is loving right now is running around with her blanket over her head and having us replace it over and over again. She especially thinks its hilarious when she runs into stuff and falls over. She also loves to bend over and stare at us between her legs. She's a little crazy right now. And, over the weekend, she was introduced to "old Macdonald" videos on you tube that she repeatedly asks for a million times a day, yelling "EE-Ey-EE-Ey Oh! Ey-Oh! Ey-Oh!". Yes, I need to find her a CD or something. Oh Kevin is a great dad but the few days a month he has them when I work the night before, they seem to learn all sorts of new things that I get to try to figure out for the next week while he goes to work....

Below is a little example of Lucy's love of walking around with stuff on her head. I believe she pulled this sheet of of the hamper.

1st day of Preschool!

Isak started preschool today! Well, it didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. He refused to let me leave so I stayed the whole 2 hours with him and had Kevin come pick up Lucy. I have to remind myself that he just turned 3 in May and that he still pretty young. That and it was his first day and he knew absolutely no one there. Pretty scary stuff. I think he will do great once he has gone a few times and feels more comfortable. I think I have much more anxiety about it than he does! He does great in our nursery at church where we leave him every Sunday for a few hours so I am hoping once he gets to know everyone there he will do better. And I am really hoping that he doesn't come out of the bathroom with no pants on and scares all the little girls in his class. That is a very real possibility and something we are working on at home. Wow this whole parenting thing is kind of scary when you start putting your kid in school and realize that your successes/failures as a parent will soon be seen by everyone!

On a side note, I attempted to braid Lucy's hair when it was wet so she could have crinkly hair for church the next day. It didn't quite turn out as I had hoped and just gave her super crazy hair.

Part 2

Alright, I need to finish up the rest of our Oregon trip. Lets see how much i can still remember....

Isak and Josh spent a lot of time on the beach playing and chasing waves.

Counsins being silly. Isak and Josh pretty much spent all day every day wrestling each other and jumping off the furniture until one of them got hurt. They had a blast.
Claire wore Lucy's tutu everyday and her and Lucy loved to pose for my pictures :).We got to go the Aquarium in Newport and it was really fun. We went once before when Isak was a baby but the kids were old enough now to really enjoy the exhibits. Below is Isak in a diving helmet..Lucy especially loved the aquarium and would run around pointing and yelling at all the fish. She was very excited.

Besides the aquarium, we did some serious shopping at the outlet mall in Lincoln City and had lots of fun playing games and hanging out in the evenings. We are really looking forward to next year!

Beach Trip/Grimmett Reunion Part 1

Last week was our somewhat annual beach trip to the Oregon Coast. Once every 1 or 2 years, Kevin's very awesome grandma rents a beach house on the Oregon coast for 5 days and we all get together. We always look forward to this and especially now we have kids with cousins, it is really fun to get everyone together. Kevin and I haven't been able to go together to it since Isak was a baby so it was really nice to have an extra set of hands to help and have a little vacation time. Warning, there are tons of pictures...anyone who isn't directly related, feel free to skip whatever. If you are family, you are required to ohh and aww over each photo and admire the adorable children in the pictures. We had suprisingly good weather while we were there. I think the kids and I made it out to the beach at least once a day and I managed to keep Isak from drowning himself in the ocean. Lucy wasn't a big fan of the cold water but did enjoy playing in the sand.

Kevin's cousin Roxanne was nice enough to teach Isak how to fly a kite. He thought this was awesome and I was thankful that he didn't let go and lose her kite!

My kids were off their schedules, of course, so they were a little cranky. Isak smiled for me in a few pictures, but mostly didn't want anything to do with the camera.

Isak even played with Lucy in the sand and shared his shovels. Nevermind the fact that mostly they just threw sand at each other, I still consider this progress.

Lucy rediscovered her love of watermelon with her cousin Claire and made scary faces.

Isak practiced his photography skills and took a few pictures of his own. Above, Aunt Lori and

Roxanne.

He took a nice shot of me holding a sleeping Lucy, and below, this is a self portrait. Pretty disturbing if you ask me.

Lucy sported her crazy pigtails.
There is an awesome city park in Lincoln City called Regatta Park that has a huge wooden castle play area and little swim beach. Its perfect for the kids, away from the wind and very shallow. It was very warm and they loved playing the water.We were successful in building a small sand castle and Isak found a large pole from one of our umbrellas. He walked around with it yelling that he was going to kill the fish with his bow and arrow.Yes, that's my son.