Ava and Harper are 5

It's hard to believe these two are 5 years old, the time has gone by so fast.  They had a busy day, starting with a check-up at the doctor, our petite girls are in the 25th percentile for height and weight.  Then they went for a birthday lunch with Mom, Dad, and Luke (Lexi is at Nationals) to Who Song and Larry's.  They told us that the guy working sang to them-but Harper was irate because he only sang to Ava, she said "he probably thought I was older!".  They came up to visit us in the afternoon.  Des made a big cupcake for them and Rielee decorated it in pink and green with lots of candies.  Rielee had their favorite song playing when they came in, and after cake and presents they played musical chairs. They will have their big birthday party Sunday at Chuck E. Cheese.

Kah-Nee-Ta

We went to Kah-Nee-Ta Sunday morning.  It was warm but cloudy and the shallow end of the pool was really crowded with the weekend day use people.

  The older kids spent most of their time in the deep end.  James came along with Gabe and Des, and Charb brought Luke and the twins.  Charb stayed for the day and left the kids to stay over with us.  Laury, David and Auna stayed the night while Emmy and Dan came to play for the day.

 We've always had so much fun in the pool the many times we've been there.  It's been at least 5 yrs. though (wildfires kept us away last year) so it was all new to Ava and Harper and Rielee, too, who didn't have any memory of being there.

After the pool the girls rode scooters, the sidewalks there are perfect for it, and they had a ball.

Ava and Harper only wanted to ride their new scooter, but they were good at sharing it.

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The guys played a lot of football.  After dinner we played "31",  then the little girls went back to the pool and rode scooters again while the football got tossed around a little more. 

We woke up to bright, hot sunshine this morning and were the first ones in the pool at 9 a.m.  It was so quiet and nice.  Luke, Parker, James and Auna played mini-golf but it got boring quickly, so they came to the pool and went down the slide a bunch of times.  After an hour, both Ava and Harper said they were tired and wanted to go back to the room.  They took one last scooter ride before we all packed up and headed for home.

Painting Emmy's classroom

 Emmy had a painting party in her classroom today.  She was excited  to replace the bright blue walls with a soft, sage green accented with light, sky blue.

 Parker came to help and told us over and over again about his expert painting abilities!

Emmy leaving a note for the janitors.   Her room looks really nice, much warmer now.

Rielee's business

Rielee put up signs all over the neighborhood this morning advertising her car washing business.  She was disappointed by a lack of response, but a little later in the day she and the girls were over at Uncle Alan's and he agreed to take her up on it.  He brought his car over after dinner and she washed it, with help from the twins until they got too wet to continue, and some guidance from me so she didn't miss too many spots.  She said she's saving her earnings for a car.

Rielee's friend Netty spent the night with her so they were both over this morning. Jillian called and invited them to play at Aunt Cathy's, then Jillian and Bridget came up and played here.  They had fun playing dress-up. 

 We went to Vancouver this afternoon to watch James play in the Babe Ruth Senior Regionals but as soon as we got there, Alan texted me that the game was changed to Kelso due to rain.  We had planned a visit to Charb and Kelly's to see Ava and Harper's playhouse.  The girls were excited and took us right out to the backyard to check it out.  We had to take our shoes off and sit at the table while they fixed us soup and cake, Luke, Kelly and Charb watched through the windows.  The girls are very proud of their playhouse.  Then they took us up to their room to see how their beds are pushed together.  It was a fun visit. 

We hit traffic on the way back to Kelso and James' game was in the 4th inning.  They were up 4-0 at that point but ended up losing 6-5.  We missed a RBI by James but watched him make some nice plays at first.  This picture is of him making a great catch for a double play. 

The fair with Rielee, Ava and Harper

 The girls first played all the quarter games and had lots of fun, they got little toys for trying, bigger ones for winning.  

 Then they spotted the ponies and took off running.  They had a nice ride, Ava never quit grinning and waving.  The owner of the ponies remembered the girls from last year,

 Harper talked to her the whole ride.  Harper had picked out her horse because it's name was "Twinkle".

 They asked to ride the lawn mower train ride next, had fun and went on it twice. 

 Rielee tried archery three times, she was a little frustrated that she couldn't hit the balloon bullseye. 

On the way out of the fair, they stopped to try out the ping pong ball toss for gold fish.  We came home with 5!  Rielee won 3 and two teenage girls gave Ava and Harper the 2 they had won.  What excitement!  Our pond is well-stocked now.

 

CR Parade-1st place

 The kids had so much fun riding on the float.  Parker drove the tractor, Luke and Brock are in the food booth, the rest of the kids are sitting on the back.

 It was so cute, Ava,  Harper and Rielee had practiced their "parade waves" and did them perfectly the whole way!

 At this point they were on the back street, out of candy and MORTIFIED!  They were hollering to their Moms, Aunt Cathy, Grandma, anyone who would listen that they were OUT OF CANDY!!  Too funny!

Afterwards, we went to the fair and walked around with Charb, Kelly and the kids.   The girls checked out their crafts and Harper was happy that Ava won a big ribbon on her picture frame.  They played some little games, got kettle corn and cotton candy, and looked at some of the animals.  Harper liked the live music most of all.
There was a snafu in judging, where we were first told we took 3rd place (they had us in the wrong category) but later were informed that we actually took 1st place!  Unfortunately, we couldn't return the 3rd place ribbon because it was too "damaged" by the kids, so they gave us enough blue ribbons so that each kid could have their own. 
 

Country Cousins float building

 It's been a long time since we entered a float in the parade.  I think we did it 9 years in a row, winning first place every year-until the last one, I think that was about 2007 maybe.  The kids were getting a little older and were kind of rowdy that year and they threw candy at Miss Knuth, one of the judges, and oops, the Boy Scouts won. 

We have a new group of little ones now so we decided to do it again.  We have a lot of fun building the float as a family, using only materials we have and trying not to buy anything. 

The Country Cousins - Cale, Brock, Tierney, Auna and Rielee holding Tor.  Parker, Jillian and Bridget worked also,  James had practice but came up later.  Cathy was our float designer,  Dan U. barbecued for us, Bob was the videographer, Dan and Michael helped as did Robin, Julie, Rick, Gabe, Des, Alan,  Papa and I.

Harper's owee leg

Harper had a big story to tell Sunday morning about her scratched up leg.  She fell in a "sticker bush" at Becky and Bruce's house Saturday night.  She said Bruce did a good job of patching her up and Becky had to pull out some of the stickers with tweezers.

It wasn't hot enough to go swimming so the girls played with water in the sandbox, building a volcano with a moat.  Rielee buried Ava's feet in the sand.

Em & Parker

This morning Parker, Emmy and I went garage saleing.  We found a few treasures.  I got them both a mocha from Mr. Bill's and Emmy somehow dropped hers in a pair of shoes at one of the sales, she felt bad and bought the shoes.  The rest of the day was a productive one with Parker.  He washed the white truck and put it by the road to sell.  Then he washed and waxed our car while I washed the floor mats and the booster seat covers.  We went to see the new Planet of the Apes movie. Besides the fact that  I fell asleep for awhile and we were sitting in the refrigerated section of the theatre, it was pretty entertaining.  All evening he obsessed about buying a diesel truck, he showed me one on Craigslist he likes.  He even listened to one running on YouTube, loves that diesel sound.  Only 203 days until he can get his permit, he has a countdown app on his phone. 

Pool play

Ava and Harper came up today for a few hours.  They only got to play in the pool with Rielee for a little while before she left for the houseboat with Mom and Dad.  They were very sad and upset over her leaving so after lunch Papa and I took them back to the pool.  Parker stayed home with us but we couldn't talk him into getting wet.  It was really fun, I wasn't planning on getting very wet and was just floating around on the air mattress until Harper decided she was going to dump me in, Papa and Ava then helped her and they thought it was pretty funny when I went under.

Laury's birthday, twin's playhouse

 Auna went to town with us today when we took Rielee to volleyball camp.  Then she and I went to get pedicures.  On the way home we stopped at the bakery and got a maple bar and an iced coffee for Laury for a birthday treat and took them to her at work. 

Kelly sent me this picture of the girls in front of their playhouse.  Daddy got the floor finished today and put up the curtains, too.  They were very excited little girls. 

Monopoly day

Rielee only wanted to do one thing with us today, and that was to play a game of Monopoly.  The game lasted 3 hours, Papa quit in the middle, saying we ganged up on him, but he split his money and property between us, so we were okay with him gone.  It took awhile but my more expensive rents finally took Rielee out.   She was a good sport and we had a lot of fun.

Too quiet

 Our week with the girls is over, Charb, Kelly and Luke got home from Mexico this morning.  We loved having them, and they adjusted to sleeping in their beds really well.  They fought it big time the first night, but it got easier each night.  Harper was overly-tired after the

 fireworks last night had a little meltdown at bedtime, but after she worked through it and Papa read to them, they both jumped in bed and were out in just a couple of minutes.

They like having their beds together(Papa removed the rails in the middle).

In this picture from yesterday, Harper was up first and went in to talk to Ava as she was waking up.

And now we have to adjust to our suddenly too quiet house.

4th of July

 Our 4th was considerably quieter this year with just Rielee shooting off fireworks, with the exception of Gabe shooting off his Dad's cannon and a few mortars.   Rielee first showed Ava and Harper some smoke bombs and other little fireworks,

 but then Uncle Gabe let them try a roman candle.

All three at once was fun.  We played some card games, the kids and Gabe played badminton,  and then we left at dusk to drive up by the lake to see some big fireworks. 

Wednesday at the beach

 We all slept in, then after breakfast we finished watching The Life of Pi with Rielee while the twins played upstairs.  The girls took turns vacuuming then played outside while Papa and I packed.  Papa took them to the playground so I could finish up cleaning.

 We stopped at Funland and they played lots of games.   Funny thing happened there, Rielee and Harper were playing a virtual reality game, I didn't pay attention when they started but suddenly they came flying out of it, shaking and saying it was too scary, there were aliens and zombies in it! 

Then we went to Marsha's and they saw Jake the Alligator Man, Ava and Harper were not impressed with him (too creepy, even though Ava said he looked like he was smiling) but Rielee sure was.  They all picked out some shells to buy, too.

 Next stop was the Merry Go Round. 

Rielee begged to go on the Tilt 'O Whirl, she had the whole ride to herself, and rode by herself since Papa and I weren't going on it and neither were the twins (they wanted to but we were afraid they would get sick) she said it was faster than it looked and she was a little wobbily-legged when she got off.

We stopped at the Astoria pool on the way home.  Rielee went down the big slide many times and Ava and Harper went down the little slide.  Harper went under water the first time and Ava got her face wet on her first time down, but after that they wanted me to catch them and keep them above the water.

Such a fun trip!

Beach trip

 Tuesday we took the girls to Ocean Park and stayed at Cathy and Bob's beach house.  It was so hot, 91 when we got there so we went straight to the beach.  There was a lot of screaming and running from the waves.  They had so much fun!  We stayed for a couple of hours and then took a break. 

They played around the house for awhile,

 then we took them to the school playground,

then back to the beach.  Rielee was making me a little nervous in the waves, she kept wanting to go out farther and farther to use the boogie board, so we moved over to the little stream that flows into the ocean and they played happily there.

We had a fire pit later and watched a couple of movies.  The kids wanted to sleep upstairs but it was too warm so we all slept in the living room.