Jesus Loves Me

A video we will never get tired of watching and hearing...

Born in the U.S.A.

Today is my birthday and I spent it with two of my most favorite people in the world (Camden and Shelby, of course). I also spent it with some of my best teacher friends at Point Defiance Zoo. I didn't get pictures of everyone but here are a few of the things we did together today: Camden took this picture of one of the roaming peacocks...

Here are Elena with her daughter Sasha, posing by the elephant barn. I shared a classroom with Elena for the past two years - a great roommate!

For whatever reason, they had camels you could pay to ride. None of the kids were quite big enough, but a few of us adults were contemplating it...

Shelby and Camden both enjoyed the new bird exhibit "Budgies". Nobody got pooped on so it was fun and uneventful.

Shelby liked the underwater part - the walruses were not out so we watched the seals and otters.

This is as close as we could get to a picture with these three together. Oh well. Camden sure seemed like the big kid among the group...I guess because he was.

Camden got up close to the Meerkats with Sasha. These little buggers are very fun to watch.
and we ended with a carousel ride - Camden's favorite part. Shelby sat next to me in the carousel bench and almost fell asleep during the ride.

Summer Breeze

When the end of the school year rolls around, things get pretty busy in my life. This year was no different - with the addition of packing up and moving all my things to a new classroom. All that to say, this will be a broad blog because I'm a little behind. So, here we go with a random smattering of all the things we've been busy doing the month of June so far...

The weather has been very nice so we've done a lot of playing on the deck. The kids enjoy the water table...

Shelby likes to blow bubbles - rather unproductively, but she thinks she's quite the pro.

We took a trip to Yakima and spent an afternoon at the arboretum taking some pictures. Thanks to amateur photographers Grandpa Lee and Uncle Mark, we have some really nice shots of the kids...

And one sort of good one of everyone together (boy is it difficult to get everyone to look good at the same time!). As you can see, we got to meet baby Courtney for the first time too.

About two weeks ago Camden tripped at the arcade at the mall and hit his face on a sharp corner at the bottom of a driving game. After much screaming, bleeding and swelling, we got him to the dr. and luckily he did not need stitches. Unluckily, however, he has a bad gash in his cheek that will likely leave a scar. Poor little guy.

Hanging out on the couch together. For once both kids shared my lap without any hitting, pushing, or other loving sibling behaviors.

Father's Day weekend we took a trip to ride the train at Snoqualmie. The kids had fun playing on some of the train cars.

As you can see, Camden enjoyed the train ride so much he had to create a new facial expression to show the extreme happiness involved. Maybe this will be next year's school picture face.
Shelby told everyone about the "wah wah" as we looked down over Snoqualmie Falls.
To finish off Father's Day weekend, Matt, Camden, Mark and Maggie got to go to a Mariners game. It was hat day for the kids.
Later on, it was a good time playing "nap time" on the floor. Shelby got right in there and made sure she was part of the fun.