Closing Out Our Summer

This year at the Skagit County fair we went multiple days and watched a lot of shows.

Magician....The kids loved him!

Ryker watched this for hours and almost caught a Tshirt they threw to him, but it was snagged by a long arm coming over his head.  Good lesson that some adults are jerks.  I hope the guy at least had some kids since it was Ryker's size.

Lots of big birds on display.

4-H- Petting zoo

The baby chicks are always a big hit

 

The kids were pretty entertained by the pie eating contest.

Ryker was really disappointed that he couldn't get hypnotized because the guy wanted them to be at least 10.  This is him trying it himself from the audience.  It didn't take though.

Ryker and Kya couldn't stop talking about this.  They thought it was the funniest show ever.  I have to agree.  It was pretty good.

Here, their shoe is their favorite pet.  What those pets were was as funny as them cuddling them.

And.....back for another bike show.

Another show we saw was funny comedians that did lots of tricks.  Here they came of the stage wrapped two passer by's in construction tape them told Ryker to hold them.  Haha, he couldn't stop laughing looking at those people.

The guys just headed back to the stage and continued the show while the people were all wrapped up.



Ryker in the lap lane while water aerobics was going on.  After spending the summer in Wibaux, he wants to work on his endurance so he can pass his test to be in the deep end.  I LOVE that he sets goals and works for them.  I am very uncertain weather he'll pass or not especially since he hasn't been in a pool that much this winter, but he'll give it his best shot!

Plum wonderland. 

We harvested, canned, froze, and dried everything in site from August through October.  I don't want to take credit for growing anything, but a lot of people just let it go to waste and are happy to have someone use it so they don't have to clean it up off the ground.  We have quite a few contacts these days that we call at harvest time!

If you don't have a pineapple corer, get one!  I hate gadgets.  If you can do it with a knife, why get another "thing" that only has one job cluttering your cupboards?  That's normally my philosophy, but my friend Liz knows this about me and knew I needed one of these so she got me one for my birthday last year.  We use it all the time for cutting the pineapple and usually end up having one of these fun drinks after.

Summer homework

Campout at the Crenna's

 

Kya can never have enough accessories!

That's a carrot in his hand.  He had to leave his lunch to go squirt Asa.

Cruising Riversong Farm

....cruising and sampling, that is.

This is their "soon these apples will all be in our bellies" dance and song.  It was quite an interesting song, but I can't remember it now.  Basically, it was all the things we were planning on making after we picked them...applesauce, apple chips, apple juice, apple pie.....

I seriously LOVE this place!  These goofballs think it is their own farm and they have so much fun here.

We had a weird dumping of snow last August.  It was actually more like chunklet ice if you know what that is.  In some part of our yard there was a lot then a few feet away there was none.  Anyway, the kids had a ball with it.

We had a good visit with Dawn, their old day care provider, while we picked her Italian Plums and apples.

First day of school!

Grandma came for a visit and a couple days later, the rest of my family showed up.

 

Grandma Vi's Birthday

We hosted a garden themed birthday party for the best gardener we know last May and I forgot about the pictures because I had places them in another folder on my computer because I made a photo book for Vi.  A great time was had by all and since it was almost a year ago, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. 

We went to you CSA and got tons for fresh flowers for free.  Riversong Farm is the best!

It was Julianna's birthday too so I made her butterfly cupcake cones.

Exploring Our Own Yard

A lot of things change in your yard when you are gone for a month and a half.

The kids found this egg on this rock.  I actually can't believe that it fell on the rock without breaking so I think it might have been on the lawn and Reed set it there when he was mowing for us to find. 

We took this uninhabited nest down from another location and put the egg in it.  Ryker and Kya were sure it was going to hatch, but there's no way there was anything living in there.  It was way past hatching time.  After about a week of checking it, we had the talk about how they don't all make it.  That launched into a lot of questions about a lot more animals including themselves.  They were thrilled to find out that they were chosen over many other egg options, to be born.  I won't go into too much detail.  I had trouble getting though the first explanation and it was much more detailed because of their inquiries than I wanted it to be.

This just looks like our lawn, but it is actually a rabbit den right in the middle of our yard.  You could lift back the grass, exposing a den and some tunnels, with 4 baby rabbits.  We would see the mom come and go throughout the day and eventually saw the babies slowly get braver as they would venture farther from their nest.  They eventually all left and we were able to mow there again.  Luckily Reed was mowing and his dog discovered the nest before he mowed them.  I probably would have mowed over them because I'm always mowing distracted trying to see what tree my kids are in or who's about to hit who with a stick.



 

These babies would chirp like crazy when mom was flying in with a worm.  We watched them for days and then one day she just pushed one off the ledge.  It didn't fly and Cosmos chased it behind a trunk on our porch.  The mom kept swooping down trying to get it to follow her or checking on it (who knows) and eventually it hopped out into the forest.  We never saw it fly, but hopefully it figured it out.  The next morning there was only one left so she must have pushed the second one at night.  We saw her push the third and without Cosmos there, he just hung on the porch for about an hour, hopping around.  He finally hopped across the grass and up onto a stump where he jumped off himself.  It tumbled across the lawn and into the woods.

They couldn't wait to get this bad boy out and invite their friends over that they hadn't seen for a couple months.

 They sold all the flowers, a bunch of lemonade, and Ryker basically forced Dave to buy a Rainbow Loom bracelet with some tough salesman tactics.

Is it football season yet? 

Ryker wanted me to shave a Seahawk in his hair last year, but I wasn't brave enough to try.  I told him I didn't have the skills for something like that.  I was able to talk him into a mohawk and blue and green hair for Blue Fridays.  This year, he came asking again.  He just knew I could do it.....haha.  I guess he was right.  We did it in August so if it didn't work out, it would be grown out by the time school started.  This was the first draft.  I cleaned it up a little better and made it more exact over the next few times. 

 Go Hawks!