Because it never gets old . . .

. . . the Zoo:
The most active I've ever seen the bears!
The boys favorite animal: the trout.


Feeding the birds:

What I should have taken a picture of was Seth pushing the stroller. He is definitely turning into a I-can-do-it-myself kind of kid.

Strawberries

Though I promised myself that I'd never do it again, when our jam from last year ran out this month, I decided that I'd have another go at jam. This time, strawberry.

So, we headed out to do some picking. Grandmother Ruthie was kind enough to come with us.
Matthew prided himself in finding the "juicy" berries; but Seth found quite a few juicy ones too.


And he enjoyed the WHOLE berry, stem, leaves, and all.

Now we just need to go back to ride the rides!

Preschool Graduation

Today Matthew celebrated his last day of preschool. His class had a little party, since all the students will be moving on to kindergarten next year. It was a little bittersweet; he's been going to school with some of his classmates for two years. But he's so excited for kindergarten, it was mostly sweet. They had a great spread for "snack;"
Sethie shared the wealth. Then there was a short little program with the class singing
and each child getting a diploma and sharing their plans for the future.
True to form, Matthew proudly announced that he plans on becoming a firefighter.
Now on to summer! And hopefully some more summer-like weather!

Beach!

It definitely wasn't what I would have deemed a beach day, but Matthew persisted and I'm glad that he did. Since there weren't many people at the beach, we were able to monopolize the little stream that runs into the Sound, which meant DAM building! What is it about diverting water? We had a ton of fun! We even managed to stay mostly dry; especially Seth!

Gymnastics

With another forecast for rain, the boys and I opted for an indoor adventure. We headed over to the closest gymnastics school for their open gym. Both boys had been before, but Seth wasn't too mobile last time. Matthew had grown since last time too; he was much more darning this time. For some reason (operator error) I didn't manage to catch much quality footage of the boys, but I'm posting what little I did catch. Both boys had a lot of fun; we'll definitely be returning, especially if it stays rainy!

Sethie couldn't get enough of the slide, despite struggling to get out:

Matthew amazed me with his balance; but of course, when I turned the video on he struggled:

Both boys loved the trampolines!

Boys' Adventure Day

This is Jon hijacking the blog for a post...

Julie has been very involved with the PTA at Matthew's preschool. Since the school is only a preschool/day care, most of the parents aren't too involved with the PTA. She has been spending a lot of time with the handful of parents and teachers that are also involved. This last Thursday, the PTA put on silent auction and pizza dinner. Julie did a lot to get the silent auction together--soliciting donations, cataloging all the items, valuating them, making sure they were presentable without being easily taken from the tables, etc. Julie did a great job, and the night was a big success for their little PTA group.

Because Julie had so much to do to prepare for the silent auction during that day, I got to stay home from work and hang out with the boys. Since it was Thursday, Matthew was excited to carry on the weekly "Adventure Day" tradition, except this time is was a "Boys' Adventure Day" (since Julie didn't come with us). The day happened to be one really nice day sandwiched between a number of cold, rainy days. Since it was so nice and we had a lot of time, we decided to find a beach park on the east side of Lake Washington to explore for our adventure.

The park we found had a sand/gravel beach area, and also some cement steps leading down into the lake. Matthew waded into the lake a bit, even though the water was fairly cold.


There were a number of ducks at the lake and they immediately came up to us when we got close to the water. They thought we were going to feed them. It didn't take them long to realize that we didn't have anything for them, and then they wanted nothing to do with us. Matthew at least got a picture with them in the background.


Seth was in the final stages of getting over a cold, and he didn't seem very interested in wading in the water. He did like sitting on the lifeguard chair that was ~4 feet off the ground. In this picture he looks deep in thought with some concern, but he really was having a good time.


Once Matthew came out of the water and joined him, the smiles came back. Those two are (usually) really good to each other and have fun with each other.


After the novelty of the beach park wore off, we found another city park nearby which had some good play structures. We didn't take any pictures there, but they both had a great time climbing on the structures. Seth has been getting very agile recently, and he has a lot of confidence...too much confidence for my comfort level. He ha no qualms standing on high platforms of play structures, even when there is no railing. His latest favorite activity is climbing up slides, regardless of their height. He's gotten so good at it that he can go up just about any slide with no help.

We capped off the adventure with lunch at Wendy's. The boys (and I) love Wendy's, and we don't have one close to our house, so we had a good excuse. I think Seth got more ketchup on the table than he got on his fries and chicken nuggets, but he made up for it by taking each piece of trash from our table to the trash can, one piece at a time (his highlight of the day). We finished up lunch by sharing a Frosty. We had a really good time on our boys' adventure, and we were happy to leave Julie free for the day to be able to pull off a great fundraiser for Matthew's preschool.