Ward Campout

Our ward had a ward campout last night. We had high hopes for the trip, but things didn't go exactly as planned...

The campout was on Bainbridge Island, and Matthew was very excited to take a ferry boat ride. When we first got there, Seth had a a great time checking out some of the toys they had.


We got a new tent for our family. We had a "four-person" tent, which really only fits 3 people comfortably. Julie found a great deal on a six-person tent which looked pretty spacious. It worked really well. It has what the instructions call a "rigid door"--the door has one vertical pole in the hinge, and a pole that beds around the outside of the door to make it more like a real door.


The best thing about the tent is that it is so spacious that we can fit a pack-n-play crib inside it and the other three of us still fit comfortably.


The big bummer of the trip was that it started raining fairly hard in the evening and rained most of the night. The tent held up well, but we didn't do nearly as much as we hoped to do. The property we went to has a horse and last year they did horseback rides on Saturday morning. We still got to see the horse Friday night, but...


...this is the closest Matthew got to riding on a horse:


It's too bad that he didn't get to ride the horse because last year he was too afraid to ride the horse. Last night when we all got in the tent, Matthew wanted to say our family prayer. He included in his prayer a very sincere request that he wouldn't be afraid to ride the horse this year. Then, he didn't even get the chance to ride it. Oh well, maybe next year.

The other difficult thing about the night was that Seth thought his pack-n-play in the tent was supposed to be a fun place, not a place for sleeping. He had a really hard night, sleeping only an hour or two in the tent, and then 3 or 4 hours in the car after Jon drove him around until he fell asleep.

Between rain, no sleep for parents or Seth, and Jon being sick, we didn't exactly have the campout we had hoped for. But, Matthew still had fun at the campout in spite of it all, and he enjoyed helping out drying out all our gear in our garage.

Dentist

Matthew had another great trip to the dentist today. He got ready for the trip by brushing his teeth three times today. Here's a picture, mostly because my battery wasn't charged the last time we went to the dentist.

New Member of the Family

Last Friday in attempt to finish our Saturday chores early, I got out the vacuum to clean the floors.

As a side note, about a couple of months ago we took our vacuum in to have it serviced and after an inspection, the vacuum man informed us that it was on it's last legs and it wasn't even worth the $19.99 (with coupon) to have it serviced. So, we began looking into different vacuums, knowing inevitably the day would come that the vacuum would fail.

Friday was that day. I began vacuuming and shortly after I heard a strange sound, followed by the lights going out. I quickly realized that I had blown a fuse. After several trips up and down the three flights of stairs and throwing nearly all the switches, I got the lights back on. Undeterred from my vacuuming, I plugged the vacuum into a different outlet and continued to vacuum. Once again I blew the fuse. After quickly throwing the correct switch I tried again to vacuum, blowing the fuse again. Well, the third time was a charm and I figured that the vacuum was dead.

Shortly thereafter I began calling around for prices on the Dyson ball, the vacuum we thought that we wanted. Finding that the price was the same at all places, I decided to go the the sewing and vacuum store to purchase the vacuum seeing that they were willing to recycle our old vacuum anyway.

At the store a salesman showed us (me and the boys) the ball and also asked about our vacuum usage and our home. I was pretty satisfied with it, except I didn't like the idea of a bagless vacuum. That just seemed like a big mess. I then asked the salesman what he would recommend for our circumstances. He proceeded to show me the Miele Neptune. After only a few minutes I was sold.

After getting it home, I proceeded to vacuum nearly every surface in the house. I love this vacuum! Jon jokes that I finally found something that I love more than him. Luckily the boys share my enthusiasm for the vacuum too. Matthew was so excited about the new vacuum he insisted on taking a picture with it.
While I'm writing about cleaning, I was delighted to find this advertised the other day. I guess I'm not the only one who tries to vacuum out their dryer lint trap!

Movies

Last week at Matthew's soccer lesson I took some video and I'm finally posting it now.

First, Seth started walking on his own last week. He's improved so much even since last week. He still will try to take a hand if he can get away with it, but he does his slightly wobbly walk all over the place. It's nice that he's a little more independent.



Lastly, Matthew has been taking soccer lessons for the last four weeks. He gets better every week, but as you can see there is still plenty of room for improvement. In the video the kids are playing a scrimmage game. The kids are divided up into two teams. The players wait in their goal as the instructor calls out one or two player from each team to come out a scrimmage. The players left in the goal are supposed to defend it. Matthew learned that the hard way.

I apologize for the shaky video and the crazy yelling mother. I found it difficult take video while screaming at my child. In the future I'll have Jon take the video (I might have a hard time giving up the yelling).

Fathers and Sons

Jon and Matthew went to our stake's fathers and sons' campout last night. Seth is still a bit young and still nurses at night, so he couldn't come yet (we're counting on him going next year).

As usual, Jon forgot the camera. He took some pictures using his Blackberry, but some of them are blurry because it doesn't do so well in low light.

There was a sand/gravel volleyball pit that Matthew used as a writing slate. Jon helped a little to make sure his name came out well.



Matthew got his first experience with a tether ball. He didn't quite figure out that the ball would come back around to him if he just stood there, so most of his playing involved running around the pole in a circle chasing the ball (his circles invoked images of a dog chasing its tail).



They were at the same campground this year as they were last year. Matthew really has a good memory--he frequently brought up things that happened last year and things that he couldn't do by himself last year. He was very proud that he could do a lot of things by himself this year, like climbing on top of the tires and lay in the hammock.



As you can see, they had to hike a long way from the car to the place where they pitched the tent. At first, Jon estimated that it was about 5 feet from the car, but on closer inspection the tent was actually more like 7 or 8 feet from the car.


Matthew loved being in the tent. If you look closely, you can see his sleeping bag is between the two air mattresses. While he was sleeping in the night, his sleeping bag slid off his air mattress a number of times. Each time, he would wake up screaming that he needed help. So much for a good night's rest...


Overall, they didn't have to "rough it" too much. They ate McDonald's for dinner in the closest town, and the stake provided breakfast this morning. Jon was even able to email Julie from his Blackberry to let her know that Matthew's bedtime prayer included a very nice request that Julie be kept safe and happy while he was away. It seems kind of amazing that Jon could email the substance of the prayer to Julie and have it arrive there in an instant. That also gave us perspective that we are blessed to be able to communicate with Heavenly Father at any moment from anywhere.

New Car

After a lot of miscomminication and waiting, we finally settled on our accident. After depositing the reinbursement check, we headed out to buy a car.

Over the last couple of months we had been causally looking for a car. After test driving several different models and makes we had set our sites on the Volvo XC90. Last week we took a more serious test drive and on Wednesday, Jon even drove one home to make sure that it fit into our gargage.

After researching the inventory of a local car dealer we went to look at the cars in real life. This is the one that we decided on:

Keepin' Cool

So, a couple of weeks ago was a record breaking heat wave in Seattle. I'm generally to first to make fun of wimpy Seattlites and their low tolerance for supposed heat, but the week was really pretty miserable.

Initially my strategy for keeping cool was to spend each day near some body of water. Unfortunately, by Tuesday Seth was running a fever (we ended up in the ER) and I decided to retreat to my parents' which was cooler than ours.

Luckily, we survived, barely. Here are a couple of highlights from the week:

Seth's 1st Ice Cream Cone~
The ice cream and ice aisle at most stores were pretty decimated. Apparently a lot of people had the same idea. Seth sure enjoyed it!

Not the best picture, but I had to include it because it's so cute!

Matthew's 1st Week of Soccer ~
The turnout on the first day was pretty sparse. Maybe something to do with the class being in a non-air conditioned gym the day after the hottest day ever recorded in Seattle. Unfortunately, I was only able to get shots of the team warming up and stretching, which of course was adorable. I'm sure there will be more pictures of soccer soon.

Already dazed by the heat!