Shop Addition, Just Add Siding

The seasons they are a changing.  We put away the little kiddie pool for the year, although now we'll probably have a few more nice weekends the kids will bug me about.  The garden is doing well, some of the crops are done with for the year (strawberries, dill, and radish).  We are still getting quite a bit of cucumber and zucchini , and the carrots are growing, albeit a lot slower than what the seed packets said.  We hope to have a few pumpkins ready in time for Halloween, although right now they are just teeny tiny.  If all goes well I'll even have the siding up on my shop in time for the weeks on weeks of rain that winter usually brings with.

Lilah Catches a Fish

We went camping at the KOA in Lynden a few weeks back.  It was a lot of fun.  The kids really liked the pool there and the paddle boats.  We even caught 3 fish out of the little lake.  Although we caught more "mermaid hair" (seaweed) than anything else.  It rained all of Saturday and most of the morning of Sunday, so on Sunday morning we went Bellingham and saw Despicable Me.  When we got back to camp it was sunny all through Monday, the extent of our visit.

McKenna Catches Some Mermaid Hair

Jeni, Rich, Jaime and I took McKenna and Lilah to the Monroe (Evergreen) Fair.  McKenna is tall enough that she was able to ride most of the kiddie rides all by herself or with any random friend that she happened to talk to while standing in line.  Lilah is finally tall enough to ride most of the rides with an adult-and in some cases with McKenna-, and I really enjoyed riding along with her/them.

At the Fair

McKenna just finished up her Story Drama Classes from the Seattle Children's Theater which she really enjoyed.  She wasn't quite sure about it at first, but really took to it toward the end of the 8 week classes.  Next up is her 2nd year of preschool which starts on Wednesday.  We were trying to get her into early enrollment for Kindergarten (she missed the age cut off by a few months), but for a number of reasons it didn't work out.  So now she'll be one of the oldest in her classes at school instead of the youngest, which is just fine.  McKenna also got her hair cut into a little bob.  She looks so grown up, it really makes her look like a different person.

McKenna's New Haircut

Lilah is talking up a storm now.  She loves to pretend play about anything and everything.  When I'm reading a book to her she'll pluck the strawberries out of the pages and eat them, or pull a butterfly from the pages and give it a little kiss.  She's getting very close to being potty trained too.  She stopped smearing her poop on the walls (hopefully that is over anyway).  We've resorted to bribing her with M&M's for going #2 on the toilet, but it seems to work pretty good and she get very excited when it happens.  We've even roped McKenna into helping her remember to go.
I've been uploading quite a bit of video to YouTube with my new Droid Incredible, you might want to check some of it out.
I'm going to be doing a 3.5 mile obstacle course called The Warrior Dash near Portland this weekend.  It should be pretty sweet, and I've been training for it almost every week by watching WipeOut on TV, so I should do pretty well! :)  I bought a pair spy sunglasses with a camera to record the entire thing and hopefully will cut a short video of it after the race.  So stay tuned for that :)
Recently read books for me include Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter, The Passage, The Stupidest Angel, and Fluke.  Next up is the 3rd and last book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay.

Well, until next time.  Keep the fire going....