The Funny Faces of Annika

I was trying to get a nice picture of Annika to be her 3 year old picture, for the picture frame in my living room. I just asked for her to smile and this was the result. (By the way, I did get a pretty good one eventually.)
These last two pictures are ones I took when Kari was having her show her cold, shivering look after going skinny dipping. I was laughing so hard at her look, that it was difficult to take the picture!

Annika is 3 Years Old

Annika's birthday was on Sunday. I found this "Birthday Princess" crown at the food bank and gave it to her to wear.
Saben and Seth are looking at a motorcycle of Saben's. I thought Saben looked so tall next to Seth.

Birthday swimming party.

Annika and her best friend, Riley sharing some snacks.

Seth really liked being pushed in this car.

3 kids in tutu's, the one in the middle is shooting a pretend gun while he wears his tutu.

Time for some skinny dipping in the pool.

After numerous tries to get a good picture of all 4 of us, we had to resort to photo shop to get a picture that was pretty good of all of us.

Tuesday - July 13

Since Kari and the kids came here on Monday, I went up there on Tuesday, so I could see Saben and Annika taking their swimming lesson. In the picture above, Saben dunked his head completely under the water.
Annika likes swimming with the floating board.

Annika and her friend Riley weren't paying attention to their teachers and started kissing one another. While their parents and I couldn't stop laughing at them, the teachers decided that they needed to separate them.

Saben practicing his kicking.

Kari forgot to bring Saben's sweatshirt and since he was cold, I put my coat on him. He enjoyed wearing my coat and even wore it into the pizza place where we ate lunch.

Monday - July 12

Monday was a bit unusual, because we hosted a 5 year olds (that wasn't related to us) birthday party. It came about because of the MOPS auction this year. Ken agreed to put up for auction the electricity class he had taught to some home schooled kids earlier this year. The mom who bought it, decided to have Ken do the class for her son's birthday party and that's how we came to host a birthday party for someone we aren't related to.

The boy whose birthday it was, had become acquainted with Saben when I took Saben to some MOPS activities, so he was invited to come. (It's the same boy we visited when Saben stayed with us in June.) Here Ken is trying to teach them about how a circuit works, I think.

More work with circuits.
After the birthday party, we walked down to one of my neighbor's house to see some of her animals. Kari got to feed a baby goat its bottle and was tempted to take it home, when she found out they were getting rid of it. She changed her mind after finding out how much it cries at night.

This neighbor is a woman that Kari used to ride horses with when they were both in 4-H. I knew she had a mare that had just had a baby a couple of weeks ago, which was the main thing we went down to see. The baby was very calm and let the kids pet her.

This is the baby's mom. Annika and Saben got to sit on a horse for the first time ever.

More exciting for Saben was getting to drive their Barbie jeep!

New Plants and Other Things

This is one of our new plants, anyone know the names of all my new plants?
Another new one, I don't remember the names of my new plants, but I've saved the tags that came with them to help my memory. I would just have to go out to the shed to look at them, and I don't feel like doing that right now.

Two other new plants, above and below.

The clematis that survived last fall is finally blooming and now I know it's the purple one that made it.

We took a gamble and bought another pink one, even though we didn't know at the time that it was the purple one that survived.

Last night when I went out to get the sprinkler going on some plants, this bird was sitting on top of the arbor. Instead of flying away, it just watched me walk around the arbor. I couldn't believe that it just sat there.

One of my favorite thing to do on warm Sunday afternoons is to take my book out to the swing by the waterfall in our yard and read for awhile.

While sitting in the swing, I glanced up and saw a gold finch in the dogwood tree. Luckily the camera was with me, so I got this picture right before he flew away.

4th of July Weekend

Saturday, July 3, we celebrated Seth's half-birthday at Forest Park in Everett. Todd and Betsy have decided to celebrate his birthday that way since the Christmas season is already so packed with activities, that it would be hard to squeeze in one more get together.

Seth really enjoyed pretending to drive! He even tried to honk the horn, even though it didn't work. All the adults obliged, by making a honking noise when he pressed the middle of the steering wheel.

We all went down to the petting farm and petted goats, sheep, calves and rabbits. There were also chickens, geese, ducks, pigs and horses, but they were in pens where you couldn't pet them.
Time to open presents!

More presents to open! Todd's best friend from high school came with his family, and his daughter, who will be 1 year old next weekend, liked looking at the gifts Seth got.

Even though Betsy couldn't get the candles to light because the wind kept blowing the match out, Seth tried to blow the candles out anyway! Notice the one and a half candles on the cake!

As we were leaving the birthday party, Ken mentioned feeling thirsty and wanting some lemonade. He had heard of a place to get some that was about an hour away. I didn't understand what he was getting at and said, "Where do you want to go that's an hour away? Isn't there some place closer to get something to drink." He then said that he had heard of a place in Bellingham that had some good lemonade for sale. That's when I remembered that Saben was selling lemonade to make some money to buy fireworks, so away we went to Bellingham. He did have some good lemonade! It's not everyone we would drive an hour to buy lemonade from!

We had no plans for the 4th this year. Sometimes we have friends over for a BBQ, but since I wasn't feeling very good most of last week, we hadn't planned anything. We thought about going to some different things, but ended up staying home since it was so cold. We played some games together, watched the movie "Independence Day", and at 10pm we watched the family fireworks show in Seattle on TV, all the while staying nice and warm. We were pretty impressed with the show they put on in Seattle, I think it was one of the best I've ever seen, even if it was on TV! There were also, lots of fireworks being set off in our neighborhood, so there was no lack of fireworks to be seen.

Monday, the 5th, was a day off for Ken. Although the morning started out drizzly, by mid-afternoon, it was getting pretty nice. We went to lunch at the Olive Garden in Mt. Vernon, then went to a nursery up there, Christianson's. We needed to get some replacements for some plants we had planted last year that didn't make it. I think Ken had a list of 5 plants he needed to replace and he could only find 1 out of the 5. I usually don't plan what I plant, I just find things that I like and get them. I found 3 different plants that I really liked to put in an area in one of the back yard gardens, that has been enlarged and needs some more plants. So even though, Ken ws unsuccessful in finding what he wanted, for me it was a successful trip. We even got everything planted after we got home, so it would be in the ground when it gets hot this week. All in all, a good weekend!

More Doctor/Dentist Appointments

I sometimes wonder what I'm thinking when I make appointments, other than I want to get them over and done with. This week I had 2 appointments, the first one was Tuesday and was with the oral surgeon, who was going to put the implant in my mouth, where he took my tooth out several months earlier. For some reason, I was more nervous about getting the implant inserted in my mouth, than I was about getting the tooth pulled out. I think it was the thought of them drilling a hole in my mouth and inserting a metal screw into the hole. Also, I was put completely under to have my tooth pulled and was only going to have nitrous to have the implant put in, because it was going to cost an extra $850 to be put totally out. That seemed way to much to pay for that, so I decided to go with the nitrous, It went OK, to just have the nitrous and obviously the left side of my mouth was numbed, so I couldn't feel anything. The only glitch in the procedure was at the end, when the surgeon decided that the implant he had put in was to small, so he took it out and put another one in. I took pain pills and anti-nauseous pills for the rest of Tuesday, then when I got up on Wednesday and was still feeling some of the effects from the pills, I decided not to take any more. I wasn't having much pain by then, and had no problem going without them. The main benefit seemed to be to make me sleepy, and I didn't need that any more.

Then today, Thursday, I had an appointment to have some more samples taken from my thyroid. Since they only had to do 1 nodule this time, it wasn't near as bad as that first time when they did 4 nodules. It was still a little painful, but was endurable, especially since I had taken a pill to relax me before the procedure. It helped me get a nap after we got home, but I didn't feel real relaxed at the Doctor's office! Now we wait for the results again.