Breakout Party

 Friday night we had our annual party for our Breakout kids. This is just the second time we've done this, we set a goal for the class to meet and their reward was a party at our house.  Last year when we had the party, we taught them the game of "States".  This is a game I played when I was in a high school youth group and is a lot of fun because you get to try to hit others with a rolled up newspaper.

We played it a different way this time, instead of choosing a state that was your label for the game, we had everyone choose an animal to be.  Instead of just calling out the animal name, you had to make the noise the animal makes.  You are trying to make the noise of another person's animal before getting hit with the newspaper.  The one that can't do it fast enough, has to be in the middle and gets to try to hit someone else before they can make another person's animal sound.  The kids enjoy the game so much, that it's a requested game and we played it twice on Friday night.

 The first thing we did when the kids arrived was have everyone make their own pizza, then we played the game of "States", followed by making ice cream sundaes.  Darius made his whipped cream on his sundae look like a snowman.

 Eating sundaes.

 After finishing the sundaes, we taught them to play "Spoons", another old game that we played when we were young.

 We didn't teach them to do this, they already knew how to do it!  At the end of the evening we had 15 minutes before parents were due to pick them up, so by a unanimous decision, we played "States" again while waiting for parents to show up.

Sunday - Saben & Annika

After spending the afternoon on Saturday, with Todd's family, we met Kyle in Mt. Vernon so we could bring Saben and Annika to stay overnight at our house.  It was a spur of the moment decision to get them, because we had read in the paper on Saturday morning about a Mind Storm Competition that was taking place on Sunday, and Ken wanted to take Saben to it.  (If you don't know what that is look it up on Google, so I don't have to try and explain what I don't totally understand!  I know it involves Lego's, motors, and programming.)  Anyway, Sunday morning after breakfast, Annika wanted to make a fort in the dining room.  It's been a long time since a fort has been made in our dining room!  I thought her toes peeking out was cute and decided to take a picture of her and her American Girl Doll, Mckenna's, toes peeking out of the fort.

Annika and Mckenna in the fort. 

After church, I took Annika to the American Girl Doll Store while the guys were at the competition.  I think Annika was pretty overwhelmed with all the dolls and accessories there, but we had a good time looking around and I only ended up buying one paper doll set for her to play with when she comes to our house!  All in all, a very busy weekend!

Saturday - Lunch & Play

This sign was the first thing I saw when we arrived at the Kirkland Performance center after having a nice lunch at a Greek restaurant, just up the street.  We thought it was a funny sign.

Apparently, there are a lot of accident where cars hit pedestrians in the area, so these flags were provided when you wanted to cross the street.  Unfortunately, when we came out of the theater after the play, all the flags were on the other side of the street, so they didn't help at all then.

We had some time between lunch and when the play was going to start, so we spent a little time on a playground.  Seth was giving 5 to Papa and Daddy as he came down the slide.

The play we went to was "Pinocchio".

Ready for the play to start!

Friday Night -The Melting Pot

Friday night we went to "The Melting Pot", a fondue place in Seattle, with Tim and Mary Beth.  It was their first trip there and although we don't go often, we had been there before, it was fun to share the experience with them.

2 plates of meat to cook!  Ken and I ordered the same meal, it had steak, chicken pot stickers, duck and pork.  It was my first time to have duck and I didn't really care for it.

Cooking our dinner.

Cooking the veggies.

 Dessert time!  We had a chocolate, caramel-pecan flambe for dessert with yummy fruit, cake/brownies, and marshmallows to dip in it.

We had a nice view of the Space Needle as we left the restaurant, so I tried the zoom on our new camera and came up with a really good picture of the Space Needle at night.