Saturday Chores

 We have had several gorgeous days at the end of Mar. this year, but today was the first one that I had a chance to get outside and do some work in the yard.  The first thing I saw after I got outside, was my early rhododendron blooming.  There was only 1 flower blooming so far, but I was happy to see that the rest of it would be blooming soon.

 

 My first wheelbarrow full, was dead blooms from my hydrangea.

 My second wheelbarrow full was clippings from 2 of my ferns.  It was nice to get a couple of them done, now I just have 4 or 5 more to do!  Hopefully there'll be a few more nice days so I can get them done!

Kayaking on a Sunday in March

 Ken has a co-worker, named Christian, from Germany, who has been working in Everett for several months.  Christian wanted to go kayaking before he headed home next week, so Ken set it up for last Sunday.  I kept thinking that March is to cold to go kayaking and decided to let the guys go without me.  Sunday turned out to be a great day to kayak and Ken said he wasn't cold at all, he didn't even wear a jacket!  Todd and Seth joined Christian and Ken, and all had a great time, (I heard).  It looks like Todd's getting ready to ram Seth and Ken!

 Seth did really good sitting in the kayak!

 Seth and Papa were in a kayak together.

 Christian and Todd had their kayaks to themselves.

Saben is 8!

Saben had his birthday party Saturday evening.  The first activity was creating an original item out of Legos.

This is a picture of the boys with their completed creations.  Everyone took their creation upstairs where they were numbered and voted on by everyone, including the adults.  No one was supposed to vote for their own creation and the winner got a $5 bill for their prize.  The boy in the white shirt got the most votes and won the prize.

Ken thought he should have gotten $5 also, because he had so many votes on him.

Pizza time.

In case you couldn't figure it out, the party had a ninja theme.  Everyone was supposed to wear a ninja type of costume or at the very least, dark clothes, for sneaking around in the dark.  (Unfortunately, when Kari was planning the party, she forgot about daylight savings time starting, so it didn't get dark as early as she had thought.)

Saben's birthday lemon tart.

Time for presents!

Everyone is poised to start the treasure hunt.

The second game was stomping on and breaking the balloons tied to everyone's ankles.  The last one to have a balloon was supposed to get a special prize.  This game was a set up for Kyle to get the "special" prize!

Saben is posed to give Kyle his "special" prize.

Kyle got his "special" prize, to the delight of all the kids!

Kyle shared his "special" prize with Kari.

The last activity as it started to get dark, was a Nerf gun battle, with the boys running all over the yard, shooting one another.

Some of the guns were huge and had a lot of "bullets" in them!

Spring Soccer Starts

 Saturday was the first day of spring soccer for Saben and Annika's first day of soccer, ever.  This is Saben's first year to have a goalie tending the goal, so it's more challenging to make a goal.  Saben made his first goal, ever, in the game he played on Saturday and he had an assist also, where he passed the ball to a team mate, who then scored a goal.  In the picture above, he's watching the goalie laying on the ground after Saben had scored his goal.  I can't see the ball in the picture, so I guess it's behind the goalie.

 Lots of time spent running up and down the field!

 He told us his position is "striker", which means, he goes where ever the ball goes.

 Annika's games are played without a goalie and it's 3 girls vs 3 girls from a different team. 

 She quickly learned the joy of scoring, so every time she got the ball, she headed to the goal, and was almost impossible to stop, once she got going!  Here, she's scoring 1 of the 14 goals she made.  Now she just has to be convinced to pass the ball to her team mates once in awhile!

 Here she's getting ready for the ball to be kicked off.

The brother and sister team.

A Shiny Crown

 Seth was wearing this crown last week and told me that he needed something shiny for it.  Silly me, I thought he meant some jewels or something like that.  He went to Betsy and asked her to get a picture of this dinosaur, named "Shiny", which he proceeded to tape onto his crown, and now he had a "Shiny" crown!  After he was done, his comment was, "I love it!"

Weekend Fun

 Once again, I'm a week behind on getting a blog done.  We took care of Saben and Annika a week ago, and these are pictures from that time.  Ken is learning about American Girl paper dolls.

 I got Saben a Star Wars Lego kit, that he spent less than an hour assembling.  If you zoom in on the dart gun Ken is holding, you'll see Yoda sitting on top , ready to fight the thing Saben made.

 Trying to hit the target taped to the door.

 More target practice.  Saben & Annika didn't do to well on hitting the target on the door, but the next morning, when they shot the suction-cupped darts towards the skylights, they had good aim and we had 6 darts stuck to the skylight in no time at all.  We left them up there while we went to church, I actually thought they would probably fall down while we were gone, but they didn't!  We ended up throwing stuffed animals up there to knock them down.

 It was a nice, sunny day last Saturday, so we all went for a bike ride down to Arlington.

 Then we spent some time on the playground.

 Annika loved hanging by her knees.

 Sitting on top, look how excited Saben is!

 Papa tried to catch the kids, without touching the ground.  (He couldn't catch them!)

  Time for a rest, before...

..heading back up the trail to get the car.  Saben & Ken retrieved the car while Annika & I stayed at the park.

Rainbow

 Yesterday on my way to a meeting, it was raining with the sun shining, so when I got to the freeway entrance ramp, I pulled over to see if I could get a picture of the rainbow.  This picture shows the rainbow ending right where the red car is, so I guess it's the "pot of gold" at the end of that rainbow!

 More rainbow pictures.

Signs of Spring

When I went to see Seth last Wednesday, it was a fairly nice day for the end of February, so we went to the park.  I had known that he liked to swing, but didn't realize that he didn't really care about anything else on the play ground but the swings.  I think I pushed him on the swing for at least 40 minutes!  He told me that Daddy had invented the rocket take-off way to push him, which involves counting down, then a push by running under him.  I told him that Daddy actually didn't invent that because we had pushed Daddy that way when he was a little boy.  I told him that when he was big like Daddy and had a little boy, maybe he could push him in the swing the same way.  This led Seth to say that, then his little boy could push his son, and so on for several generations.  (I'm changing his words to say several generations, instead of continuing to say, his son could push his son, because that will get confusing pretty quickly!)  After swinging until my arm was getting tired he got off the swing.  He ignored the rest of the playground equipment, and wanted to walk over to what Seth calls the "Papa tree".  (See Ken's Facebook picture if you aren't sure what the "Papa tree" looks like!)

After the visit to the "Papa tree", we walked to a bridge, crossed over it and saw some people feeding the seagulls.  After they finished feeding the birds, we walked over to visit the seagulls.  It was at this point that it started to rain, so we headed back to their house for the rest of my visit.  Getting to go to the park is a definite sign of spring to me!

Another sign of spring, is all the nice flowers starting to bloom.

I had noticed the crocus coming up quite awhile ago,...

...but I hadn't noticed the small daffodils, until they started blooming this week!

Another crocus!  

I noticed this morning, when I was looking at a calendar, that daylight saving time starts a week from tomorrow!  That was a shock!  It still feels to me like it's the middle of winter, even with these signs of spring.  I know daylight savings time starts earlier now, but next week just seems way to early!