Annika's 6th Birthday

 Annika wearing her birthday dress.

 The bracelet she made.

 Time for the treasure hunt.

 Unwrapping all the treasures.

 Lining up to make teams for water based games.

 And... they're off!  It's a relay race to see which team can squeeze the most water out of the balls into a container the fastest.

 Waiting for their turn to fill a container with water.

 Now, a water balloon toss.

 Here comes the water balloon, it's hard to catch, when you're not looking!

 The most fun was throwing the water balloons at Kyle!

 Kyle got Saben with a bucket of water.

 Slip and Slide time.

 The birthday girl tries it out by herself first.

 3 at a time!

 Watching Kari inside the porch, trying to light the candles. (They kept blowing out when she tried to do it outside.)

 Blowing out the candles.

 Eating ice cream sundaes.

Annika lost the 2 bottom teeth the usual way, not because she fell and knocked them out, like the top 2 teeth.

Time for presents.

Patches Jumped to the Top

 The other day when I was eating breakfast, Patches jumped to the top of our cabinets.  As far as I know, it was the first time any of our cats had jumped up there.  She didn't stay up there very long, I guess she just wanted to see what was up there and show me that she could do it, then she was satisfied and came back down.

Mt. Vernon - Highland Games

 Ken and I decided to go the Highland games taking place in Mt. Vernon on Sunday after church.  This was our lunch, a yummy pastry filled with steak, mushrooms and gravy.

 Lots of guys were standing around in kilts!

 A woman doing the log toss.  After they get control of it, they walk or run a few steps before tossing it.  It has to go completely end over end in order to count.  Not many were able to do it.

 There were also some dogs, the announcer said they were all Border Collies, herding sheep.  4 sheep were released from a pen and the dog and his handler had to get the sheep to run a course, which included getting them to go through this chute.

 They did it!

 When a competitor finished with his turn, he had to help the next competitor get the pole upright.

 There were 2 competitions going on at the same time here, the men were doing the log toss and the women were competing over by the bar on the far left.

 The women had to swing a heavy weight, it's in her right hand on the left side of the picture, then try to throw it up and over their heads, trying to get it to go over the bar.

She made it, you can see the weight just going over the bar.  There was lots of music (bagpipes mainly), arts & crafts, and some dancing competitions, most of which we some how missed because of watching the animals and sporting events.  It was a lot of fun to watch and I found a magnet with the Elliott name, the coat of arms and the clan tartan on it.

Dim Sum, The Great Wheel, & Water Fun

 My Christmas present from Todd & Betsy was riding "The Great Wheel", plus dinner and playing games at their house.  We decide to add lunch after church at a Chinese restaurant that served "Dim Sum" to the day.  Seth was able to pick up his hum bow with his chop sticks.

 I had never seen this dish before, it was filled with a chopped shrimp filling surrounded by dry noodles, which Seth really liked.

 After eating all the "Dim Sum" we could hold, we headed to the waterfront.  Todd had bought our tickets for "The Great Wheel" on line, which was really good, it saved standing in line to buy our tickets.  We only had to stand in line to get on the ride, but that really didn't take very long.

 Before I go on, as we were looking for a parking place along the waterfront, "The Great Wheel" looked like it wasn't moving sometimes, and I mentioned that to Seth.  His reply was, "Oh no, Gram!  Your birthday present is ruined!"  (He kept calling it my birthday present instead of Christmas present.)  We all cracked up, it was just such an unexpected comment from him.

 Riding "The  Great Wheel"!

 It's a long way down!

 Lots of gorgeous views from the wheel!

 Do you see the "Space Needle"?

 One last view!

 Seth wanted to touch the "fisherman's" nose.

Papa treated everyone to ice cream.

 Time for some water fun before dinner.

Todd and Papa pulled Seth down the slide.

Saturday - July 6

 Before we left for our morning outing, Ken took this picture of the front of our house.  The garden is really pretty right now.

 Our outing on Saturday was a bike ride with our friends, Dennis & Mary O'Brien.  Mary had suggested that we ride from Machias to Snohomish, have lunch, then ride back.  It's a 5 mile ride each way and I was nervous about going that far, since the longest ride I've done this year before this one was just a 2 mile ride.  I actually did fine, maybe it helped to have a break to walk around town awhile, then have lunch, before tackling the 5 mile ride back to Machias.

 We discovered this mural being painted while we were walking around Snohomish.

I'm anxious to see what else the artist is going to add to it.

Hornets Nest

 The afternoon before Ken was going to power wash the deck, he discovered this hornets nest hanging from the underside of the deck.  Can you imagine what would have happened had he started power washing right above it?

 We had some wasp spray leftover from other times when we've had hornets nests, so I sprayed it in the evening when the bees were settling in for the night.  We waited a couple of days, didn't see any activity, so last night Ken pried it off the boards and discovered there were still some live bees and pupa in the nest.  The dead bees had plugged up the hole at the bottom of the nest, so we were surprised to find some alive still.

 A lot of the ones that were still alive were in this part of the nest, where they were laying the eggs.  Luckily, I still had a little bit of the spray left, so I sprayed into the nest and also the top section above, so this morning they all seemed to be dead again.

The 2 sections of the nest.