Friday with Grandkids

 Friday morning after breakfast, we headed out for a bike ride.  We rode up the Centennial Trail to...

 ...a barn at the end of the trail.  It was my first time to ride all the way to the barn, which is 4 miles from Bryant, where we started.  (This barn was owned at one time by the parents of a good friend of Kari's.)  So Annika and I rode a total of 8 miles, but Ken and Saben rode from our house to Bryant, because we couldn't fit all four bikes on our bike rack, so they rode 12 and 1/2 miles.

Later in the day, we met Betsy and Seth at the Snohomish Aqua Center and spent some time there doing different activities.

 Saben, Annika and Ken went down the water slide.  This is Annika coming out of the slide.  The second time she went down, she went down with Ken, and she said she went a lot faster when she went with him!

 Most of the time we stayed in the area that was like a river because it had a pretty strong current to keep moving you around it.  Saben liked floating on his back in it.

 In a part of the river, there was a section that was like a whirl pool, Seth and Betsy are in it.

 Toward the end of our time there, a game of tag was started, it looks like Ken and Annika are hiding from whoever was "It" at the time.

This is a view of part of the Aqua Center, with the "lazy river" in the front.

Activities on Day 2

We had Saben and Annika help us pick blueberries in the morning on Thursday.

 With their help we got 11 pounds of berries, so now we have enough for another year.

 In the afternoon, Ken helped Saben build a jump for his remote controlled truck.

Annika and I went out and bought a kit to make candy, by melting chocolate chips, etc.  Unfortunately, it didn't melt the chips very well, so we ended up melting them on the stove, but at least it had some cute molds in the kit, that worked well.

 After dinner we went outside and watched Saben try his truck on the jump they had made.

 The jump has different levels to it, this is the steepest one.

 If you look closely, you can see the truck as it went off the jump.

 Annika had a turn with the truck also, then decided that Gram's hair needed some decorating.

An Unexpected Visitor

 While Kari and Kyle are on a trip, friends and family are taking turns having Saben and Annika at their houses.  We picked them up from one of their friend's house this afternoon. On our way home, we stopped in Mt. Vernon and went to a movie, "The Secret Life of Pets".  After we got home from the movie, Ken and the kids were outside while I was watering my planters, when a deer wandered into our yard.  Saben tried to creep near enough to take a picture with his phone.  This is as close as he got.

Later, he ran his remote controlled truck around the yard before we all played a couple of games at the table outside on the deck where it was a lot cooler than in the house.

Another Week of VBS

 Last week, VBS was held in the evenings at our church.  Ken was in charge of doing a science type of experiment each evening.  (I was his faithful assistant.)

 The first night, Ken put some red food coloring in a jar of water, then some bleach was poured into the mixture, which was supposed to make the water clear again.  Unfortunately, it took to long for the water to lose it's red color and it never totally became clear again.

 Kids crowded around to see the experiment.

 Tuesday night, the story was about Jonah, so the experiment was...

 ...showing how the whale spewed Jonah out of it's stomach.

 For the third experiment, Ken showed the kids how to make a pin float on water instead of it sinking.  All the kids were amazed to learn that they could do that!

 For Thursday, Ken made some periscopes to look under the water.  The kids had to find an item that was different from everything else in the tub of water.  The first tub had sand dollars and hidden among them was a 50 cent piece.  The second tub had a bunch of sea shells and a golf ball, then the last bin had plastic sea animals and a toy truck.  Some kids found the different item right away, while others had to be told where to look for it.

For the last night, Ken made old fashioned "telephones" out of string and cups.  As he tried them out at home, he started out doing it with tin cans, but they didn't work real well, even though that's the traditional way to make them.  The paper cups worked a lot better.

 One boy listening and another one talking to the person on the other end of the string.  I was one of the people trying to do this experiment with the kids and it was very hard to hear/understand what the kids were saying!  But the kids had fun trying, although my throat hurt by the end of the night because I had to shout so loud into the cup!

Ken also brought in an oscilloscope with a microphone so the kids could see the sound waves their voices made on it.  It was a good, but tiring week!

Annika's 9th Birthday

 Annika had her birthday party last Sunday afternoon at her house.  Her and her friends spent a lot of time jumping on the trampoline.

 Saben threw water balloons at the girls on the trampoline, so Kari filled a cup with water and gave it to Annika to throw at him.  She got him, but unfortunately, he was carrying a water balloon at the time and got her also, which led to a brief time of tears, since he got her birthday dress all wet!

 Some of Annika's friends hid around the corner in order to ambush Saben and got him wet also.

 There were several other activities, including drawing...

 ...putting some decorative tape on pencils...

  and small notebooks.  There was also a "beanie boo" hunt, where they had clues to solve in order to find the "beanie boos", so they were running all over the yard.

 How many kids can get on a trampoline at once?  There's 10 on it in this picture!

 Annika's friends know what she likes!  She got 4 or 5 new stuffed animals, this was the first one she unwrapped.

 For dinner, Annika chose to have BBQ'd hamburgers.  After the girls ate, they watched a movie while the adults ate.

 Halfway through the movie, they had a banana split break and sang "Happy Birthday" to her.

 A candle in Annika's banana split!

She got it blown out before it melted her ice cream!  I love that Annika always makes sure that we know she wants us to come to her birthday party!  I wonder how many more years that will happen!

First Voelker Family Camp - Part 2

 The 2 boys having a serious "Star Wars" discussion on the way down to the beach.

 Railroad tracks just up from the beach.

 Ken and the grandkids put a penny on the train track, hoping a train would come by while we were there.

 At the beach

 Some rocks to climb up, with a little help.

 Seth is sitting in a hollowed out spot in the rocks, that looked like the perfect place for a 7 year old boy to sit in.

 Papa is showing Seth a very small pool of water in the rocks with a bunch of hermit crabs in it.

 Annika found a nice little home for her new "Beanie Boo"!

I think Maple is saying, " But, Mom, I don't want to get in the water!"

"OK, Mom, you were right, it was fine once I got in!"

 An interesting set of holes in this rock, I thought it looked like the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.  (A few to many islands though.)

 Fun on the beach.

A train did come by, just as we were getting ready to head home.

The penny on the left is the before picture and the one on the right is the after picture.  The penny had flown off the track and we had a hard time finding it, but Ken finally saw it next to a rock that had it almost completely hidden.