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We love the Fair!

Sometimes the kids share very nicely, sometimes not so much. I particularly love it when it’s their idea.

I don’t know about the rest of you around here, but I really enjoyed our few days of rain. We even had a thunder storm that traumatized Lucy but entertained the rest of us.

We had plenty of ups and downs this week, but it was mostly good. Everyone is still enjoying their classes at the Y and CareBear spent a good portion of her time during gymnastics running around an obstacle course screaming “fire! fire! hurry! hurry!”. She had a great time.

We managed to make it to the Ren Faire on Saturday. The weather was overcast, but warm, so it was a good day to go. CareBear and LiliBee collected fairy stones and mermaid glitter from random costumed people, which was a lot of fun. We watched part of a play and browsed through the shops. The kids liked the sword fighting but were really impressed by the whip-weilding pirates. I even ran into someone that I worked with years ago at Good Sam!

In other big news, LiliBee is 21 months old! She’s practically two… where did my baby go?

The down part of our week was on Friday when CareBear was a bit under the weather with a tummy ache. I’m still not sure what that was all about, but at least it didn’t last long.

We’re hoping to do a little visiting this week and maybe go play in the park while the weather is nice. Chris will be heading to the dentist for a temporary crown, which should be lots of fun for him. I’m just hoping to take a nap.

CareBear enjoyed the rides…

Since LiliBee is too little for the rides, we passed the time with a lively game of “where’s the pine-cone?”

Then they both enjoyed a little cotton candy, though in very different ways.

All in all, a fun day at the fair.

We’ve managed to avoid any of the rest of us getting sick again (so far), so we were able to have quite a fun week. We started new classes, had a picnic in the park, played at the fair and even visited Northwest Trek!

Carys is trying out a preschool gymnastics class this time around. So far, it’s her and 4 other three year olds swinging chaotically from bars and jumping into the foam block pit with varying degrees of success. She had a lot of fun and I was quite entertained. She’s also taking a swimming class again and is actually starting to get the hang of kicking!

Lilia is taking a parent/child swim class this session. Chris went with her and, since it’s the same time as Carys’ gymnastics class, I didn’t get to watch this week. I hear that her favorite part is jumping off of the wall to Chris and that she liked doing “motor boat”. She tends to get chilly while swimming, but that didn’t stop her from climbing in and out of the pool for fun.

Chris surprised us with a picnic at the park the park on our way to the farm this week. One of the best parts was that I got to be surprised, too! Since I’m usually tasked with planning and providing food for things, it was a very nice change. Carys thinks that surprises are the best and she and Lilia had a great time picking out a picnic table and playing at the playground.

We hit the Pierce County Fair this weekend. It’s a nice sized fair for little kids, even though the ride selection isn’t very diverse. There were only a few rides that Carys could go on (and none for Lilia, but that’s not unusual)… though it didn’t matter too much since she rode the 4x4s twice and then did the “jungle gym” obstacle coarse type ride 4 times. She really liked the ball pit part of that “ride”. We did all the usual fair looking and eating and generally had a great time.

Unfortunately, Chris missed out on some of the fun to make an unscheduled trip to the dentist for a temporary filling. He cracked part of one of his molars off eating breakfast, so he’ll be going back in a couple of weeks for a crown. Lots of fun for him. Luckily, our dentist is right across the street from the fair so the girls and I had plenty to do while waiting for him to return.

The kids and I headed out to Northwest Trek with my folks today. We had a nice walk on one of the hiking loops and then wandered around looking at animals. Carys was really impressed that she can spot the animals all by herself now, even when they’re not moving around. Lilia loved stopping every few feet to pick up a new stick or rock or leaf. It was quite challenging to keep her walking in anything resembling a forward direction. The animals were mostly sleeping while we were there, but it was still a fun trip.

This week will probably be a little more mellow, with rain in the forecast and all. I do hope to hit the last weekend of the Ren Faire, though!

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. And Happy Summer to everyone!

The beginning of summer hasn’t been nearly as “summery” as the last couple of weeks, but my allergies are really appreciating the slightly damp weather right now.

We had a pretty mellow week. We got back into our routine after the vacation weeks and just enjoyed not having much to do. That will all change this week when we start our next session of classes at the Y! We’ll have our usual Toddler Gym class and CareBear is starting swimming classes. She’s really looking forward to it, especially since she gets to go by herself while I watch through the window (she’s so independent).

Adding those to our week means that there aren’t any days where we just stay home all day! I’m not sure how that happened… for all my planning, I never see these things coming.

Chris had his follow-up appointment with the neurologist last week. We found out the results of his testing (mostly normal) and his sleep study (really abnormal). He was being worked up for sleep apnea vs narcolepsy… apparently, they sometimes have the same symptoms and can only be differentiated by the sleep study. As it turns out, he as severe obstructive sleep apnea (he stopped breathing more than 40 times an hour and woke up more than 50 times an hour) and what they call “pathological sleepiness”, plus his blood oxygen saturation goes down to 85% during the apnea.

So he went back to the sleep lab to be fitted for what’s called a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine that he will wear when he sleeps. Considering that he’s apparently been severely sleep and oxygen deprived, that should make him feel much better.

We spent Saturday down at Meeker Days and it didn’t even rain on us. The festival was lots of fun, though we didn’t get to browse as many of the booths as I would have liked.

Once CareBear spotted the bouncy rides, it was all over! She spent a lot of time bouncing, going on everything they had there. We convinced her to walk around with us after a while and managed to check out all of the things that we really wanted to see.

We even got to watch the belly dancers, which was something that I wanted to do. The girls both enjoyed that, too, which was nice since it meant that they sat there and watched instead of running around… for awhile, anyway. LiliBee was most impressed by all of the dogs walking around, though. She loves pointing out dogs to us.

Father’s Day was very, very mellow around here. Since Chris already had his unofficial Father’s Day a couple of weeks ago (can’t beat the radio convention for Father’s Day gifts around here), our “present” to him was a relaxing bath and a few hours off. The girls and I went shopping so that he could have peace and quiet to play with his new radio gear. We all spent the rest of the day lazing about, reading and playing.

It was nice to be slackers for awhile.

 

We’re finally flu free around here. It’s been a long three weeks of fevers and staying home. We more than made up for that this past weekend, though.

After toddler gym on Saturday, we headed to the Spring Fair. I love fairs, have I mentioned that? It was pretty crowded being Saturday afternoon and all. We managed to have lots of fun in spite of the long lines, though. CareBear got to go on a few rides and won a new ball at the “fishing” game (plastic, magnetic fish). LiliBee complained about not being able to do that stuff yet but enjoyed the people watching. We all enjoyed visiting the goats and chickens in the barns.

Sunday was our belated Easter Egg hunt down in Olympia. Auntie Trina hid sugar filled plastic eggs all over Grandma’s yard and the girls had a great time finding them. CareBear is an egg finding machine, her basket was over-flowing! LiliBee wasn’t sure what the fuss was at first… it was fun to put eggs in the basket, but she doesn’t have the competitive streak yet and was more than happy to just look at the eggs. Grandpa did some grilling and we had a whole Easter Party! The girls slept all the way home.

Today, we had CareBear’s appointment to recheck her vision. She tested as normal this time around, so there’s nothing to worry about at this point. It was a pretty painless appointment.

Then we headed out to the park to take advantage of the nice weather. After walking the paths with Grams and Pas, we turned the kids loose to play at the playground. CareBear got over her initial hesitation about the slides (I don’t know where that’s coming from) and spent a lot of time going down the tunnel slide. LiliBee wasn’t sure which slide she wanted to go down for awhile, but she sure did enjoy climbing around the smaller equipment.

It’s nice to be well in time for the fleeting warm spring weather!