Lots of fun this week after school got out

School got out on Thursday and we're so excited about summer. It's kind of funny because it doesn't feel like summer. The weather has been in the 60s all week. Hard to imagine swimming much at those temps. We've already had three birthday parties and gotten ice cream and such, so summer is off to a great start. Our friend had a party on Saturday and some girls that went to it brought a bunch of garter snakes they caught by their house. My kids were entranced, especially Spencer. They all had a great time holding them and I even got in on the fun. 

Aaron and Chloe like to swing in this swing together.

 Chloe turned three yesterday! We had a low key and very enjoyable Sunday with her. We were going to go to the park but it was rainy and chilly so we stayed in. But she got a batgirl costume and a batgirl cake and some dolls and generally had a lovely day. We love her and it's so fun to watch her grow. No babies in the house here anymore. She's so capable.

 She picked bacon and quesadillas for dinner. It was surprsingly tasty. Haha!

 And it turns out I don't have anything but a slow motion video of her blowing out her candles, so I'll stick with a picture of the video here. She had to blow them out three times. Three times for three years I guess. We'll take it.

This week in pictures

We checked out osme of the lake beaches this week. It was super fun. There's one just a mile or two from us on Lake Washington that we enjoyed. 

 And another one at Lake Sammamish maybe six or seven miles from our house the other direction. Also super fun.

 Aaron has gotten into selfies using my phone.

 We coccooned our kids this weekend in this awesome king-sized fleece blanket we have. It was more funny than any of us expected.

 More photography by Aaron.

 And we treid out a cool new park and splash pad yesterday as part of our Father's Day celebration. Yay Bill! We love you!

 I went to Genevieve's end of first grade school party today. We're one of those super late ending districts and we don't get out until Thursday. The weather is only in the 60s and 70s at the moment so it totally feels okay to not be done as opposed to if it were hot summer already. Fun times! She's growing up so fast. This has been a good second half of the school year here in Washington. There were some hiccups along the way, but they two odlest finished strong and they love it. We still occasionally get comments about wanting to go back to South Carolina tough. Friends are still missed there and even our old house and such. Clemson will forever own a piece of the Ashmans' hearts. Now on to what I expect to be a fantastic summer.

A few projects

After seeing some my sister made, I decided to make some of these marble necklaces for teacher gifts. I love how they turned out.

 I finally put a wasitband into these PJ pants I made with an old sheet I had to use as a muslin. They're pretty comfy. Waist is a littel low, but that's easy to fix on the next pair. I'm slowly trying out the patterns I've bought over the years. This is a keeper.

 Another child gets the reading bug. That makes my heart happy. She's reading Frog and Toad. Who doesn't like that series? She'd be happy to let us read to her for hours.

Feeling productive

Hmm, this has been a low-key week. Bill and I did have a super prodcutive weekend though. We got our two new window AC units installed. A lady from church was giving them away. Score for us! They work great. I want to install a few ceiling fans in our house and I think between the two we'll do all right sans AC here this summer.  

 I got an urge to bake yesterday and Spencer and Genevieve helped me make these delightfully pleasant sugar cookies as well as some cinnamon rolls. I even made these cookies gluten free and they are tasty as can be.

 Bill sent me a picture of he and Chloe while we were out making cookie deliveries. It's basically my favorite thing that she smiles big for the camera now.

 I trimed back my bushes this week so they're not trying to take over my back porch anymore.

 Oh, and Chloe has the most interesting taste in clothes. Dress shirt, pj shorts, and fluffy socks of Genevieve's.

This year is just flying by for me. I can't believe it's already June. We get out of school super late, so we still have three weeks left, and I'm pretty sure the summer is going to fly by too. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, we have fun things planned, and I'm generally just really excited for a good first month of summer, even though my kids don't actually get out of school until the third week of it.

Weekend hiking

We went hiking twice this holiday weekend and both were super fun. Saturday we headed out to Rattlesnake Ledge and played at the lake for awhile and then hiked partway up the trail. The kids spent the whole time climbing the huge boulders and naming them. We had a couple friends along and it was lovely.

The kids go past one of our local parks every day on teh bus and they've been dying to check it out for months. We finally got out to it after church on Sunday and it turned out to be a really fun park for all of them.

Chloe decided Sunday was the day she needed to have her hair done for the first time. Someday I imagine her hair will start growing for real, but at this point it's still all wispy. But it's finally got some length in the back and so she got a twinner set of pigtails to Genevieve and it was the cutest thing.

Yesterday for Memorial Day we had a jam packed day. We started out the day with a church pancake breakfast at a local park. Then we headed out to Twin Falls, which is a 2.5-mile hike that the kids completely rocked. We pulled out all our hiking poles and they loved having their own. We finished the day off with dinner at our cousin's house. It's been a long time coming that we could spend an entire day out and come home with happy kids. We don't have any diapers to deal with or naps and this newest family life phase is turning out to be really delightful. There's a million more places we can check out around here, so our weekends are looking good for the forseeable future.

Botanical Garden

We finally got to the Bellevue Botanical Garden this weekend. I took the four kids and we had a grand ole time. Genevieve thought it was funny to look crusty for all the pictures, but never fear, she loved it too. We loved the botanical garden in Clemson and the one here did not disappoint. We'll be back. 

 Chloe has started saying cheese and grinning huge when it's picture time. Took long enough! I think we might get an all smiling family picture finally for the first time ever now.

Biking, camping, and selfies

We took advantage of bike to school day this week, borrowed my SIL's bike trailer, and had a grand ole' time biking to school on the Cross Kirkland Corridor trail. It was just hard enough for my kids that they were infinitely proud of themselves for doing it. It turned out I loved it too. There's a huge hill between our house and the start of the trail otherwise I might think about doing it more. Maybe when we've convinced Aaron that he can indeed learn to ride his bike two-wheeled and he can ride himself, so I won't need a bike trailer, then we'll do it more.

 Aaron has taken to the selfie game as well as portraits of Chloe. I have a jillion of them on my phone already.

 We spent this last Friday/Saturday camping at Ensign Ranch. It was delightful. I went there all growing up every other year for family reunions and it was a lovely tour down memory lane going back. We camped and helped clean up the place a bit, which was the reason we went for a service project, and waded in the river and generally had a fabulous time.

 Sunday we did our very own piano recital. Everyone played a number, even Aaron and Chloe, who aren't actually doing piano lessons yet. But I'm teaching the older two and it's been fun so far.