Edison's Ninth Birthday!

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For his ninth birthday party, Edison chose to have it at the Civic Club and to play kickball and tag as well as to have some time in the water. Eben rounded it out by adding some games like water balloon toss, egg race, and three-legged races. Eben expertly led all of the activities of the party and was getting compliments left and right about his skills organizing silly youngsters hopped up on Sprite. Edison thoroughly enjoyed himself and all the boys had a lot of fun.

JULY - Family Get Together / 4th of July

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We celebrated Floyd and Edison’s birthday at Fairhaven Park in Bellingham. It was our first full family get together since Christmas and it was wonderful to catch up with everyone again. Edison looks up to Floyd so much and enjoys being around him that this is always a very special occasion. I was also able to get the kids to sit still long enough to get this cute cousin picture!

For the 4^th of July we spent a fairly low-key day around the house before heading to the Civic Club to go out on the boat. We brought the tube and kids swam and played around all afternoon. Matt and Lisa joined us and we cruised down to Lake Union, had a picnic dinner, and waited for the fireworks show. There was a lot of excitement and people on the water including one man in a homemade floaty whom Eben rescued and towed to safety. The show did not disappoint and the rush of the ride back up the lake is always exhilarating.

Jones Island

We took a long weekend in advance of Independence Day to head out for our first San Juans camping trip of the season and a stay at our new favorite campsite on Jones Island. We were happily surprised that our southside spot on the point was available and we quickly set up shop. As we hiked around the island we found someone had built a swing with driftwood and rope from the beach. From this spot, we can’t see the full sunset, but we do get nice color in the evenings.

 Saturday was breezy and we didn’t leave the island. We passed the time by playing bocce and hanging out on the beach in the northern cove, which was protected from the wind. Reed impressed us by being able to effectively paddle the kayak around the cove all by himself! Charlotte spent much of the time reading which warmed my heart.

 Back at the campsite Charlotte and Reed built a driftwood structure which involved a lot of dragging logs around and teamwork. Edison’s 9^th birthday was on Sunday and he choose to go to Roche Harbor to look at all the boats for our activity of the day. Plus we got to have big ice cream cones, too! We left on Monday morning and headed to Bellingham for Floyd and Edison’s birthday party.

More Swimming

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Edison and Charlotte have been spending a lot of time in the pool between practices every morning and meets Tuesday and Thursday evenings. They are exceling and pushing themselves to improve a little bit every day. This is their first organized sport and it is really fun to be part of the local neighborhood swim scene. Edison’s most competitive stroke is backstroke. Although he is also great at freestyle and has dropped 10 seconds off of his 25 yard fly over the past couple weeks. He has qualified for the end of season meet in all three of those strokes. Charlotte loves the breaststroke best but is also doing well in freestyle and backstroke and is quite a social butterfly of the 8 and under girls group.

At the meet against Sheridan Beach, Edison got to swim against a lot of his classmates who are on that team. That was super fun and Charotte and Edison both earned more best times!