Spring Sports/Brithdays

One day over memorial weekend the kids and I went and visited Talitha. We were able to get haircuts and also see this amazing field of bigleaf lupine. 

There were a ton of bees and it was neat to see how they carry the pollen as they fly from flower to flower.

Leon has been working hard learning to play baseball. It is his first year since t-ball and he is the youngest player on a 13-15 team. There is a huge size gap between Leon and some of the boys. A few even play on the high school team. He has friends on the team and has been enjoying it for the most part. He likes handing out with his friends but says the games are stressful. He has been walked on base several times and even made it home. Twice he has gotten bases by being hit while up to bat (no wonder it is stressful). During this last game he got his first hit that got him on base. It was very exciting and he was able to steal and get home. Of course this was the one game of the season I had to miss. Luckily a friend took a video and text it to me!

Leon preformed in the marching band for our armed forces day parade.

Calista turned 9! She had some friends over for a painting party.

Scarlett turned 15! She had friends over top watch "The Parent Trap," and then they went to the church dance together. 

Scarlett killed it at her school play. They preformed "Puffs," all seven years of Hogwarts from the Hufflepuffs point of view. Scarlett played Leanna and Ginny. She did amazing and the play was hilarious.

She had tons of lines, an amazing monolog, and even a grand finale scene.

Beatrix had her reading debut! Her first grade class dressed up and met in the library where they each read a book into the microphone. The kids practiced for weeks. Families got to come and watch. Afterwards they got flowers and had snacks. It was the cutest thing and Beatrix's book was pretty funny.

I didn't get any Mother's day photos but we did have a spa night for activity days. Thanks girls!

This next picture is from my favorite local trail.

Penelope had her lacrosse awards ceremony where she got the Most Improved Player award. She did awesome this year and even I could see an improvement. Last year there were games where she barely ever had the ball and she only scored once the entire season. This year she had it all the time an scored often. I think she was trying to prove a point because we bought her a $200 stick and $60 goggles this year and she promised it would help her play better.

Lastly, we went and saw a whale in Bremerton. It was hanging out by the ferry terminal. I've never seen one locally before. It was super exciting and pretty close. The video doesn't do it justice.

Backyard Photos

Now that we have had some great weather I have been able to take a couple pictures of our backyard. It is almost magical.

Random

Here are a few random pictures I never got around to posting. Enjoy.

Spring Planting

We had a beautiful spring break this year. With Bob's help and manual labor I decided to plant in the front yard.  It is so nice to have our own house. This first picture is the before. You can see my lovely cherry blossom tree in bloom. I've had that in a pot for almost two years and it is still small. I was hoping that it would grow more once it was in the ground.

Next is the after picture. I tried hard to plant things that don't need a lot of light and that the deer will leave along. We also added a walkway from the drive4way and a path around to the side of the house. I'm pretty happy wit how it turned out and I can't wait to see how everything grows over the next few years.

Two princesses helping us buy stones. We underestimated the amount we needed twice and ended up having to go three times.

Remember the cherry blossom tree from the first picture? The deer destroyed it! I tried to tape the branches back on but I do not think it will work. I'm so mad at the deer. I got this disgusting deer spray but it smells so badly I don't know how often I can spray it.

Cinder and Stormy

Meet Cinder and Stormy, our new kittens!

We promised the kids we would get cats after we moved into our new house. We wanted low maitenence pets and having a cat in Japan worked well for us. It has taken a few months because the humane society is only open during the week and we have been busy. But we had a no school day and I told the kids we would go check. 

We knew we wanted a bonded pair of kittens and sure enough they had one friendly set of kittens ready for us to bring home.

At first I thought we should come back another day and see if they have others. These two look almost exactly the same and they are solid grey. But the kids really wanted these kittens.

They have grown on me. 

But not the litter box. So I'm ready for them to move to the garage. So far they have been inside. But ideally they will also go outside and spend time in the garage hunting mice. Hopefully we can have a smooth transition.

Cinder has the red collar and is a bit more adventurous. Stormy has the blue collar and is more shy. They play fight with each other all the time and are a little skiddish. But they do like petting and never skratch or bite us so everyone is pretty happy with them.