Recently Alice was able to have sleepovers with each of her grandparents.  First she stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Hodson (and cousins Jack, Piper, and Will).  They packed some serious fun into 24 hours.  The festivities included crafts, visiting the Jim Henson exhibit at the EMP, roasting hot dogs, watching movies, and painting her very own toy boat that she sailed down a stream.  She had an amazing time--didn't want to leave!  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures...

 

A few days later, we all went up to Mt. Vernon for a family reunion.  Grandma Dempsey spent some quality time with Alice and her cousins Zack (I found out is Zachery, but goes by Zack), Gwen, and Tasha.  They stayed overnight in a cabin, walked by the river, swam in the pool, headed to Birch Bay for camping the next night, played chubby bunny, and combed the beach.  She loved it!  We missed her a lot.  Well, at least Jake and I did.  Roxie had no problem getting all the attention for once.  Alice came home exhausted from trying to keep up with her older cousins.  Both sleepovers left her with some great memories that I'm sure she will not soon forget.

Ok, so a friend urged me to create a separate blog for my vinyl creations so I took her advice.  I will be posting new things that I do--and probably some older stuff too.  If you are interested, check it out at:

 

This past week we went with some friends and family to Seabrook.  It is a cute little place that came highly recommended.  I'm sure it will be even more spectacular in a few years when the community has developed even more.  In true Washington coast style, it was overcast, misty, and cool.  If we had been there the week before, it would have been sunny and near the 80's--virtually unheard of!  Despite the cool weather, we made the most of our short trip.  The girls did great in the car--Alice watched a movie and Roxie ate and sang to herself.  When we got there, it wasn't quite check-in time yet so we headed to the beach.  Roxie LOVED wading in the ocean and running on the beach.  Alice loved playing with friends and cousins and digging in the sand.  After the kids were completely covered in sand, we headed to the house.  When we arrived at the house we thought was to be ours and ran up the stairs, peeked through the windows, and noticed there were a pile of shoes inside.  A sure sign of occupancy.  However, we didn't notice the shoes until after one of the kids rang the doorbell.  Everyone scurried down the steps fast enough that no one would ever suspect it was us--except for the fact that we were the only ones outside in the street.  Oops.  After finding our real house we quickly checked everything out and unpacked.  The next couple of days were wonderful.  We did more at the beach, played at the park, toasted marshmallows, soaked in the hot tub, played shuffleboard, listened to Ben and Jake play their guitars, chase kids, biked (well, I watched as J & B took my kids around on bikes--I'm a lazy mom), and ATE.  We had enough food to last another couple of days.  The trip seemed to go so fast--too fast.  After checking out on Saturday, we headed down to Ocean Shores and spent some time on the beach flying kites and playing in the sand.  Jake was happy to cruise around the beach in the truck--luckily, we had no major accidents.  However, our horn sounds really odd now...huh.  We had some lunch, hit the bumper cars--the kids were hesitant about go-karts, and shopped for taffy and shells.  Before heading home, we stopped for some ice cream.  I think we managed to hit most of the classic beach activities in those 3 days.  It was so nice to get out of town and have good company to enjoy it with!

For some reason, during the summer ants like to try and come in our house near the glass sliding door in our kitchen (maybe it has something to do with the crumbs on the floor?).  Alice has taken it upon herself to rid the house of any ant she might find.  Here's how things played out this morning.

 

Alice: Mom!  There is a dead ant on my shirt!  Can you get it off?

 

Me (as I picked the dead carcass off): Uh, how did a dead ant get on your shirt?

 

Alice: It was my only weapon.

 

Me: Please don't squish anymore ants with your clothes.