Ha!
Now I'm not so far behind!
We had Mikey's birthday on a Monday afternoon.
We headed to a local "free to people that live in our town" pool for some swim time with friends.
Mikey had a good time swimming around and gettin' all crazy.
By the end of the hour and a half swim, he was wiped.
Then we got out of the pool, hit the changing rooms and headed to a local pizza place for dinner and a treat.
"Soooooo hunnnnnngry."
We ordered waaaaaay to much pizza.
I think everyone got to take home left-overs.
Mikey wanted a Captain America: Civil War themed party.
They didn't really have that at the party store.
The closest I could come was Avengers themed stuff.
But, making cupcakes was easy.
Nice that Capt. America wears red, white and blue as all the Fourth of July cake decorations were on sale by this point......
In answer to your question, he DID get chocolate on that white shirt.
While Mikey was busy the first week of August at a basketball summer camp, Katie spent her days getting creative.
She fashioned a swing for Giorgio Monkey (yes, he's still around) from discarded cardboard that was leftover from Mikey's birthday gifts (thanks!).
Since Mikey's camp was only a half-day camp, he spent his afternoons at the spa wearing his toga.
That first weekend in August we headed to the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire.
Katie was a fairy and Mikey was a knight?
I think?
Oh wait!
Now he's knight.
Officially speaking, that is.
Fairy Katie visited Queen Elizabeth too.
She wasn't there to get knighted and in fact declined this honor from the Queen (!).
She had brought word of a proposal of marriage from the King of Spain.
Really. He stopped Katie in the street and sent her to ask Queen Elizabeth for him.
The Queen asked Katie to deliver her answer to the brash King...
No.
Next up.
Foam weapon LARP'ing time!
YES!
"Once upon a time, there was a beauuuuutiful Fairy who began a quest to unite the kingdom of Pixieville with the help of ....."
"Huh?
Wha -?
What the......!!!"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Sigh.
With the help of her annoying little brother.
It's okay Mommy.
I wanted him to do that.
More dramatic that way."
The following week, Katie was at girl scout camp and Mikey was at a Star Wars themed theatre camp.
Part of Katie's camp included a sleep over night on Thursday.
In a surprise move, Huzbend came home early from work, pawned our remaining child off with one of our friends and took me out.
We ate dinner and went to see the Culture Club in concert.
Seriously, Boy George was right there.
He's the guys waaay back there on stage with the bright yellow hat on.
Honestly.
That was a total surprise.
Good one, Huzbend.
The next day, it was time for Mikey's big performance which was entitled......
Mikey played "Star Wars-ron".
Mikey will have to explain who Star Wars-ron is to you.
I can't do it.
I have no clue.
He has his own little back story for the dude that has to do with another of his made up characters named Supron (another -ron).
I don't know.
Anyways, he started the play as a good guy.
Then he infiltrated the bad guys lair by pretending to join their side.
Then, at the end, he decided he really WAS a bad guy and left the good guys out to dry.
Good guy Star Wars-ron.
Then, BAM! Bad guy!
He's beating up R2D2 with an invisible light saber!
As Mikey explains it,
"Mommy, it's like in that movie Goosebumps. The guy says, 'Every good story has a beginning, a middle and .... a twist!"
After Mikey's performance was over we had to rocket out to the East of Nowhere (but really close to a place that makes good pies) to pick up Katie at Girl Scout Camp.
They have an end of week flag ceremony where all the groups do skits.
Katie's group did theirs about sleeping?
I don't know. It was hard to hear.
This picture just says Katie.
I love it.
It's one of my favorite recent shots.
The next day was a Saturday.
Katie had a birthday party to attend in the morning and in the afternoon it was...
duhn, duhn, DUHN!
IV Infusion time.
Yay.
Well, at least this time it wasn't the day before her birthday.
There WAS a day in between.
On Monday, Katie went off to a Gods of Mt. Olympus themed theater camp and Mikey was done with camps for the summer.
That Monday was also Katie's birthday.
Guess how old?
If this picture doesn't say, "SQUEEEEEE!" I don't know what does.
She got a lot of stuff (thanks!) but I think her favorite was this little item.
A cotton candy maker.
She picked brownie sundaes as her special treat.
Friday of that week brought with it Katie's drama camp performance and some special guests!
My sister, niece, nephew and mom flew in for a visit.
Katie's play was entitled, "Oh my Gods!" and she played the daughter of Hades, Hazel Levesque.
Synopsis: Zeus and Hera go on vacation to Hawaii.
Zeus leaves Hades in charge.
None of the other gods dig this decision and so they throw Hades in a jail cell and start fighting amongst each other.
Hazel, and the other demi-gods (Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase), get a message to Zeus utilizing YouTube and he comes back to set things right.
Yayyyy, Katie!
The day didn't end there.
Ohhhh no.
That evening, we had Katie's official birthday party.
She invited some friends to stay the night.
First up, dinner.
Next, special treat.
Katie came up with the cake design.
I just implemented her plan.
Doggie cake.
Yes.
That is a Mini-Ralph on the cake.
He is one well loved dog.
The real Ralph, not Mini-Ralph.
"Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff."
After dinner, cake, presents, and some Ever After High viewing, it was time to tie-dye.
They dyed pillow cases.
They actually came out pretty good and it wasn't too much of a mess.
The next day, after the sleepover crew left, we visited downtown Seattle.
We stopped at Sikh Turban Day at Seattle Center.
You could get a free turban if you wanted.
Katie chose to go with a henna tattoo instead.
After that, we were off to the PacSci Center for an Imax movie about America's National Parks (it's the National Park Services 100th anniversary).
Then we wandered the exhibits.
This picture just screams troublemaker.
Or Spanky.
You choose.
Braaaiin.
Sheep brain.
We stopped by a Lego exhibit.
I can't escape Legos.
Even when we leave the house they follow me.
What a clown.
The henna paste dried and flaked off leaving a really pretty tattoo that lasted about two weeks on the back of Katie's hand.
The kids HAD to do the Hurricane Simulator.
The winds reached up to 79MPH.
There were lots of screams and giggles.
Not something you usually hear during hurricanes.
And, of course, we cannot go to Seattle Center without running through the International Fountain.
Nope. Can't do it.
Now that is some loooong hair.
A bunch of finger dinosaurs.
Your middle finger is the head and the other fingers are the legs.
Think brontosaurus.
We headed to Northwest Trek to check out some of our local (but exotic to tourists) fauna.
Wha? Whazzat?!?!?
A mountain goat!
And a deer butt!
There was also a lot of this in the non-tourist attraction down time....
Cute.
It's amazing to see the slight resemblances in them all.
There was so much excitement in August that Mikey lost a tooth!
We weren't done yet!
To cap off August, we hit up the Evergreen State Fair.
It is only at state fairs that you can find socks with your favorite dog breed printed on them.
Such a rare find!
There was a petting zoo this year.
We were one of the first groups in line.
Nothin' can keep Katie from being able to cuddle animals of various shapes and sizes.
They had a cow.
Hi, cow.
Katie fell in love with the....sigh, everything.
It took us a long time to get outta there.
But we finally escaped.
But, only because the amusement rides opened.
I won't let them ride the bigger, faster rides.
I just don't trust the traveling carnivals.
But the kids don't complain that much.
It's kinda tradition to ride these kiddie rides.
Especially The Whacky Worm coaster.
And the Swings.
They also get to pick a special treat of their choice.
For Katie, it's a bit limited as to what she can have.
She picked this gigantic bag of cotton candy.
Mikey picked some kind of delicious looking pie.
A la mode, no less!
We then visited GASCAR animal races where animals of various species are pitted against each other in a high speed run to the finish.
Mikey was picked to lead the orange team cheers.
I think our racer was a goat.
Our guy won and so Mikey, as our lead cheerer, won a prize.
He got a pooping pig.
You squeezed it and poop extended out of his butt.
Here's a picture.
Only at a state fair.
Again, another thing you will only find at a state fair.
Bungie cord jumping.
It looked fun.
The kids asked to try it.
I couldn't say no.
Katie did manage to flip once.
Mikey tried hard....
....but just couldn't make it all the way over.
They were pretty high in the air.
After all that excitement we visited the animal barns.
And the tractors.
Even now, they HAVE to ride on them.
Check out this post from back in 2013 (scroll to the bottom)....
.....and here they are in 2016.
Before we left the fair, we had to stop to see the dogs one more time.
They were running agility trials.
Katie was very excited because we had recently set up an agility course in the backyard for Ralph.
I'll have to get some video up here of that.....
It's amusing.
Someone was very happy, and HYPER, when they got home from the fair.
I wonder why........
