And now for something completely different...: August 2018

Now that you've heard Katie's telling of what happened in May, here's my take on the month.

It was a beautiful Saturday, so we decided to head outside.

Of course, Katie did not want to go.

She never wants to go.

Mikey wanted to go hike up Tiger Mountain.

I'm not sure if that's what we did.

But we hiked somewhere.

Here's the crew taking a little snack break.

Guess what?

I was there too.

There really aren't a lot of photos of me.

When there's really no destination in mind and we're just hiking about, we let the kids explore a bit.

It also gives Ralph a bit of a break from trying to keep everyone in sight.

Poor guy chokes himself almost to death on every hike.

Katie found this tree that had fallen and wanted to climb out to the end.

Which she did.

For some reason, every hike we go on we end up coming home with two more walking sticks.

I gotta remember to have the kids use one of the millions we already have at home.

See, here's Ralph pulling to catch up with Huzbend and Mikey.

I eventually just gave him to them so he wouldn't stress so much.

We spent a good amount of time trying to throw rocks at a tree stump.

Katie could not hit the tree.

She tried and tried, but couldn't do it.

I eventually convinced her to move on.

Before we left, the kids went exploring again and found the remnants of some sort of structure.

Only the foundation was left.

They also found this swing.

Katie decided to make a bit of extra cash by picking up dog poop.

She didn't feel like putting shoes on, but I wouldn't let her walk barefoot to pick up poop.

This was her solution.

Poop Bag Shoes.

I'm not sure how you would market these.

Allergy season was in full swing in May after getting an early start last month.

There were lots of sniffles and dirty tissues around our house.

For Mother's Day, we headed down to Seattle to participate in The Color Run again.

The night before, we ate dinner at "The Hot Pot", as Mikey likes to call it.

It's really called "The Melting Pot".

A fondue place that has gluten free options.

We've eaten here before.

Mikeys favorite part of the meal is the cheese fondue appetizer round.

He ate about 4 pounds of bread and cheese.

This is funny because he doesn't "like" cheese.

Hard form cheese (ie cheese sticks, cubes of cheese, a slice of cheese) - He says, "EW!".

Melted cheese (ie mac n' cheese, cheese on a burger, pizza, fondue) - He says, "Yes, please!"

This is his, "It's SO GOOD" look.

The next course is the main course where you cook different meats and veggies in your fondue pot.

Mikey always picks ravioli - so he has to wait to cook his last so that Katie can eat non-glutened meat. It's a good thing he fills up on bread and cheese.

Here she is trying salmon for the first time.

She liked it.

After that, it's the dessert course.

Chocolate fondue with all sorts of options for dipping and all gluten free (even the brownies and the cake they give to dip).

This is Katie's favorite part of the meal.

We were too busy eating to take pictures.

We headed back to our hotel to get ourselves to sleep.

It was hard to do after eating all that chocolate.

We were up early the next morning - not too early, about 8ish - and out at the start line.

Off we go!

Katie has got her yellow jacket on, Huzbend is right next to her with a blue cinch bag on his back and Mikey is right in front of me.

Katie and Huzbend took off.

They usually do.

Longer legs and all.

I hung back with Mikey.

Second station on this run was a foam station.

There were two foam stations on the route this year.

Each had it's own smell.

I know the green foam smelled like Dole Whips....I mean pineapple.

The kids LOVE the foam.

We would catch up to Huzbend and Katie every so often.

Here's everyone together and still looking quite clean.

Here's a few shots of Huzbend and Katie.

I love this one.

Brave man for having his phone out at a color station.

Here's a good look at the pineapple foam station.

Mikey and I were getting nearer the finish.

We had caught Huzbend and Katie at this point, but Mikey had worked too hard to catch them and had to take a break. Then, we lost them again.

Oh well.

Space Needle!

Here we are approaching the finish line.

Lot's of color gets thrown at you at the finish line.

I ended up with a big yellow splotch down the side of my face.

After you finish you make your way over to the Finisher's Festival where you can throw even more color.

Someone must've ate a bit of orange color.

The kids have done this before and so they were prepping for the big color throw.

Mikey is not a big fan of getting color in his mouth or eyes.

He went for the full face cover.

Katie went for the "I don't want to breath it, but I'll wear it" cover.

3...….2...…..1!

THROW!

It's pretty impressive.

Here's a video.

WHOOO! We survived.

This is Katie's favorite part of the Color Run.

Getting covered in color.

Victory or Peace?

Huzbend approves as well.

For once, Mikey didn't inhale 2 tons of color and was quite happy.

Usually, at this point, he's grumping out because all he tastes is the color stuff.

I have to take back what I said earlier about the color throw being Katie's favorite part of the event.

New this year was what I would call a FOAM PIT.

The kids COULD NOT resist.

Katie found it first.

FOAM FIGHT!!!

BEST.....

...DAY.....

….WAIT! IS THAT A FOUNTAIN???

Why, yes. Yes, it is.

Anyone who reads this blog should know that my kids cannot resist running into any sort of water be it fountain, puddle, sea, river or lake.

Clothes be damned.

Same thing happened here.

Again.

So, not only were they covered in corn starch color, they were soaking wet too.

The hotel must've loved us when we came back.

Yes. We did return to the hotel to shower.

I promise we did not make as much of a mess as you would think.

We decided to hang out a little longer in Seattle.

They clean up nice, don't they?

We headed to MoPOP (Museum of Pop Culture) to see the current exhibit they had on Marvel.

Just chillin' with The Thing.

Mikey was in heaven.

He is a "True Believer".

That's a Marvel/Stan Lee thing.

Look it up.

EXCELSIOR!

Spidey dropped in to say hello.

This is the Tesseract or the Cosmic Cube.

However you want to call it.

But, just know that within its depths is an Infinity Stone which can control the fabric of space allowing its holder to teleport anywhere in the universe at any time.....

There were all sorts of cool MCU props.

What?!?! The Eye of Agamotto.

Just sitting right here.

For anyone to just come along and take.....

We found ourselves stuck in the Mirror Dimension..."ever present but undetected".

What better way to end our visit to the exhibition than with a quick sit down to read a few comics.

Before we headed out, we stopped into the Fantasy exhibition.

We've been to this many, many times.

The kids still like to wander into it just to see the dragon, to crawl through the Hobbit hole and to sit on a throne and pretend they're royalty.

I bet you're wondering what this is.

It's an attempt at a decorative rock.

It was an art experiment that just didn't work out.

Kudos to Katie for keeping it in a baggie all the way until Mother's Day and not just keeping this seeping all over her inside top drawer all week.

Katie also made me a scarf in art class.

Mikey had me follow clues to find my gift.

I wonder where he got that idea?

One of the clues was actually hidden ON Ralph.

Impressive.

That next weekend, I was off to a PTA convention.

Huzbend and a friends Dad had to coach my YMCA soccer team - The Golden Warriors.

So cute seeing Huzbend with the Coaching Clipboard.

Katie decided to run for office at her middle school.

She ran for 7th Grade Representative.

She had to make a nomination speech that the whole school saw and a poster to hang up in the cafeteria.

She ended up running unopposed and was elected!

And, more about Katie.

She was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society as well.

She had to maintain a certain grade point average as well as complete at least 18 hours of community service.

Here she is receiving her official certificate.

Thank you to a friend who took these pictures.

I was rushing off to the cafeteria after the ceremony to set up some gluten-free, nut-free treats for the kids.

Here's Katie posing with her Drama teacher (left) and English teacher (right).

The 8th graders got to be knighted as they received their certificates.

Inquiring 6th graders wanted to know if the sword was real.

Here's the principal letting them get a closer look.

He has a, "I won't get fired for this, will I?" look in his eyes.

It's a real metal sword.

Just not sharp.

Here's Katie and her friend at the after-party where, I'm happy to say,

there were cupcakes and cookies even for the food-ingredient-challenged.

When May rolls around it's time to start bringing home all sorts of elementary school goodies.

Like writing notebooks and stuff.

I'm assuming it's because it takes at least a whole month to clean out the students desks from the year.

Anyway, here are some Mikey gems.

This is an assignment in which he had to use his vocabulary words in a paragraph.

From what the teacher wrote, I guess he didn't follow the instructions.

But, it's still hilarious.

"1. a lady greedily stole my money.

2. I briefly became Superman.

3. a guy silently, seriously, rapidly, eagerly, hastily, fluently, bravely, secretly, blew me up.

4. a guy gave me velvety(?), skinny, generously, spotty, squeaky, wealthy, shaggy, scratchy, merrily 1 (one) silvery block of tnt."

Another vocabulary exercise....

"Ahhh galaxy is collapsing...

BOOM!

I died a cheerful, beautiful, delightful, successful, shameful, wonderful, boastful, wasteful, stressful death. The galaxy blew up in a nervous, marvelous, outrageous, mountainous, poisonous, dangerous, humorous, famous, vigorous, scandalous, state.

ahhhh, run it's theeeeeee…

rebellious, envious, glorious, studious, furious monster.

Dude."

We went to a picnic at a friends house and I got home-made Dole Whip on Memorial Day.

Yum.

Mikey did some stuff this month too.

Going a bit out of order, back on the 15th of the month, he had his Science Fair and Art Walk.

Here he is with one of his besties.

For some reason, his art wasn't displayed.

Maybe he was absent that day.

Oh well.

He did have a science fair project.

His topic of research this year was.....

"Where do boogies come from?"

Ageless beauty.

At the end of the month, Mikey had a field trip to the MOHAI museum.

MOHAI - Museum of History and Industry.

We'd never been there.

There were so many chaperones that I was able to have just Mikey and one of his BFF's in my group.

JUST TWO.

It was a good and not very stressful field trip.

The standout of the trip was when a kid came into a room that had a display of the Naked Swimming Baby Nirvana album cover and told us that it shouldn't be on the wall because it was "inappropriate".

I also had to explain what a brothel was and why some protesters in a picture were being dragged around and beaten with billy clubs.

And the weird-ass Great Seattle Fire exhibition.

What is up with that?

Here's a little snippet courtesy of YouTube.