What's New With The Carter Family

This year, Jem and I got to go to Aquafest too! (Last year we were in Australia when Brandon, Sarah, Justin and River all went). We parked at the high school, got a shuttle ride to downtown Lake Stevens, and had some so-so food (the corn and lemonade slushee were OUTSTANDING though!), watched the kids ride on some rides & listened to some music! I ran into a TON of people from both playgroup and preschool - that was cool :) My favorite part of the night was when the kids all got their faces painted - here they are with their works of art :)

Why is it always the coldest day on earth when we decide to go somewhere that requires sun and warmth? *LOL* Despite the gale force wind, clouds and cold weather, we took a ferry across to Jetty Island for the morning. It was a nice place to spend the day (it would be way nicer in the sun though!) and there was so much beach to explore. I want to do it again sometime, definitely! Here are some pictures of Jem and River (and our friend Paris) from today's excursion. On the Ferry. On the beach. Climbing and Exploring!

During the summer, the city puts on free concerts on Thursday nights. Since River was staying for a sleepover, we decided to take the kids there. It was really nice! A ukilele (did I spell that right?) group performed tonight, and played all kids of songs (on their 2 dozen ukileles of course haha!). Just watch Jem dancing to the music....he really got into it! These coincide with the 'Farmer's Market' which is just a small gathering of vendors with food, produce & flowers. It's a nice evening out, very relaxing...a great way to spend a summer's night!

Hip Hip Hooray for progress!!! Looky what Brandon and I set up this past Sunday - the pool! It fits PERFECTLY in the bottom corner of our property, and will be ready to use within a day or two! It's hard to see from the pictures, but it's pretty big and deep! It's 18ft x 9ft, and 4ft deep. Plenty big enough for Jem and a few of his friends! But boy oh boy, who knew it would take two days to fill the thing, and don't even get me started on the $140 we spent on salt (YES SALT) for the saltwater/chlorine generator. Supposedly it is spa quality salt *LOL* and it was 120lbs worth...but sheesh, it's SALT! I swear there will be no splashing of that pool water, not with that precious salt in there! Ok, I'm kidding. Well maybe not. Perhaps just a little splashing. BUT NO WATER WILL LEAVE THE INSIDE OF THE POOL if I have anything to do with it haha! As you can see from the photo, the patio is almost done too! Brandon just has to do the end parts (as the pavers need to b...

It's so funny.........there's just something about this photo of Jem that I took today that reminds me of....well....me. I don't know if it's that goofy smile. Maybe it's the cheeks. Hmmmmm. Or those eyes. Yep, that's it. Those are definitely my eyes. I see myself, I see my father, I see a long line of family before him. We all have the same eyes. Weird, but cool. {Postscript: Ok, so this post probably seems very random *LOL*. Let me explain why I started thinking about all of this stuff. My good friend April just had a little baby boy almost 2 weeks ago. It's her third boy, and let me tell ya, he is the spitting image of his two older brothers! How can three babies look so much alike? It's crazy this genetics thing! So anyway, then I came across this picture of Jem and I was like WHOA that looks just like ME! So there ya go.}

Whatever happened to my little boy, you know the one....the kid who hated having his hands dirty? Even if he had a SMIDGE of anything dirty, sticky or foreign on him he would instantly want it off! Well I guess THOSE days are over (and have been for quite some time *LOL*). Here he is playing down the hill while daddy worked on the concrete stairs on the last day of June. It's fun being a boy, don't you think?

Jem came home on the last day of school with a big bunch of ugly, broken, mismatched crayons! Instead of throwing them away, I decided that we would 'recycle' them - into beautiful round multicolored crayons! I'd seen this done at work and had always wanted to try it myself. So this morning, that's what we did! We took the paper off of the crayons, snapped them into little pieces, arranged them into a muffin tray, baked them for 12 minutes at 250 degrees, cooled them in the freezer for 15 minutes and wa-la! We made 12 crayon rounds in all - and I think they came out pretty nice! Jem had fun doing this with me...I think I'm going to have to make this an end of school year tradition!