Happy 13th birthday Madeline

Happy milestone 13th birthday to the new teenager Madeline! This birthday celebration had a lot of big plans that had to shift... Quarantine birthdays require patience and understanding, and thankfully Maddie had both. Her one wish was to take her birthday gift cards, and go on a shopping spree to the pet store. If there is one thing she tends to quite diligently, it's her aquarium. Her gift cards financed a "home makeover, fish tank edition", and she was also able to bring home a couple new sea creatures to love. Each year, it seems "shopping" makes the list of desired activities :)

We celebrated with Fruit Loops birthday cereal, her favorite drive-through for lunch while shopping, and her favorite simple home made dinner. She requested a berry pie, and enjoyed just relaxing with the family in between setting up her new fish tank accessories.

We celebrate our sweet teenager - she is loving, affectionate, emotionally intelligent, attentive and kind. She is also wild and intense, because you KNOW we have two teenage girls in the house! Ha. Love my growing family, and could not love my sweet Maddie any more!

Happy 11th Birthday to Max

 Happy birthday to my darling Max! For quarantine birthday this year, he requested a day of backyard games (with prizes!), all is favorite foods (birthday cereal: Chocolate Toast Crunch, Dad's crepes for lunch, and the girls' musubis for dinner). This year marked the third year he requested a bubble gum machine cake (this kid has asked for this precise cake THREE times in his life... who knew gumballs were so awesome?)

We had a low key day of friendly competition, watching The Incredibles together, and showing our boy how much we love him! Max is such a steadying force in the family. He is funny, quick-witted, has a great love of reading, and a perfect match for his wily younger another. We could not love him any more!

Staycation 2020

 I know people sometimes do the "staycation" thing where they take time off work, and stay around town visiting their local fun spots. I guess in the era of quarantine, this is going to be more of a thing. For us, it came about sort of by accident because we had planned on a camping trip with a large group of friends, sharing campsites. As the time got closer, it just didn't seem like the right health choice for us to be in a large group like that. It was a hard decision, and we really lamented the social filling this would have brought all of us. Chalk this one up to one of MANY hard decisions. It did reveal that we have incredible friends, who never made us feel bad for making this choice. All the other families went on the trip, so we could easily have felt like odd man out. 

So! Instead of camping, we decided to take the kids on some local adventures (two trips to our new favorite spot on the Wilson River, and one trip to the coast for a beach/kayak day). Beautiful weather, and so fun to get out of our house and visit a few of the MANY gorgeous places where we live.

We love "our" river spot so much, we brought our cousins from Seattle to visit, when they were in town. 

We also got a visit from our other cousins, and were able to throw our sweet Maya a little mini-birthday party in the backyard too!