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My family planned a family reunion for the end of June in the Pacific Northwest, which meant that I got to see all my brothers and sisters, their families, and my parents.  I have way too many pictures for one post so I’m going to start from the beginning and break it up over several posts.

The first one to arrive was my mom.  She flew into Portland and visited my sister first, then took the train up to Seattle.  I picked her up on Saturday evening (June 15th).  My Dad and brother, Bryan, arrived late on Monday night (June 17th).  They left my house on June 22nd after my sister and her family arrived.  Here are some pictures from their visit:

Grandma reading to Charlotte over breakfast:

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Isaac’s 9th birthday was on a Monday (June 17th).  After a special breakfast, I gave him some new jeans and he opened a card from Grandma Bunny which contained birthday money.  He spent the rest of the morning researching Nerf guns that he could buy with his birthday money.  He collected all the money from his room and talked his sister, Charlotte, into contributing her money so that he’d have enough for the Nerf gun he wanted.

Then, i sent him off to school.  I picked him up for lunch and took him to taco time.  He loved their fancy soda machine.  He had a beef burrito, nachos, and a raspberry sprite.

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I threw a small party for Isaac on the Saturday before his birthday.  He wanted a military themed party. 

I made some simple invitations for him to pass out to whomever he choose.  He gave the first one to Charlotte’s best friend, Ander, at recess.  He invited one boy from his class at school and two boys from scouts. The night before the party, he helped me make cupcakes.  I let him follow the box directions to make white cake batter and yellow cake batter.  Then we followed a recipe for a homemade chocolate cake batter.

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Now that it’s June, here are some pictures from April that I never found time to share:

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I feel like I’ve been absent from some parts of life for months.  My blog has obviously suffered.  If you want to skip the details and just read when our moving date is, skip to the end.

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For spring break at the beginning of April we went to Utah here are some of the pictures from our trip:

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I have had a really hard time finding time to write lately, so my annual post about Nicole is a little late this year.  Here is what I wrote about her last year. 

Nicole has grown up a lot over the last year.  She started preschool at the beginning of November.  She really likes it and is learning so much!  She can now spell and write her name and has developed a new interest in letters and letter sounds. 

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I liked this little picture that Nicole was given in primary on Sunday, so I used it as a centerpiece for Nicole’s monkey birthday:Nicole started off her birthday with a batch of apple-spice pancakes:

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This year Nicole had a small party on the Saturday before her birthday (May 4th).  We only invited one girl (a friend from Nicole’s preschool class).  Nicole wanted a monkey theme. 

We started with Monkey coloring pages and then made sock monkey bracelets.We made a monkey snack:Nicole opened a gift from her friend:They played in the playroom and outside then sang the birthday song and had cupcakes:And we sent home monkey gift bags:

There are few things more fun to young children than a nice big puddle:

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As I child I remember coloring eggs at “Pittsburg Grandma’s” dining room table.  We would use wax to make decorations and Grandma would tell us about how they color eggs in Lithuania. 

We were too busy on the days preceding Easter to color eggs, so we colored them for family night on the Monday after Easter.

We decided to try an idea that seemed popular on the internet (baking instead of boiling eggs).  The kids loaded the muffin for me:

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I maybe went a little overboard getting Easter things this year.  I wanted Easter hats and new Easter clothes for the kids as well as a small gift for each kid:

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We went on an Easter Egg Hunt on the Saturday a week before Easter.  It was a special needs event that we were invited to through Nicole’s preschool.

They had a fire truck to explore:

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We’ve been renting our house in Washington which means that we can’t build any book storage on the walls next to the kid’s beds like I want, so book storage in the girls’ room has been a mess.  I bought these under the bed storage containers thinking we could sort the books out and have each girl store her own books under her bed.  To my dismay, the beds were too low and the containers didn’t fit underneath.  So I bought a 4 X 4 and had Zach cut it into blocks which we used to prop up the beds.  Now we just need to drill holes in the bottom of the beds and in the wood blocks so that we can use some dowels to make them more secure, but even without the dowels, none of the beds have come off their blocks.

One of the kids’ favorite treats from the Asian market is Ramune soda.  I love this series of pictures depicting Thomas’s response to it:

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Here are some of the things Thomas likes to do in the kitchen:(He has vanilla, but the lid is on)

He loves to pull out our plastic utensils and put them away in different places.  The oatmeal box is his favorite, but sometimes I find them in cereal boxes and other places:Here he is hiding some of our plastic kid dishes:These are his favorite thing in the kitchen, I usually can’t find them when I want to use them because he gets them out and hides them so often:

We met Zach for a visit to his favorite fish n’ chips restaurant, Freshy’s:

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I just thought these pictures were fun, so I had to share them with the internet.  Charlotte was sharing an apple with Thomas.  She’d take a bite and then offer him a bite.  Thomas loves apples and so do Charlotte and Ila.  My kids eat about 6-7 lbs of apples a week:Here’s Thomas with apple slices in each hand:

The Pinewood Derby, a journey of pictures, unless Zach edits this post and adds some text.

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I love that my kids are friends.  I hope they will always be good friends.  They do get in little fights at times, but they get over it and love each other again soon.  Today I had a chance to take Charlotte out with me all by herself which does not happen very often.  I asked her if she’d rather go with just me or take another kid.  She responded that she’d want to bring someone along and instead of just one sister, she wanted all 4 of her siblings to go.  Luckily I was able to talk her down to just one sibling. 

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