June in pictures

 hey, look at me. it's only mid-july and i'm already posting about june. here are the pictures from last month:

i think one of the girls actually took these. probably madeleine.

when diane feels like she's picked an exceptionally good outfit and hairstyle, she'll sometimes ask me to take a picture of her. this was one of those days.

this was madeleine at the "hawk walk," a fundraiser for her school.

we had some friends that were moving and had a double birthday party for their girls, who are right around my girls' ages. they did it at a gymnastics facility and the girls had a blast.

jonathan had a couple weeks during june where he walked around with garden gloves on as much as possible. the week before the garden gloves, it was an oven mitt. they were huge on them, and he walked around with his hands held up high so that they wouldn't fall off. it looked like he was constantly prepped to do surgery or something. pretty hilarious.

we had some visitors in june. randy's brother came with his kids, and grandpa bob joined them. grammy came the next week, but i somehow failed to get a single picture of her here.

while randy's brother was here, the boys (minus jonathan) all went camping, so the rest of us decided to go get some milkshakes and fries and enjoy the kirkland waterfront a little.

we also went to the everett children's museum. i had never been before and it was pretty fun. the kids loved it.

madeleine wrapped up her first year of school last month. it's hard to believe she'll be in school full day in the fall.

this is a picture of her and her teacher, mrs. wilson. she was a fabulous teacher, and a perfect fit for madeleine.

madeleine and irina, one of her best friends from kindergarten. she lives right by us, so we walk to and from school together most days.

i believe the following three were taken at 6:00am for a "one of these things is not like the other," sequence on instagram.

we bought a pool pass this year. it's actually the pool that i grew up going to. it's a neighborhood pool, mostly for the HOA members, but they sell a limited number of pool passes each year to non-members. it's one of the closest pools to us, and since i want my kids to be in the pool a lot more than they have been previously, we decided to bite the bullet and buy a pass.

we went to the pool pretty much every day except sundays in june. regardless of weather, right after naps we all suit up and head to the pool. for lots of june, the weather wasn't amazing, so we frequently had the pool either to ourselves, or only shared it with a few people. the pool is heated to 84 degrees, so even when it's cold outside, the pool was still pleasant to be in. my kids love it and i love it, too.

may in pictures

randy had been messing around with the settings on our camera and i took these first few pictures before i realized it and fixed the coloring. but they're so cute, i still had to post them. jonathan is one of the most expressive kids i've encountered. he hardly says three real words, but he can talk your ear off and has the best inflection.

he and madeleine are best buds.

these are from mother's day. something happened with the camera, so they're not great, but it's at least documentation.

madeleine lost her first tooth! she walked up to me and said, "look mom, i lost my tooth. it was bothering me, so i pulled it out." randy and i were both fine with avoiding involvement in the actual removal.

this was a family outing to bothell landing one weekend.

randy and i went to a byu singers concert that was about two minutes away from our house at the bastyr university chapel. they had beautiful stained glass windows.

my tomato fleet is planted and growing. i can't wait for the fruits.

jonathan loves to bring all of his bedding downstairs and set up his bed in the middle of the room.

we finally got diane a bike with pedals (i need to take pictures of her riding) and now jonathan has a bike. ah, the joys of hand-me-downs from sisters.

well, after three kids, we finally had our first trip to the emergency room this month. jonathan ran into the fireplace and put a nice gash in his head.

this was to hold a numbing agent on the wound:

randy held him for the actual stitches. i don't do so well with that stuff.

they gave him this bear at the hospital, with a bandaid just like his. poor boy.

and this is the main reason that i have been behind on blogging and pretty quiet on instagram lately:

potty training. we started a couple weeks ago and jonathan is fully potty-trained now, but it took about a week of completely devoting all of my time to following him around and teaching him, and then another week of pretty close attention. i feel like i'm finally getting my life back and trying to catch up from a couple weeks of doing absolutely nothing.

the weather was really nice and we were sick of being cooped up, so we moved the potty training outside.

and she lost another tooth. once again, no involvement on our part.

enjoying some ice cream together in downtown kirkland.

we also saw these ducks and geese while we were down there. the ducklings were all piled on top of each other.

and that's may. i'm finally caught up. until next month... or three months from now...