Too silly.

In our family, we say "silly" instead of "stupid." As in, "That was silly of me," or "What a silly TV show," or--my personal favorite--"Why is Facebook so SILLY?!"

Anyway. This summer has been pretty silly. And I mean that in both senses of the word. We've had some really goofy, silly fun this summer; we've also had some really silly, stupid stuff going on. It's just been too silly around here.

So, Silly Summer, here's what we think of you:

And now...I think we'll go to the beach.

A Desire to Be Free

"We have implanted in our souls a desire to be free. The Lord understood this when He granted us our mortal probation. With that freedom, however, comes accountability. We are instructed not to idle away our time nor bury our talents and not use them. We are expected to make our lives better through our own initiatives and efforts."


-L. Tom Perry

Golden Raspberries

Raspberries! I love them.

Isaac doesn't. Which is a tragedy, really, because that means I have to eat all of them.

I saw these at the grocery store a few weeks ago:

Golden raspberries? I'd never heard of them. But they taste the same as red ones.

So of course I had to buy some. I was going to bake something with them, but...um...suddenly they were all gone.

I dunno how that happened.

With Grandpa

That is all.

Green Smoothie Popsicles

Two things you should know before you read this post:

1. My mind was totally blown when I realized I could freeze smoothies in popsicle molds--I love real-fruit popsicles, but I don't like all the sugar.

2. I'm afraid of blenders.

So I told Little Boy (months ago) that we could make some popsicles. Someday. And then I forgot. And forgot and forgot and forgot and forgot....

But I finally did it today. Since green smoothies (that is, a smoothie with leafy greens in it) are all the rage right now, I decided to use a green smoothie recipe for our popsicles.

See, they don't even look green. Little Boy was concerned that "green" popsicles would taste like limes. He doesn't like lime popsicles.

I used the first recipe on this site. Fruit, spinach, no sugar. (Edit: I made half of the recipe. It was the perfect amount for eight little popsicles.) We haven't tasted them yet, but the smoothie was pretty good before freezing it.

Little Boy is REALLY hoping that tomorrow will be warm. Warm means that Mommy will let him eat a popsicle.

Summer Days

I love when I'm not too big for the playground equipment.

Achoo.

{click image for source}

So yeah, I haven't been blogging.

Because allergies have been kicking. my. hiney.

(We don't say "butt" at our house.)

Anyway, I'll be back when the cursed plants quit their pollinating. Stinkin' plant reproduction.

I Think They Can Dance

So You Think You Can Dance just started up again. Guys, I loooove this show. I've blogged about it before--head over here to read about why I like it so much and how the show works.

The first few episodes of the season aren't usually that great. I guess it takes awhile for the dancers to settle in. But since the skill level of the contestants has been getting better every year, and this is season 8, this week's opening show was actually...pretty good.

So here are my two favorite dances from this week--one fun dance, and one more serious dance.

Here's the fun one:

And here's the pretty one. This clip has all the blabbing included, so skip to about the 2:00 mark if you just want to see the dance:

Did I mention that I love this show?!

Snail Babies

Sounds gross, right? My parents have a bunch of blueberry bushes in their yard that have been there forever--so they produce TONS of blueberries. Okay, not literally TONS, but you know what I mean. Anyway, toward the end of the blueberry season this year, we started finding tiny snails on the blueberries--after we'd already washed the berries and were about to eat them. It turns out that baby snails are adorable. This was the third (and last) snail that we found. And no, we didn't eat any snails--at least not that we know of.

We Are Gonna Play Blue's Clues, Cuz It's a Really Great Game

Little Boy's Little Cousin spent an afternoon with us a couple weeks ago. [Her baby brother was here, too, but he's not in the shot.]

 Isaac took Little Boy and Little Cousin to the playground for a couple hours. It was HOT that day. Super-hot. So after lunch, I let the two of them them cool down a little bit in our bedroom.

 

Or maybe I should say the three of them--Little Boy, Little Cousin, and Joe.

Beach Trip

I have a lot of pictures here, so I'm not going to type much. We'd been learning about the beach, so we took a trip to the nearest one (it's more of a seashore than a beach, I think--you'll see in the pictures). My baby sister drove--she needs a lot of practice hours before she can get her license. Little Boy hadn't been to the beach (seashore?) in at least a year. We had this part of the beach to ourselves. Rocky, huh? My brother tagged along, too. Little Boy found a tiny shell--you can't tell in the photo, but the shell is fingernail-sized. I wouldn't recommend swimming in this water (although some people do). We wear rain boots instead. We saw barnacles, little crabs, seaweed, gulls, and seashells--all things we'd learned about at home. And Little Boy thought that was kinda cool. But really, all a three-year-old boy wants to do at the beach is throw rocks in the water. {cross-posted at Pie For Breakfast}

A List and an Unrelated Photo

Yeah, Father's Day was more than a month ago. But I was looking through my photos today, and realized I'd forgotten to post this one--this cake was perfect because both my husband and my dad love to golf. Love. My grandpa taught my dad (his son-in-law), and my dad taught Isaac (his son-in-law). I guess we'd better have a baby girl eventually, so Isaac can have a son-in-law to golf with. Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything. I had a busier day than usual today, and I was going to blog about it...but now I'm kinda tired...after having been so busy and all. So I'm gonna go with a list instead. Y'all can fill in the details yourselves. Today:

1. Got Little Boy to read three-letter words for the first time. My family keeps asking when we're going to move on to four-letter words (*rolls eyes*).
2. Brushed the spiderwebs from the deck and front porch. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but trust me--it was. I won't even tell you how many egg sacs I found.
3. Made popsicles--finally--with some little popsicle molds that I got at WalMart this year. I used pink lemonade. So...they're not any healthier than regular popsicles. A bit cheaper, though.
4. Unpacked some more of Little Boy's stuff that's been lying around for three weeks. Now he actually has some room to play in there.
5. Washed, dried, AND put away laundry.
6. Had goldfish crackers for lunch. No, this is not a habit at our house.
7. Went to the local berry farm with my mom and sister. Had some of the local berry farm's ice cream. Counted that as part of lunch.
8. Spent more than an hour picking blueberries from my mom's blueberry bushes and didn't get them all. Those bushes are monsters. Delicious monsters.
9. Spent a little extra time setting up for preschool tomorrow. Hope it pays off.

Do you ever have a really productive day, and then not have another one for a long time? Yeah, this is probably the most I'll get done in one day for at least another week.

Strawberries and More Strawberries

Remember last year, when we went to the local strawberry festival? No? Oh. Well, we did. And we had so much fun that we went this year, too! We met up with some friends and some family. Little Boy was brave enough to ride the little train: Look, he has his own personalized barrel! [No, not really.] Little Boy, some friends, and a cousin. Little Boy LOVES taking tours of the farm [on a big wagon pulled by a tractor. Think hay ride, but without the hay]. Well, he loves the tractor, anyway. One of the cousins took a little nap. And we left with some souvenirs. They didn't last very long. Guess we'll have to go back for more next year.

A One and a Two

Two things about our new apartment: 1. We don't have internet there yet. Kind of on purpose. We'll probably get it hooked up sometime next week. 2. It's been a good 15 degrees hotter in western WA than average. That might be okay if air conditioners were standard equipment in Pacific Northwest homes, but...they're not. And a ceiling fan can only do so much. One thing about my mom's house (my parents live up the road from us): 1. They have internet and air conditioning. So Little Boy and I have been spending a lot of time at Grandma's house. Little Boy loves it, of course, because there's more room to run around (and around and around). And more room to jump off of stuff, which is one of his latest hobbies. And also because Grandma lets him have animal crackers whenever he wants.

Just Beachy

So, this one time we went to the beach [this was like two months ago. I know, I'm terrible at keeping up.]. And at that beach we had some adventures.

 
We sported our most stylish beach gear, of course.

 
Little Boy ONLY wanted to walk in the water. None of that boring sand stuff.

 

We wondered why this pink starfish was with all the purple ones. Maybe the pink one was lonely, and the purple ones were comforting it--we saw lots of pink ones on other rocks. Or maybe the pink one is their prey, and they're going to eat it. Eventually.

Not pictured: The weird fish that we found on the beach and threw back in the water. Saved! And the beached jellyfish that we did NOT throw back in the water. Ouch.

Hot Hot Heat

Well, the relatives have come and gone. It was a good week. We went to the mountains, the beach, and the Seattle Temple. And we sweated a lot--it was hot this week.

You might think that, with the record-breaking heat going on at sea level, the mountains would be a good place to cool off. We thought so, anyway. Wrong. It was still sweltering.


The snow might have been more inviting if it were less...gray.


Luckily, it wasn't too hot to pose for pictures and show off our biceps. Heh.


Maybe we should've gone for a higher mountain. Looks pretty cold up there.

Atttack of the Killer Tomato

Remember a couple months ago, when I was worried about my tomato plant? It looked so sickly:

Well. I obviously know nothing. My tomato is now a renegade...the jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me...uh, sorry. Ahem.

Anyway, check out my "sickly" tomato now:

 

Yeah. It's a monster.

U-Pick (We Pick) Strawberries

So, a few days after the Strawberry Festival, my mom, my sister, and I went back to the farm to pick strawberries. Oh, and Little Boy came, too.

 
We searched for berries...

 
picked berries...

 
looked cute while standing among the berries...

 
and hauled berries. We ended up with three bucketsful--way more than we needed. That was fine with me. I have a strawberry problem, remember?

 
Mmmmm.

Strawberry Festival

Two weeks ago we headed out to a local berry farm for their annual Strawberry Festival. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I have a strawberry problem. If there are strawberries within reach, I will eat them all without even realizing it. All of them. And I don't know why. They're just good, I guess.

So anyway: Strawberry Festival? I'm totally there. Another draw was that everything at the festival was free. Except the berries, of course. But that's a good deal for a family outing.


Why are we here, Mom? Oh, you just wait, Little Boy.


Small strawberry sundae = free.


Our best friends just happened to be there, as well. We didn't plan it.


This is what sealed the deal for Little Boy. The farm had a big green tractor. Well, I'm sure they have more than one tractor, but this one pulled us around the farm on a guided tour. Little Boy was all excited to ride behind the tractor, but once we climbed aboard, he took it really seriously. He sat on his little seat with an all-business look on his face. I think he felt grown up.


And then, of course, there was the playground. He's probably staring out toward the tractor again.

So, in spite of his uncertainty, Little Boy had pretty much the best day ever. And Isaac and I enjoyed ourselves, too. Did I mention the strawberries?

Being Like...

When Little Boy pretends, he says he's "being like" something. For example, "Bein' like Daddy!" Or, "Bein' like Spongebob!" Or, "Bein' like a orange!" [Don't ask.]

So the other day, Little Boy decided to be like "the ditty!" [We don't have a cat. It's my mom's.]


Nope, he's not crawling around...


because my mom's cat is a little bit lazy. The "ditty" is not exactly something that I would personally want to be like. But then again, neither is an orange.