Bella, Gabe and Josiah

 Seriously. Excessive silliness. Those are the only words to describe these two.

The salmonberries are ripe!! I loved when my boys were little, but it is also so much fun that they can do things and I can trust them to not run in the road and behave themselves.  Also, Gabe getting berries was a great example of his tenacity. I have never seen anything as far into those pages as he would go for a berry! And Josy is a likely berry thief. I would put berries in my bowl and when I turned around it was empty again, but somehow his bowl kept getting fuller and fuller…

We wanted to have a party to celebrate Bella’s graduation from high school. Since she didn’t have a normal graduation ceremony (and I still haven’t seen her diploma, which I need to follow up on…), we wanted to do something official to celebrate. We decided to wait until Katilyn and Seth could be here, but it turns out that was a bad weekend for everyone else, as everyone else that we invited had plans that weekend and couldn’t make it… But we had fun! Bella wanted ramen and onogiri, along with peanut butter cake, so she and I spent the afternoon cooking, but it turned out really well and it was exactly what she wanted, which was the whole point.  School has been a rough road for her and I’m proud that she actually did it.

We asked the neighbors to watch Josy’s wheelbarrow while we were gone, since it was new and we had kids staying at our house. They took the job very, very seriously.

I wanted to be back from Maui for the 4th. That’s the fun times of the year to be home. So we flew home early on the morning of the 3rd. When we landed, there were all sorts of people to meet us, including the family who were did the house swap with and Auntie Katilyn and Bryson! We talked at the airport for a long time and then we headed home to sleep. Some of us slept. Pat and I got in a two hour nap. We had to wake Josy up after 4 and a half, and Gabe didn’t sleep a wink. I expected him to just fall over due to exhaustion, but somehow he survived… Then we went to Aunt Jan’s to watch the fireworks. One of my cousins was there with her family and her son lives history and military stuff and Gabe thought he was the best ever. Then did not make it home from the fireworks before falling asleep in the car… The morning of the 4th, we woke everyone up again and headed to the parade. Josy was still asleep, so I picked him up and plopped him in the car still asleep. Poor baby was tired!! But

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. And in this case, that was apparently our energy, because we were so wiped out that we did basically nothing except for packing our suitcases and cleaning up the house… Then we started the long flight home. Josy started excited. (Also, how did he suddenly turn into such a big kid????) And then promptly fell asleep on the plane. First, however, he thoroughly entertained the guy next to him, who thankfully was a good sport. J: Do you have kids? Guy in the next seat: No J: Do you have a sister? G: No. I’m the oldest of four brothers. J: You have to have a mom. Someone to grow the kids. Gabe stayed up and watched a movie…and then paid for it for the rest of the way home. But we made it home and we had some special people to meet us at the airport…

The last thing that we knew that we wanted to do was to go back to Black Rock, where we went on our honeymoon. We started with papaya for breakfast. Then we got in the truck and Josy showed off his new hat. Then we headed up the coast. The first stop was lunch and the boys found a splash pad. We also found some pirates. And a pineapple. Then we walked along the beach to the hotel. We were going to just walk, but the boys got very wet just walking. So we gave up on their swim suits and let them swim like that. Josy will still say that swimming in his clothes was his favorite part of the trip. Pat and I did put our swim suits on though. We do have some standards… Josy had an extra change of clothes, but Gabe did not, so he changed into his dry swim suit for dinner. And then we got rolled ice cream and jenga for dessert.