Swimming lessons

Both girls started swimming lessons this summer. Auntie Erin took Hayden to hers every week, and she loved it! She was a natural, already going under water with no problems at all!



Daddy took Emmie each week, and true to her nature, she was very hot and cold about swimming. We knew it would be tough because she's naturally afraid of the water. She started out a little hesitant, but then did great for awhile, followed by a couple of not so great classes. So she will be a work in progress. :)

Summer Fun

Since I am waaaay behind on keeping up the blog, I'm going to do one big post with a bunch of pics from all our fun over the last month! It's been busy, but fun! I think we are all ready, however, to get back to a bit more of a routine schedule with preschool starting soon!

We went to a kids' concert at the Kirkland waterfront and Emmie has gotten so brave around the water - she actually waded in up to her chest!

Fun playdate at Lola and Abbey's house

Family hike to Denny Creek and the natural waterslides ... lots of fun, minus the million flies!

Emmie and Rhea watching the Blue Angels

Emmie went to an adorable tea party with all the little girls from her new preschool that she will start in a couple weeks!

Great-grandma Shaha and great-uncle Bill came for a visit.

We went blueberry picking - do you think Emmie had a few to eat?! :)

Great-grandma Evie came for a visit, too!

Our sweet little angel :)

Lots of summertime fun with Jordyn - they are pretending to be mermaids.

Hayden is 9 months old!

Our little munchkin is getting big fast! We have seen alot of firsts in the last month - Hayden started crawling, got her first two teeth, began pulling up to standing, clapping and pointing! She has also added "uh-oh" to her vocabulary, except it mostly comes out as "uh!" when she drops things on purpose to see our reaction.

This little baby is so physically capable of everything, we are always amazed! She is SO fast at crawling, pulling up and sitting down is no problem at all, she crawls all over us and everything, climbs into things, out of things, and when we're outside or on the hardwood floor, she "walks" on all fours so as to avoid hurting her knees! It's amazing to watch. It has also been fun to watch Emmie and Hayden interact on a new level now - they actually play together and it is too cute to watch. Emmie, of course, loves to 'teach' Hayden everything she knows!

As always, miss Hayden continues to have the best personality - she is so easy-going and always has a huge smile on her face! We love her so much!

Here are her stats at 9 months:

Height - 28.75" - 90th %
Weight - 18.5 lbs - 50th %
Head - 90 % (big like Emmie's!)

Great-grandma Shaha visit

Great-grandma Shaha came for a visit and the girls had a great time playing with her!

4th of July

Our 4th of July was busy but fun! We had our first family campaign outing since Nate began his quest for Issaquah City Council - we went to the picnic at the South Cove neighborhood on Lake Sammamish, where we enjoyed watching kids in the dunk tank, got Emmie's face painted, and of course, had hot dogs, while Nate learned the fine art of talking to complete strangers, asking for their vote! We then came home and spent the rest of the afternoon at our own Dahlia Park neighborhood BBQ. It was a HOT HOT day, so alot of time was spent playing in the water and eating popcicles with all the kids. At the end of the evening, I stayed home since Hayden was asleep, and Nate took Emmie up to the bluff above our house for an awesome view of all the area fireworks. Nate took some video of Emmie describing what she saw. :)

Raspberry picking

We made a trip out to Remlinger Farms with all the neighbors and had a great time picking raspberries a couple weeks ago. I think we ate as many as we took home! Once home with our raspberries, we attempted to make our first raspberry jam, and while it tastes good, I didn't manage to get all the sugar dissolved so it was very grainy! But Emmie doesn't seem to mind at all, and we had alot of fun making it.

Camping and clam-digging fun

This month has been alot of first for Emmie - we took her on her first camping trip to Dosewallips State Park on Hood Canal. What a great time! We went with about 15 families from the new school Emmie will start in the Fall, The Children's Garden. What a great group of people, and it was so fun to see Emmie hit it off with several of the kids, so she will know a few familiar faces when she starts in September.

The highlight of the trip was going clam digging - something we had never done before, but what a great time! We all had a blast tromping around in the mud, digging up a bucketfull of clams, and Emmie's favorite - chasing around the million tiny little crabs that were scurrying all over the place!

It was a beautiful place, and we had so much fun, can't wait to go camping again soon - next time we will take Hayden with us! We missed her!


Emmie and Brady checking out the clams they dug up.


All that white stuff in the background are oysters!! There were tons of them!



Yum yum, smores are so yummy.