Happy Birthday to me!

I turned 29 today, woo hoo, right? I have a friend who told me that it all goes downhill after 30, so I plan on living it up this year! My birthday started a day early with Randy surprising me with a gift certificate for a mani/pedi at a salon. I haven't had a manicure since our wedding. I put the fake nails on and everything and the lady told me to never put nails on again since my "nail beds were so pretty." Deal! Those suckers are a pain and are not for me. I chose a nice hot pink color for the polish and then she added glitter. (I'm training for a triathlon and this morning on my 15 mile bike ride I kept looking at my nails cuz as Raidon says, "so pretty!" and I almost crashed.)

 But the gifts don't end there, he also scheduled a 1 hour massage and 1 hour facial. -What is a facial? I guess I will find out next week at my appointment. Can you tell I'm not used to being pampered?
I made myself this delicious German Chocolate cheesecake cake for my birthday. Yes, you heard right. Delicious sugary fatness, but hey, it's my birthday and time to indulge. Too bad my family only ate 1 small row of this sweet concoction. This tempting thing needs to leave my home immediately!

 And apparently I'm 4 today, according to candles :)

And please ignore the bags under my eyes, I have been getting up at 6:30 every morning for the triathlon training and am feeling exhausted. Here's to a great year!

Summer Craze

Get ready for a picture overload! Here are a few things we have done this summer in pictures:

This is Lake Wilderness Park in Maple Valley, and it's awesome! The water was nice and shallow and surprisingly warm. The kids loved it! My friend took us to this park for a fun picnic.

During the super hot heat wave days of the summer, we went to several splash parks. We went to this one at Pioneer Park a few times.

 It's not summer without ice cream cones at Burger King! This was Tripp's first day of summer.

 This is another splash park, Les Gove Park in Auburn. It also has some super sweet toys to play on, but I didn't get any pictures of them. It was overcast the day we went but the boys still wanted to get wet.

 Raidon is absolutely nuts when it comes to water play.

 Let the battle begin....

 We watched these boys for my friend while she packed her home to move to Ohio. We had a lot of fun and everyone knows we can always use more boys in our home ;) We were sad to see them move.

 We also took them to the river by our house and found out that Isaac is nuts!

 For Tripp's birthday we went to Bullwinkle's in Tukwila. Sadly this was the only pic I took of the day. We also went to Taco Bell for his birthday dinner and had a brownie cake at our home.

 I got to watch Khloe and Henry for a couple weeks this summer. This was Khloe's pet slug. She wouldn't let anyone touch or harm it. Silly girl!

 We also watched Alyssa one day and took her to the library for a magic show.

 Deklan was selected to help with one of the magic tricks. The favorite part of the show was the magician's "naughty" wand. It kept poking him when he wasn't looking and the kids ate it up!

 The crew after the show. Can you find Raidon?

Here are a few other library activities that we went to this summer: The kids love building with the straws and connectors.

I thought he looked so goofy with these.

 We got to watch the sing-a-long version of Frozen and build snowmen with marshmallows, pretzels, candy corn, and chocolate chips. Zayna and her kids also visited us for a week, but I was really bad about taking pictures while they were here :( Zelda, Asher, and Tripp got up early every morning and rode bikes. That is what Tripp missed the most when they went home.

I got to take the kids to a free Seahawks football camp. There was also a cheer leading clinic. It was about 120 degrees on the turf field that day. I took this when it was over. Check out those pink cheeks!

 Here all the girls got to pose with Blitz the mascot and the SeaGals while the boys ran through about 10 stations of football drills

 

 Zelda was an awesome little dancer. I couldn't believe she danced in that heat. She told me, "I know it's hot because my butt is sweaty." I'm glad I got at least one pic of Khloe dancing. She sat down with me in the shade of the speaker for the rest of the camp and I don't blame her. I was sweating and I wasn't doing anything. I bought all of these troopers milkshakes on the way home, they totally deserved it!

 And this little man has played flag football this summer and is a little stud. He plays as quarterback, running back, and safety and is so awesome! He is so fun to watch. He throws touchdowns, runs touchdowns, gets almost every tackle, and catches interceptions.

We went to Borst Park in Centralia for all of the Independence Day activities.

Trolley ride:

 Softball throw:

 Look-a-like contest. I think Randy, Tripp, and Raidon got third place. It was based on cheering from the crowd and apparently we didn't have enough family there to cheer for us. :)

 Tug of war:

 Tractor ride:

 Sack races:

 It was too much fun for Raidon, he was passed out during the entire parade where our kids scored a huge bag of candy.

This is only about half of the things we have done this summer, I am just really bad about taking pictures. So here is my super long picture catch up of what we have been up to lately. Hopefully it won't be too long until the next update, but who knows? We are trying to potty train Raidon right now and it's exhausting. Here goes....

Not a baby anymore :(

My sweet little Baine-Joe turned 1 at the beginning of the month. Time flies by way too quickly.

 Tripp, Deko, and I made some tye-dyed funfetti cupcakes for him with cream cheese frosting.

 He was a little timid about digging in at first....

 But definitely was able to make a huge mess when he was done.

 Aww... come on, I would totally have the cutest girls ever. What a sweety! Deklan said his present needed bows.

 Yep, we got our one year old a punching bag and he loved it! He tackled it over and over just like he does his brothers.

We love our loud mouthed Master Baine! He thinks he is a big boy and can do whatever his brothers are doing. He started walking at 10 months and is running now. He is so fun and crazy.

My Grad

Deklan graduated from preschool this week. How did this happen? He can't grow up yet, because I am not ready! His class put on a cute program. They sang songs, did sign language, and spoke another language. All of the kids moving on to Kindergarten got to share their favorite fact about an animal. Most of the kids shared facts about butterflies or sharks, but not Deko. Here is is fun fact:

True to Deko-form, he made everyone laugh. Only my child would talk about poop at his graduation. We are so proud of our little boy!

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