63 degree average

We discovered a new playground this week. They love it!

Whitney playing peek a boo at the new playground. She is also sporting a 24 month size shirt and 18 month pants. See, Grandma. I'm not lying. They really do fit in those size clothes. Crazy.
Tucker at the beach, hoping for yet another crab dinner. Thank HEAVENS this is Daddy's new recreational activity, crab diving.
Tucker intently watching a small bird
Mommy and Whitney went on a hike at 7:15 am. See participants below. The rest were in bed when we walked out the door. Tucker would normally be up, but he stayed up until midnight the night before.

Whitney playing in the sand at the beach waiting for the crab dinner. Note: tan marks in WA can occur on the face, hands and feet, but not really anywhere else. Check out her sandal tan. look close at her left foot.
I found these prints around our house. Can you guess who's is who? 1. Tucker monster or Whitney bear?
2. Tucky monster or Whitney bear?
3. Tucky monster or Whitney bear? See answers below.



I've decided to make everyone jealous, since I'm really jealous of all the sun you all are seeing. That way we can all be jealous together. I was paying our electricity bill for the past month of June/July. Yep. It's up a little because we have to turn the heat on in the night and early morning to get the chill out. On the bill it states the average daily temperature. 63 degrees. This lady at church made me a little sick with her stats. She said she heard on the radio (in seattle. Our house is always about 3 degrees cooler due to vegetation and being on the northeast side of a mountain. Our strawberry plants and lavender are just now blooming, to give you an idea of our microclimate) that a guy looked up how much summer Seattle has had this year. His definition of summer is 80 degree weather or higher. 78 minutes year-to-date. So my roommate and I went for a walk, and she reminded me that it is better to have the coolness than the blasting heat. At least no one is dying around here.

This week was a really good and really not as good week, all in one. We had two days of sun on Friday and Saturday, so we went to the beach to watch Daddy dive for crab, went blueberry picking and hiking. I was going to fit in kayaking, but looking at all the wakes from the boats on the lake from the overview hike we went on discouraged me.

Whitney loved blueberry picking. Tucker isn't really into it. At first, Jim picked a few berries for Whitney, then handed them to her, but once she saw that there were more from where those came from, she picked blueberries herself. She was pretty good about only picking ripe or semi ripe ones. No green ones went in her mouth, but a few reddish ones probably did. She tossed and turned all night, probably with a tummy ache. Too much good food. Yesterday she ate strawberries and bagels for breakfast, the regular for lunch and crab, sweet potato fries (home made), raspberries, and bread with honey. Jim is certain that we have the best fed babies in town. He has spoiled them. He was trying to crack his crab behind the papertowels, but as soon as they caught on with what he was eating, they wanted nothing else. Jim decided that the next kid gets no taste of crab until they can crack the shells themselves. I have to agree.

Tucker stayed in nursery the whole time last week. As a result, they both had really bad colds. I got it too a few days later, and found out that it started out with a really painful sore throat. I knew they were crying in pain Tuesday night, but couldn't figure out why. It was one of those really snotty colds, so while Whitney had to have her nose wiped every 10 minutes, Tucker did not. The usual for him, too. No runny nose for him. Nope. Snot is internalized always with him. This time it went in his lungs and gave us a scare as he really had a hard time breathing through the night. I knew he wasn't dying, but he was wheezing and working hard to keep breathing. I brought him in and he basically got asthma medicine to calm down the breathing stuff. All that sleep loss really threw off his schedule, so of course, the perfectly logical solution to that is to stay up until midnight to solve the problem. Grrrrrrr.......

Tuesday morning, before it all hit, we went to visit someone who happens to have a cat. Holy cow. I had no idea how much Whitney loves cats. Probably because she has to chase the cat, not beg it to leave her alone. After playing the cat, she watched Grandma's e-card over and over while I cut her fingernails, as it has a cat in it.

So, since they really seem to be understanding more and more, I decided more and more chores are in order to go with it. They aren't balking..... yet. Before, clean up meant I pretty much cleaned everything up, sorted it and put it all in the play room from its scattered location throughout the house. Now, they can somewhat sort on their own. It takes forever, but now I have them pick up all the scattered toys and ask them where it goes. Tucker is surprisingly good at this. They both are, but I guess it surprises me more that Tucker stays on track with clean up more often than Whitney. They also started helping with dishes. Tucker is really good at rinsing. Whitney practices "bub-bles" a bunch.

All in all we are glad to be healthy again, glad to see the sun without roasting and looking forward to another week of work for Jim.

Answers 1. Whitney bear. 2. Tucky monster. 3. Left is Tucky monster and right is Whitney bear

Below are videos for grandparent eyes only. They are videos of them playing at the park and the beach.