Promise delivered

For 7 summers we lived in Fairview Park, a pool-less community.  We would go down to Dayton for our pool fix when we could, or hope to be invited to someone else’s neighborhood pool.  Right about the time that Fairview finished their new community center complete with (at least) an indoor pool, Chris took the new job with Amazon in Seattle.  The girls and I were bummed.  Just when we were finally going to have a pool to go to…
SO, when talked about moving, we promised the kids that wherever we moved, we would find a neighborhood with a pool.  Well, community/neighborhood pools as I knew them are few and far between in Bellevue.  I grew up in Oakwood where the community pool was 2 blocks away, and very reasonably priced.  Here, they have “swim clubs”.  You can’t just pay on a per visit basis you have to be a member.  You have to drive there, and they aren’t nearly as reasonably priced as a community pool.  As with pretty much everything here, I struggle with sticker shock.  The club costs were too much for me to swallow.  I figured this summer we’d see how many days were actually “pool-worthy” and how much we got invited to other people’s pools.  Plus, I knew we were going to go to Dayton for 2 weeks of the summer.  Who needs a pool membership??  Well, it turned out the number of pool worthy days were more than I thought.  We finally broke down this weekend.
We are now official members of the Samena Swim Club.  We bit the bullet, spent the money for the yr. round membership (the only option since they don’t do “summer” memberships) and we have spent the last 3 days enjoying our new swim club.   Hopefully we will be able to enjoy it all year.  They have an indoor and outdoor pool, as well as small fitness room where Chris can work out, limited group classes and a preschool, where all the kids swim daily at the end of school.  I’m told that lots of Eastgaters (our elementary school) are members, so hopefully we’ll get to know even more people.
The girls have another week of swim classes and we’re thinking that Camille may be able to pass the deep end swim test by next week.  This involves treading water for 1 minute.  swimming the length of the pool, and jumping off the side, swimming to the ropes and then back to the wall.  If she can do this, then she can go off the board in the deep end.  The diving board is her motivation.  Elyse is doing well in swimming class as well.  Both girls moved from level 2 to level 3, but Camille really wants to go off the diving board.  Elyse is not super interested in that.  (She is interested in doing it in Gigi & Pop Pop’s pool though.)  Elyse may have found a different passion though.  While my brother was here, he made use of the ball pit balls and plastic piping that was supposed to be used for a soccer goal (but was just strewn about the back yard) and made a faux baseball game.  Elyse had excellent hand eye coordination.  Softball maybe??  She loved smacking the ball with the “bat”.  Sadly, this was not something I ever even thought to do with her.  But, I am trying to teach the girls to knit.  This seems like a good quiet activity to do since Elyse has some sort of stomach bug.  How she got it, I don’t know.  No one we know has a stomach bug…probably picked it up from that nice pool club membership, right??

Toddlers and Hoopers

If Chris and I could manage to work together, this text would be mixed into the videos below.  BUT, patience has never been a strength of his (or mine) and so he did his part and now I will do mine.  So the videos of the girls hooping are really for my Grandma.  She wanted to see video of them “playing” but I had trouble capturing that on camera today.  When they were playing, I was not able to video.  Camille did dress up her small bunny (which at one point was attached to her blanket) in a straw sun hat tied around her neck, Barbie halter top, pants, and a bow tied around her ear.  I wanted to take a photo, but by the time I got around to it, bunny had already changed out of the getup for bed time.  Sorry.
The video of Harry toddling around is my favorite.  In the past few days, Harry has moved from occasionally walking to get from point A to point B to almost always walking.  He truly looks like a drunk little man.  He did before in the videos of 1st steps, but the difference now is that he actually manages to catch himself before he falls, and then keeps going.  But he definitely looks like he has had a few too many drinks when he staggers around.  Chris’ parents got me a singing birthday card with the chicken dance song.  The message inside says “don’t even try to look dignified”.  It’s a good one.  Harry and the girls love to dance around to that and at one point Harry was dancing and hopping across the floor on his knees.  Camera was not handy at the time sadly. 
My neighbor said the other day that Harry sees himself as a big kid like his sisters.  It is true.  One day this week I pushed Harry on one of those tricycles with a handle to our neighborhood park.  Elyse walked, and Camille rode her bike.  On the way home, Camille’s legs gave out and she wanted to walk.  Harry was walking at that point too but I couldn’t manage to hold his hand, push the trike and walk Camille’s bike simultaneously (imagine that!!–what kind of a wimp am I?).  As it turned out, I didn’t need to.  Harry wanted to ride Camille’s 2 wheeler, no joke.  And Elyse and Camille took turns pushing the trike.  Harry was extremely proud of himself riding the big kid bike.  Never mind that it was pink. 
While my sister was here we took the kids to the craft store.  Harry had been interested in drawing and so we got him toddler crayons in the shape of a ball that his fists can hold onto.  They say they’re for ages 18 months+ but we all know he’s artistically ” gifted”.  I mean, did you see the fingerpainting video in a previous post??   But…NOPE.  He doesn’t want the “baby” crayons.  He wants the markers, with caps he can take on off and put on.  Well, not so much with the “on” part, just mostly off.  An then leave them hiding under furniture to eventually dry out.
To help me celebrate my 35th b-day, my neighbor Jennifer took me and her sister (whose b-day is also the 15th) to dinner in Seattle on Tues night.  I had a good time looking at the characters walking the streets of Capitol Hill.  It’s a colorful neighborhood, to say the least.  I can’t wait to go there again.  I want a seat by the window so I can people watch.
Chris has been working from home lately because of construction on I-90.  He worked from home yesterday and was able to take a 2 hr. “lunch” so that we could go for a bike ride.  We rode to Mercer Island.  It was fun because we could actually have a conversation  while we rode the island.  We don’t get to talk as much as we’d like.  It was also nice to do that kind of thing in the middle of the week.  The weather was hot and sunny, just how I ordered it.  My brother arrived in time for guacamole and chips on the deck and then dinner on our new outdoor dining set.  It was one of my best birthdays in a long time.  Having a babysitter for those 2 hours was a good call on my part.
It is hard to believe that 2 weeks from today we will be in Dayton.  I look forward to it, but feel sad that the summer is going at lightening speed.  I need summer to be 2x as long as it is–we have only just begun!!

Video Help

Here are some videos Emily wanted to post.

Photos uploaded

http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/LateJuneEarlyJuly#

Beware.  Chris took 99% of these pictures.  I love Chris, but he takes TOO many pictures without people.  I like people in my pictures.  Many of these are BORING.  Just a heads up.  On the other hand, there are some cute ones of the kids.  I know you have to take lots  pictures to actually have one good one, but still, there are about one hundred that we could safely delete if only there was an easy way to delete large groups of pictures on Picassa.  But I do not know how.  And, upon reflection, many of you would probably say the same about the verboseness (is that even a word?) of my blogs.  Probably we could delete about 90% of the words and it would be better.  Anyhoo, the pictures are uploaded.  I’ll leave it at that and head to bed.

We have been blessed with lots of company the past couple of weeks.  Bits, Andy and Zack came the last weekend in June, and then Bits & Zack stayed for the week.  My cousin Kate, who lives in Istanbul, joined us mid-week and stayed until Sunday, and on Friday my friend Kerrian from Baltimore arrived for the long 4th of July weekend.  It was so much fun having everyone, but we were too busy enjoying each other’s company to catch up on the blog.
We went to several beaches beacase we had really warm weather.  Plus it was an activity that everyone could enjoy (kids and adults).  Friday we spent the day in Seattle doing touristy things like walking around the Pikes Place Market, and the space needle, and tons of walking.  Then Chris took the kids home for dinner and Kerrian, Kate, her friend Liz, and I went out for a drink and then dinner in Capitol Hill at a Thai place.  It was so fun for me to be foot loose and fancy free. 
On the 4th, we couldn’t actually go to fire works because Harry would need to go to bed, so after a late dinner Chris took the girls (big and small) around the neighborhood in search of some fire works in the distance.  I stayed back with Harry and caught up on some kitchen duty.  Kerrian and Kate and I got to do some good hiking/walking through the neighborhood, and so I’m not sure how much they enjoyed doing it again, but they were sports about it.  
After 10 days of gorgeous weather, this week has been cool and gray.   This week the girls have swimming lessons every morning from 9:45 to 10:30.  They are really tired from all of this, so our afternoons have been low key.  Today they are watching Mary Poppins.  It’s nice to have down time.  Chris is in Minneapolis this week, but I”ll try to get the rest of the pictures on picassa for viewing.