Friday, September 11, 2015

July Miscellaneous

How bout we do a random post of the photos from July that don’t warrant a post of their own? 

Carly took a little sewing class from Jen Gibbs in July.  The class was about three hours long for four days.  Jen took the girls to the fabric store on the first day of class and let them pick out the fabric they wanted to use for their projects.  


At the end of the class Carly had made a pillowcase, a tote bag, and a felt needle case


Carly really enjoyed the class and would love to signup for the classes Jen is going to have this fall, but I’m not sure we can swing it with our other commitments.  Carly also participated in a weeklong lacrosse camp in July.

Justin and Jason hit up a few more hikes this summer.

Poo Poo Point (yep, seriously that's it's name)


The green turf is where the paragliders take off – gorgeous views!

What parent doesn’t love seeing the love between their children?  A house full of kiddos definitely isn’t always peaceful and loving, but nobody gets mad at the baby.  Drew sure is loved and adored.  Abigail will often want to snap a picture of her and her little buddy.


Justin has signed up to participate in the Seattle Spartan event in October with several other guys in the ward and community.  It’s an 8+ mile run with 25+ intense obstacles.  He’s taking his training seriously and gets up early several days a week to workout.  I’ll save the details for the finish line, but I’ll share a few of his pictures he’s taken recently.  You’d be hard pressed to find a prettier view.


Yep, we’ve even gotten out there and ran together.


As a (now former) counselor in the high priest group, Justin has organized a high priest social the past two summers.  The Syphers are kind enough to host in their wonderful yard.  The food is great and it’s fun to visit with families we don’t socialize much with.  Drew grew tired of all the older folks and kept walking back to the car to let us know he was ready to go.  


I had a friend ask us to join them for a summer $1 movie followed by hitting up Chick-fil-A on Cow Appreciation Day, July 14th.  The deal is that anyone fully dressed in a cow costume gets a free meal.  Some of you might be wondering why the Fletcher’s need anymore free meals when we have 156 free meals to use in the next year – well, by dressing up as a cow  you to pick ANY meal whereas our 156 meals are only good for the original chicken sandwich meal and since I hadn’t tried any other meal EVER, I was excited for the chance to try something new.  It was a tough decision, but I opted for the grilled chicken cool wrap with avocado lime ranch dressing – oh my, yum!  Worth the effort to cut out dozens of black spots for me and the kids.

Figuring out how we were going to make cow ears…

I look uber thrilled don’t I?

So the only plain white shirt that fit Drew was one of Katie’s.  I didn’t realize how the little gathers at the top of the sleeves combined with the pink ears and long hair made Drew look a little feminine.  He got his own free meal though so worth the gender confusion.  Lauren’s youngest was dressed in a chicken costume – so cute.

The kids all got a cow balloon – not sure why Katie chose a green cow ;)


Just a cute picture of Jason and Katie sitting on the back step watching Justin work in the yard.  


Our yard has been thrashed this past spring (cranefly?) and it’s taken all summer to get it looking like a place you might actually want to be in.  This picture was taken back in April when 80% of it was dead and gone.


Now that summer is over our backyard is has mostly filled back in and we could actually hangout back there – just in time for the rain – boo!

A new lamp arrived in a human sized box – perfect for summer fort making. 


July 20th we had what has become our annual Fletcher family night at the pool.  Mike made some food assignments and brought plenty of food for us all to enjoy.  It wasn’t the warmest evening so I ended up staying out of the pool, but the kids couldn’t care less.  Poor Drew was shivering, but loved every minute of it. 


It’s also become the perfect opportunity to celebrate Haden and Jason’s birthdays.


Our summer lunch dates continued throughout the summer.  Each of the kids got a least two lunches with Mom.  I wish I would have taken pictures of all of them – next year.  Abigail’s first was at the Cheesecake Factory – girls knows how to milk it, but like I’d object.


On July 29th, Jason had his make-up lunch date for the lunch date he had an allergic reaction to back in June.  He could chose anywhere he wanted to go and he decided on Burger King – um, okay?


After his lunch he had a well-child checkup and then we redeemed his birthday coupon at Cold Stone.


Drew continues to get into things.  Fully ignoring the “No food outside the kitchen” rule as well as what should be a rule against eating out of the cereal container with your wet slobbery hands.


The kid is adorable though.  Busy, but adorable.  This was my attempt to get a picture of him wearing a new tie.


You get the idea.

Not sure what Justin bribed the kids with to make them run around the outdoor table during a hailstorm, but it looks like they’d have done it for free.  Yep, and that’s Jason squealing.


Drew and I shared a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on a July evening.  I don’t think I was planning to share with him, but he plopped himself down on the kitchen floor and asked for more.  Who can blame him?  


It’d been ages since I’d prepared a box for myself and I gotta say it was as good as I remember.  As a member of the Macaroni and Cheese Kid’s Club I saved the proof of purchases for each box I ate from childhood until sometime several years into parenthood.  Back in the day you could redeem them for all sorts of cheesy souvenirs.  When I was in college my parents used to give me a case of this stuff as a Christmas present.   

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Our Best Bites in Seattle

With the craziness of fall, there is rarely a time we eat all together as a family and dinner tends to be a hodge podge of randomness throughout the evening.  Once upon a time I did cook delicious meals for my family on a regular basis.  I’m not much of a chef, but I can follow a recipe.  Thankfully, I’m feeding my family with the aid of technology and there are many websites that I turn to again and again for great food.  Our Best Bites is one of our family favorites.  Abigail has Sara’s Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe memorized and makes it no less than once a month.  The girls were each supposed to cook a meal once a week during the summer.  Carly’s first meal was their Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos, which were yummy as always.

When I saw they were coming to Seattle on July 23rd to promote their new cookbook on our local morning show I jumped on the chance to get free tickets for me and the girls.  We also had a few friends join us for the fun.

There were six segments to the live taping. 

1. Guest star known for his role in How I Met Your Mother, Jason Segel was there promoting his new movie, The End of the Tour.

Between each segment we were able to snag a picture with the guest (except Jason Segel – he was a strict no picture star) 

2.  Decorating a dorm room, sponsored by Bed, Bath & Beyond – who gave out $10 gift cards to everyone in the audience – sweet!

3.  Hello Kitty dropped by with free tickets for the audience to the Hello Kitty Festival that weekend.  I was actually quite tempted to take Katie and the girls, but it didn’t work out.


4.  Kate and Sara from Our Best Bites demonstrated making a delicious Thai Chicken Salad.  It was seriously so yum that after the taping we went backstage and snagged an extra few helpings.


My friend Jen on the far right actually went to high school with Sara (Our Best Bites – in the middle next to me) and the gal next to Jen (in stripes) is in our stake and is the MIL of Kate (Our Best Bites – in maroon).  Mara on the far left is in my ward, her sister is next to her, and as it turns out I was roommates at Ricks College with their younger sister.  Small Mormon world.

5. Author, Cynthia Bond, talked about her new book, Ruby.  It made it to Oprah’s book list so I likely wouldn’t enjoy it.

6.  The final guests were from The Royal Arch Maron Children’s Heart Foundation getting the word out that they are looking for patients with heart problems to sponsor.

Overall an enjoyable lineup.  We were entertained – we clapped and cheered when we were told – and we got a few free things out of it.  


We took a picture on set with the host after taping had wrapped.


It was fun to watch the show when we got home and try to spot us on TV.  We had several close ups, but I thought I’d include the shot that includes most of the audience.  We're on the second to back row.


After the taping, we decided since we’d already paid to park for the entire day we might as well walk around downtown a bit.

Trying to get a picture of Abigail and the entire space needle proved to be a bit of a challenge.


The Chilhuly glass sculptures outside near the Space Needle were fun and interesting.


I had a few errands to run downtown and then we enjoyed some gelato at Costco on the way home - our 2015 summer treat of choice.


Fun day with my girls!

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

24-hour Triple Date

Having two babysitters in-house is pretty sweet and we take full advantage.  Abigail had a lot of babysitting jobs for other families in July, but Carly is more than capable of holding down the fort when Abigail is out earning her keep.  Even Carly had an outside job last month.  There was one weekend in July that Justin and I had three dates in a 24 hour period. 

Date 1:  Friday, July 17th - Dinner downtown at the Cactus with friends.  Delcious!  Must get the Navajo Tacos again soon… yum, yum!  Dinner was followed by the 9:30pm Jim Gaffigan comedy show – hilarious!


Date 2:  Saturday, July 18th AM – Breakfast at our favorite – Sunbreak Café in Auburn.  The Andros’ were in town for the weekend and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to catch up with them and several other Auburn friends – always a great time!  


Date 3:  Saturday, July 18th PM - Shortly after we got home from running errands after our breakfast date, Justin got a call from a former coworker offering us free tickets to the Sounders game.  Not just any tickets – but suite tickets!  Um, yes please!  We jetted off downtown and were the first in the suite.  The food was impressive!  Justin’s watched sporting events in company suites many times and he said this was the best spread of food he’d ever seen.  Who we kidding, I was way more into enjoying the food than watching the game.  Pretty sure I had 3-4 servings of macaroni and cheese and more than my fair share of desserts.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

It’s Over

This happened today.


The first day of school.  Which means summer break is officially over.  The craziness of fall has already begun with FOUR kiddos playing soccer (one of those playing volleyball as well) and a husband working long, unpredictable hours.  A new calling in the RS Presidency and submitting and reconciling all YW camp expenditures for our entire stake has kept me busy, busy over these last few weeks.  We have one last hurrah this weekend and then I intend to delve into documenting our summer.  It’s been a good one!

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

4th of July

The kids look forward to attending our community 4th of July celebration every year.  It was particularly hot this year so Justin and I were hoping the kids wouldn’t want to stay for the entire 3 hour event, but we should have known they wouldn’t want to leave.  


Jason was super excited to play laser tag.  That’s him wearing the checkered shorts on the left…


As always there were plenty of free snow cones, popcorn, cotton candy, and drinks to enjoy.  The kids each had a special balloon made for them, but by the end of the day they had all perished or been discarded.


Not a single picture of Abigail because she was off enjoying the party with friends all afternoon.

Drew went straight down for a nap when we got home and napped until we had to wake him up a few hours later to drive to Bothell for a BBQ and fireworks with several families from the ward.


The Fuhriman’s family has been hosting a big 4th of July party for apparently 15 years and we were invited to join the fun this year.  There was tons of great food – all you could eat homemade ice cream and the largest display of fireworks I’ve seen privately displayed – which is saying a lot because the Snoqualmie peeps go all out.  This was over-the-top-crazy-good.

The girls watched the fireworks in one of the large hammocks.


I’ve also never seen anyone so careful about fireworks.  The entire area was roped off and lighted with patriotic Christmas lights.  They set up wood barricades in each launching area to minimize risk of injuries and someone was hosing down the property the entire evening.  Safety was an upmost priority.  


Crazy that even with all those precautions – one firework exploded from the bottom and came shooting out towards us.  Thankfully no one was seriously injured.  Unfortunately, one family’s kids were so traumatized that they had to pack up and leave.  I had felt something on my back, but didn’t check it out until I got home that night.  Apparently a spark had entered my sleeve at just the right angle to burn a hold through my garments and burn my shoulder blade.  The situation could have been MUCH worse!


It was a great fun-filled day!  I’m so grateful for the beautiful area we live, the country and freedoms we enjoy and being able to spend the holiday with such wonderful friends.