Boat ride picture dump.

The lake looked kind of cool with the sun coming through the clouds. The lighting is kind of messed up but i couldn't figure out how to fix it.

 

Excited children

 

The shipwreck on the island. It's apparently over a hundred years old.

Eloise is an excellent driver, provided you want to go in circles.

Serafina catching water spray and watching them drip off her fingers.

Isn't she adorable?

Random birds

Serafina was a little bit better of a driver. She was making very serious faces while she drove though so it was hard to catch a smile.

 

Last day of school

Today was Fina's last day of kindergarten. I was reading a blog the other day that mocked parents who take a picture of their kid on the last day of school to compare it to the first day of school. I don't care if it makes me seem like an overachieving parent, I thought it was a cute idea.

Look how much she's grown up! I'm still a little annoyed at John for not taking a proper first day of school pic so that my mom had to snap one with her cell phone as she dropped her off.

The original plan was for us to go to West Yellowstone tonight, but the Yukon broke down yesterday and was in the shop until this afternoon. So it forced us to take a day of relaxing. We stayed up late watching television. Maybe a little too late.

 

Hopefully she doesn't pee on my couch before I get her to bed.

I HATE THE PARK!

I NEVER swinging! Harumph.

I don't know why you even bring me here.

Okay, I'll climb up, but I'm not having fun.

And I NEVER going down the slide.

Okay, I go down the slide.

I NEVER swinging! Never Ever!

I made a doll.

Or more accurately, I assembled one. Weez and I found this kit at a thrift store yesterday with a plastic head and a presewn body.

The sculpting instructions didn't call for a butt or a belly button or knees or elbows, basically just boxy fingers and toes. But I did everything anyway, because I happen to know how from repairing CPKs.

She looks very cpkish from the back. The hands are really boxy and I wish I had thought to modify it and sew thumbs into them before I stuffed her.

Oh, and on the other side of the thrift store, I found a prepackaged doll baby outfit in her size.

Bizarrely, the unfinished doll was in the toy section and the outfit (which would fit any 6-7 inch doll) was over with crafts. I don't pretend to understand these things. Eloise is pleased with her new "baby".

Spokane

We got delayed in Spokane because the weather was shitty towards Montana and we didn't feel like going home. The hotel we were staying at was called "The Red Lion at the park" so I asked John to look at maps and figure out if it was the awesome park with the carousel and skyride and everything and sure enough it was, and was close enough to just stroll over there.

We shelled out 10 bux which was enough for 3 rides on the carousel for each of the girls and one of us, and 2 rides for the other. The first ride, Eloise rode a tiger which didn't go up and down, but the other 2 she wanted to ride a horse. She looks a little nervous.

Fina rode a horse all 3 times. John had wandered off to ride a horse leaving me with 2 girls side by side and I snapped these pictures quick before it started moving. When it started going fast, Eloise cried and tried to climb off her horse, but I told her she had to stay on the whole ride. As soon as it stopped she said "that was fun! We go again?"

Here's my favorite picture ever, which John took while we were going and he was watching.

They had a great time and were bummed when we had to go.

That evening I mentioned to John that there was supposedly a giant "little red wagon" somewhere in the park but I had never been able to find it. He looked at a map and told me it was right by the carousel but we had gone the other way back. So the next afternoon while John and Eloise were napping, Fina asked if we could go find the wagon because she overheard me mention it.

The handle is a slide. It had been raining earlier so the slide was wet and the first time she went down it she went very slowly.

But luckily for her, a group of 4 young adult tourists came by and all went down the slide so then it was dry and it worked a bit better. She played for quite a while.

Then I suggested she pick up some leaves and garbage and go feed the garbage goat, who we had discovered the day before. There's a button on the wall behind him and he's basically like a vacuum, you hold out a piece of paper or a leaf or a bit of trash and he sucks it right down.

She did a silly pose, because she'd been watching that group of giggly tourists pose silly by the wagon. Then we walked across the street to a store I had wanted to go in the day before but didn't want to take Eloise in.

On the way back she found a giant oak leaf. She wanted to bring it home but unfortunately I "forgot" to pack it in our suitcase and it got left at the hotel.

Spending the afternoon with Fina might actually have been my very favorite part of the trip. Also I really like Spokane and would like to go back there and spend a few more days exploring.

5 years apart...

Fina and John by the Bonneville dam in Oregon, March 2008

Fina, John, and Eloise same spot March 2013.

I find it awesome that John is wearing a nearly identical shirt in both pictures, he does not. It was freezing cold and raining this time, but I couldn't resist making them pose. It's funny that the weather was similar both times too.

Hair

I decided to go different from the silly little baby ponytail today. Even though Wooz was not impressed with this turn of events and yelled "I like my hair messy! Go 'way, mommy!!"

It's a pretty cute little french braid, from a distance. I had to do it as fast as I could while she was trying to escape, so the spots where I added more hair aren't even, but I think she looks cute. She was excited when I showed her in the mirror.

Thrilled I tell you.

thrift haul

I haven't taken a bunch of pictures of my thrift haul for a while, but it kind of makes it fun so I decided to today.

First we have Weez's new baby doll. It has a vintagey look to the face so I'm not surprised she picked it out. It's small, like 8 inches maybe? A little smaller than a CPK teeny tiny preemie. Speaking of which:

Yellow hair and brown eyes. I haven't decided if I'm keeping her or letting Wooz have her or what, but I couldn't resist for some reason.

I tried to take a picture of the 2 Hanna Andersson shirts, laid out side by side on the couch, but Weez kept grabbing the sweater and trying to put it on. I finally gave in and let her try it on, even though I thought it would be too big, but it looks super good on her with leggings so I might just let her keep it. And this way I got a nice picture of it. The other one might be a tad big for Fina, but it was only a buck at the goodwill.

A bunch of toys. The little people helicopter came with the dude who is shoved in the back of the ice cream truck in the pic, because as I was trying to snap the picture, Weez came and moved the pilot and stole the little people airplane out of the picture. The cars came with a car track thing but it's annoyingly missing a piece. And Ernie's crane has a magnet on the bottom so he can pick up metal things.

I got Fina this miniature pillow pet butterfly which was new with tags. She named it "Pink wing Purple wing Pink wing Purple wing. You have to say it twice." (The dress she's wearing is the same size as the sweater Weez stole from the pile so I thought that the sweater was going to be for Fina.)

This is the ensemble that the TTP was wearing, which are both CPK tagged but obviously too big for her. The sippin' kid bib is either really faded or a strange color.

A birthday letter to my husband.

Dear John,
I'm sorry that your birthday card is a fart joke. Hopefully the cake I made is good and kind of makes up for it.
Love, Katy

My New Salt & Pepper shakers

Since we got married, John and I have never owned salt and pepper shakers. Well, for a while we had a set of really stupid grinders that we got at a yard sale because he just love loved the idea of grinding your own salt and pepper, but they were cheap plastic and I dropped one of them on the floor too many times so we use the remaining one for pepper because we don't use that much salt and also grinding sea salt onto your food is annoying (at least with these lever grinding ones we have) because you can't limit your amount as easily. So I saw these at the store the other day, AND they were on clearance, and you know a bargain like that is hard to resist even though they were only 30% off I snagged them up.

This lovely lady is the salt. I would prefer them to be colorful like real matryoshka dolls, but the white will go with pretty much any dishes I suppose. What's that? Where's the pepper shaker?

They are nesting dolls after all! 

The salt shaker is considerably larger than the pepper, but that's because she has to hold the salt AND fit the other inside her. They're so cool. The only thing I worry about is that the salt one doesn't snap together very tightly so if someone didn't know and held her by the bottom half, she'd probably fall right into their food. Also I like that the salt shaker only has 1 hole and the pepper has 3, because I'm the type that uses more pepper than salt. I suppose you could fill them up the other way around, but that's not what it said on the directions. ;) I also got a matching set of measuring cups, but I haven't taken them out of the box yet.

Sunday's dinner

I was looking for something else in my pictures and I saw that we had taken a decently appetizing picture of Sunday's dinner. Spinach and mozzarella stuffed meatloaf, gross mashed potatoes, and salad. Yum. Also do you totally love our new serving dishes? It's kind of fun to have awesome things to make your food look more appealing, even if we don't really have room to store them. We got them NIB at the goodwill store for considerably less than if we bought them new elsewhere. (And after reading the reviews online, I'm glad we didn't pay very much for them because apparently they have a tendency to break if you pick them up by the handles when they're hot, even though they're supposedly oven safe.)

Ipad adorableness

Isn't it funny how you sometimes have to eat your words? When Ipads first came out, I was horrified at the thought that people would let their kids play with something so expensive. When they came out with special cars that your kids could drive on your iPad I was baffled. I was apprehensive when my mom let my kids play with her nook tablet. And yet...

Look at the crossed feet and the intense concentration. So cute.

She loves it so much and I'm always amazed at the amount of stuff she can just do on it. That is, when she gets the chance to just play by herself. And she's only managed to buy 5 bucks worth of extras for her games. (We have it password protected but if I download her an app then you don't have to enter the password for like 10 minutes, so we found out the hard way that if she tries to buy things right after I've downloaded her a game, it just lets her at it. So now I only download new apps for them when it's my turn and kids won't be playing right away.)

...And 5 minutes later. "I'm just watching her, mom!"

Her solo turns don't usually last very long if Fina isn't at school. Also I think we have twice as many kid apps as stuff for us.

...and 5 minutes after that. Not shown is 2 minutes after that when Eloise realizes what happened and starts crying and slapping Fina in the head.

And as a bonus for reading my ramblings, here is a cute picture of my kids in the masks that they made earlier.

Super Fi and her well dressed sidekick. Little sisters always have to be the sidekick because they're copycats.

I cut Eloise's out for her but Serafina did all of hers herself.