Getting Out and About

Saturdays are my favorite day of the week, especially in the summer.  My hubby is home, the girls kind of let us sleep in (at least until 6:00), we lounge around in jammies, and then we find some fun family thing to do.   There is a lot to do here in Bellingham in the summer and I think it's because all of the festivals and things get jammed into the two months that we actually have summer weather.

Last weekend was "Old Settler Days" here in Ferndale and that meant a small town parade.  Growing up in Denver I never experienced this sort of thing.  There was one road trip where we ended up in Wyoming for July 4th and they had a parade.  The thing I remember the most was patriotism and the abundance of candy.   Now I am making those memories with my girls and I love it.  Katie had so much fun waving at everyone and getting to eat some candy (mommy and daddy stashed most of it though).  Carly had fun too and wasn't even phased by the very loud fire trucks that went by.  And the best part about this little excursion...we were only 5 minutes away from home so even though it was nap time we made it home before any Carly meltdowns!

Yesterday was another family fun day and this time Katie and I started off by going to the Dollar Store together to stock up on some road trip things.  Then we headed over to the library to get some books, CD's, and DVD's.  It was nice being able to do this with just Katie was because we weren't rushed or on a Carly nap schedule.   And the preschool teacher in me got excited when I got a great teachable moment.  Katie tore one of the books she was looking at and we have spent a lot of time talking about using gentle hands with our books.  So we took the book to the librarian and apologized for what happened.  Katie knew she had made a mistake and even got the teary eyed, about to cry look on her face.  I think it worked and later I noticed she WAS being very careful when turning the pages of her library books.

After our trip to the library we packed up and went to the Bellingham Kids Festival.  We had never been but it was a totally free event put on by our Parks and Rec department and sounded like a lot of fun.  They had a all sorts of things for kids to do and free stuff to give away.   The girls got to jump in a bouncy house, go through a traveling petting zoo, play on the playground, eat free pizza, and watch a children's band called The Recess Monkey.   They were a group of elementary school teachers from Seattle who travel around performing during summer vacation.  This was Katie's favorite part and while we didn't get any pictures I did get this video.

We are having a great weekend and today I am on a mission to get my To Do list checked so that we can be all prepared for the upcoming road trip.