Thatch's Kindergarten Grand Finale

In some ways I can not believe Thatch is already done with Kindergarten, but in other ways this has been the llllooooonnnnngggggeeeeessssttttt year ever! School in The Pole ended a month ago, yet here we are just beginning the wind down. Last night Thatch had his concert at school where the entire Kindergarten performed. I was early, yet still only found room in the very back (which was probably a good idea since Cooper was, well, Cooper. Clearly I need to step up my A-game to keep up with all these over-achiever parents. Game on.

 Here's a few zoomed in photos and a couple blurry videos :) Oh, and good news-my camera only takes blurry photos when it loses charge. So I guess I just need to keep on that. Yay, another thing to do.

He's in yellow, right in the middle. Super Star!

One thing I've learned in the past year's performances is that Thatch is either totally into the hand movements or totally unimpressed by them and just doesn't do it.

 Here's a video of their last songs of the night. So stinking adorable!!

Thatch had a poem he read during the performance. By the time I made it up to the front, whilst wrangling Harper, and got the camera started, he was already done. So I made him do it outside the school. Ha.

And in other Thatcher news, he's really become quite the artist. Some of his drawings are sweet, and some are just plain hilarious. Like this little ditty...

It's the I-5 bridge that collapsed. Totally awesome.

And with that, we're all caught up :)

Love you long time!
S

MIA- A recurring theme.

I don't know what my problem is, I love blogging and telling you all about our escapades but I'm terrible with keeping up lately! I'll just add a few quick tidbits on what we've been up to and then pretend like this lapse never happened...kind of like how I pretend that I'm always on a diet.

Geez, I don't even remember the last thing I blogged about. Let me go stalk my own blog for a minute to find out where we were...

EASTER? Good night Sabrina, get with the flipping program! Seriously, sorry guys. I know how hard this must have been for you ; )

So my Dad and Michele came to visit in April! It was a whirlwind trip and we didn't get to see much of them but the boys did! I drove them down to Seattle and they traipsed around the city for Saturday, then drove up. Here's a couple blurry pictures, because my camera sucks.

Papa and Coopster

Papa and Grandma Jonesie :)

The official portrait from the restaurant in the Space Needle. Have I mentioned I am uncomfortable with heights? Eating up here was...difficult...by which I mean slightly terrifying, but the food was AWESOME. 

After that we had baseball, which was chilly. It snowed one game, which is totally abnormal for here. To that I say, "Sorry Washington, that happens wherever we go."

*this is where my camera started taking blurry pictures. A trip to Best Buy to complain is in my future.

Thatch had a school performance about the ocean. It was HOT in there, like faint in the metal chair hot but it was cute. Again, my stinking camera only took blurry video and pictures. Maybe that's why I haven't blogged?

J stood while I sat. We had to tag team kids though.

Because our kids are heavy. For me at least. Not for him, he's like Hercules. Ha, I just made myself laugh out loud. 

A blurry picture of Thatch. Damn you camera, damn you.   

Thatch being eaten by a killer whale. What, you don't see it? Just blur your eyes a little.

We've found a place we love to visit. It's super kid friendly, has excellent food, and it has a distillery (for Jonathan's pleasure). It's Bellewood Farms, an apple orchard with something for each of us. My thing is the apple pie, J's is the apple gin, the boys is the tire yard and the mass amount of farming equipment they get to play on. We're cool with it, because of the gin and the pie.

One day we were driving around with MeeMaw and we swung by there on what happened to be the Apple Blossom festival. It was beautiful! Not that you could tell, because the picture is blurry.

It's hard to see but that's Mt. Baker in the background. That empty field is going to be a pumpkin patch soon :) 

It was a gorgeous, sunny Sunday when we went! Can't you tell by this high quality photo?

This would have been Christmas Card worthy, had I not bought a crappy camera the previous year. Stupid sales.

 At this point, I switched solely to the iphone camera, which oddly enough took much better photos than the camera. So here's a couple of random ones that have been on Facebook, but I realize that not everyone is on "the book". <--- I just made that up.

Harpie's true colors are showing. 

She is the apex predator of the tub.

We went to the Sudden Valley fire dept pancake feed but it was closed by the time we got there. Boo. That makes me want to go eat pancakes right now, just to show them.

Don't EVER turn your back on these two, even to switch laundry. They are T.R.O.U.B.L.E. together.

Thatch had a couple of field trips in April, or maybe May, one to Great Harvest Bread Co. and one to the library. It was fun to chaperone and get to know the little kids Thatch talks about at school

Learning about wheat berries, Thatch is super interested. Or not.

I think he's more of a kinesthetic learner. 

Here are the little boys with their "bookmarks" but using them as cell phones. 

A rousing game of Duck Duck Goose in the library grassy area. Pretty, huh?

Somewhere in here J and I managed to sneak out to Seattle for a date. We went to the Pikes Brewery at the Pikes Market, which is now Jonathan's favorite Brewery. Poor Redhook.

Possibly the first time, ever, that J has worn one of our children.

Yeah, that's more like it.

Awh, look at us girls! 

She's saying "Look at me or I'll scream!" She screamed anyway though.

And then, just to give Redhook one last chance, I took J there again for Beer AND Bacon night! It was pretty fancy, there was lots of beer for J to have. For me, there was Bacon Chocolate Stout Cheesecake.

Glaring at me. Did he honestly think I wasn't going to take pictures? 

The menu. It literally was a steak of bacon. Some people at the fat, I did not. It was all epicly awesome...

But this was straight from heaven. Candied bacon on a chocolate stout cheesecake. Oh. My. God. I'm drooling now.

So we met this guy at the tasting and Jonathan pointed out that this is what my cousin Shawn is going to look like in 20 years. The resemblance, and even personality resemblance, was unnerving.

 We've gone back to the orchard a couple of times and explored the fields. That's where we found this herd of cows that totally loved us. The followed us the whole way. It was kind of freaky.

 Onto last week...We went to a new park and Thatch had a field trip.

Harps on her prefered ride.

Cooper is a monkey, he can climb on anything.

A selfie. That's a stupid name. 

Harps, toddling around.

The ENTIRE kindergarten went to the tide pools. There was also 3 other classes that showed up afterwards. There were a LOT of kids there. Oh, and I brought Harps and Coops with me too. Goodness.

Thatch and Coops had a great time exploring. We'll go back again one day, once I figure out tides and all that jazz.

I say smile and this is what I get from him.

And then there's this pose.

Afterwards they all ate lunch together. Thatch is such a good big brother, he's never worried about being too cool to sit with Coop and I. This shall pass though, I'm not crazy to think it will last but I am smart enough to enjoy it right now.

Harps likes corn dogs.

And finally, here's an adorable one of the Coopie. I know it seems like he wears this shirt a lot, and he does. It's because it's bright and I can find him very quickly when he runs off.

This past weekend the kids and I drove down to Battle Ground to visit the Glazes and for Beau's 4th Birthday but I didn't take one stinking picture! Darn me!

Okay, so there we have it. I have punished you enough with this update and I promise to keep them shorter in the future.

Until then, I bid you ado.

S

Airplanes, Easter, and Gang Signs.

Found the cord. It was in my safe place, that I couldn't remember, thus making it unsafe. It's a viscous cycle. Anyhoo, I'm going to continue with the picture story gig.

On a "cold", windy Saturday we drove down to the "Big City" and went to the Museum of Flight. The boys were in AWE from the moment we drove into the parking lot. Luckily we got the worst spot in the whole lot so we were able to walk by every outdoor static display they had.

I just like this one of my menfolk, it's cute.

That would be Thatcher's "Shit Eating" Grin. This is possibly the happiest I've seen him, except for Disneyland.

Cooper's like "You're kidding me, that's real? B.S." 

Captain Yarsley in a cockpit.

There were airplane displays hanging from the ceiling. Harps was intrigued.

.

Coopie can always con his Auntie B into holding him :) I love dragging her on our adventures.

A fore mentioned hanging airplane displays.

Little Jonathan playing with the Bernoulli's Principle display. He was mad he couldn't get enough wind speed to really make it fly. Nerd Alert.

Face cut outs are awesome.

Someone did not want to go to Infinity or Beyond.

Thatch didn't know what I made him put his face into. Then he was like...

...Woa, I'm an astronaut.

There's a park about a 1/2 mile away from the house so we go there sometimes after school. There's a creek that runs through it so Cooper enjoys trying to flail himself into it. Only God knows what kind of amoebas and parasites live in it but I let him play in it none the less. Harps sticks to the swings and Thatch to the equipment. Rule followers...I like that.

Taking pictures while kids are swinging is hard. I was kicked a few times.

But sometimes you catch some really good shots :)

Action shots rule.

Monkey Bars. Totally get where the name comes from.

This is seriously a steep slide.

On rainy days there are a lot of indoor places for the kiddos to run around at. Bellingham is impressively focused on activities for the littles to do, rain or shine. I personally don't enjoy being in the rain as much as watching it from under a blanket so we went to an indoor park to play on this particular day. Harper crawled around the whole place and gave the floor a good mopping with her pants. Yay, more laundry stains to fight. 

Pretty sure she licked every toy they had there.

Trying to keep up with Cooper. He didn't run her over, thank heavens, but it will happen soon. <---Mother's instinct.

She has super expressions. I love them.

I'm fairly confident here she's telling me to "Put the damn camera down Mom".

And here she's saying "Well, if you're going to take pictures, here's my good side."

We signed the boys up for the YMCA's Rookie league baseball. Jonathan took them to their first practice while I stayed home and cleaned the house getting ready for Grammy and Grandpa's arrival! Teamwork!

How awesome is this going to be on ESPN when they do his player profile in 18 years?

He wanted to wear his baseball sweatshirt. He's actually pretty good at Baseball, as opposed to Soccer.

Ready position. Making his Mommy proud.

And then the Grandparents and the Aunties arrived and we had Easter the next day! Auntie Ash's plane was 2+ hours late making Jonathan and I come home at 1am, so we didn't hide the eggs until the afternoon. Made for good lighting I guess.

This Cooper's "LET'S DO THIS" face.

Grammy helping Harper find her eggs. Thatcher's eggs were blue, Cooper's were green and Harper's were pink. Her's were the easiest to hide, because I basically just rolled them in a pile in the middle of the grass.

And each monkey got a golden egg. Big stuff in there...$20! Dang Easter Bunny MeeMaw!

Thatch's game face. 

Harper found out the eggs had stuff in them...

...and was like, "This is candy? Winning!"

Sorting out the goods.

Still shocked that I let her have candy.

Giving me the eye, she probably thought I was coming to take it away.

And this is what Easter looks like when there isnt' snow. Crazy.

So we drove to Seattle to do a little shopping and I found these gems on my camera after the upload.

So cute :) She's such a good influence.

And then I see that she's teaching them how to throw gang signs. Those Yarsleys and their bad influences.

Luckily Coop could only manage the pincer grasp and Thatch was doing what ever it is that means. 

So Saturday was the big day...first Baseball Games! Yay!!!

The big guy, up to bat in the #4 position. There were only four players that showed up though, so he's not really the clean up hitter.

A parent plays with the kiddo in the 3 year old division. Jonathan clearly takes his job seriously.

My Cooper diving for the ball to throw that little kid out at first. Really, Cooper picked up the ball and ran it back to the bucket. The kid was safe. Boring.

Good to know it's not just our kid.

He hit the ball. That's a start! Next step, is to get it to go on the other side of the plate :)

And now you are caught up with the going ons of we Yarsleys. I'll try to keep more with the blog. I just went to Ikea today so I'll update you on how Jonathan handles the unloading of the car :)

XOXO
S