Back to School Senior & Freshman Edition

Blink and just like that the summer is over and it's back to school! The last two weeks of summer are not really a break. It's BAND CAMP!!

Gemma will be going to Westlake High as a Freshman this year and so she gets to go to Band Camp too with the color guard. 

She is excited to be with Avery this year, who is Ellie's sister.  It is so great having another set of sister friends and they live so close to us as well. To make it even crazier, they were at our Elementary School as well. They are in the two grades in-between Lily and Gemma. So we didn't really know them at MATES.

At the end of the two week band camp they have parent preview night. They have a big pot luck and then we get to see all they have learned in the grueling two weeks. Lily showed the #1 Truck Dad all her Trumpet skills. He is getting pretty good at this over the years. 

Ellie is not in Marching Band this year but she is still coming to a lot of the events to hang out with Lily.

They performed the first half of the show for this year. It is called "Tip Top Tap" It is a 1930's Jazz club theme. 

They honored all the Seniors and gave them each a special pin. There are 22 Seniors in Marching Band! That is one third of the whole band!

Then it was time for the first day of school. We had to decide on the first day outfit. 

One is beginning and one is FINISHING!!

No teary drop offs this year. They got to drive off to school together!! Yay!! Everyone was happy about that!

 

Seattle Friends & Fun

Our next morning in Seattle we got up and ready to head to Snohomish to the Brady's house. We were meeting up with our friends Clare and Ryan and their kids for the day. 

First we picked up Trophy Cupcakes to have for dessert that evening. We loved this shop. Too bad the original one in Wallingford closed. We had so many fun cupcake dates there when the girls were babies. 

They still taste just as good and they had a special LaBubu design which was hilarious. 

The adults had reservations at a couple of winery tasting rooms while the kids all hung out at the Brady's house. It is pretty great to have older kids that are independent and can watch the younger ones. 

One of the tasting rooms was a speak easy. Ann reserved it and we had the whole room to ourselves. We could play music on the record player and enjoyed flights of local wines.

The kids all had a great time together at the house and everyone remained in one piece. 

We came back and David grilled up burgers and hot dogs for us all. We needed a meal after all that wine. We tried to get all the kids on the stairs for a group photo. Oldest to youngest. It was semi-successful. 

Lily and Gemma decided to keep the fun going and stayed the night at the Brady's. 

We had found a hilarious photo of the girls from our previous visit 10 years ago. We tried to get them to recreate it. They did pretty well! 

They are such the sweetest sisters and best friends. 

Our last day we met up with the Brady's and went to lunch before saying our goodbyes. Then we drove South stopping in Ballard to have a walk around and go to the Ballard Locks to see the Salmon swim. 

All these places we went so many times over the years and our kids have no recollection. 

We watched the boats go in and out of the locks from the Ocean to Lake Washington. 

We couldn't have asked for a better weekend. We will not be letting another ten years go by before another visit. The girls want to go all the time now!

Seattle Get Away

Our first time back to Seattle in TEN YEARS! Why did we wait so long?! We decided to get an early start on our long weekend out of state by taking a 6AM flight out of LAX. Not super. That's a 3:30AM wake up! Once we had landed and got our rental car we made it into the city and straight to TopPot for a large cup of coffee and donuts!

We parked down by the waterfront and took our time walking around on this beautiful day! Nothing can trick you into moving to Seattle like a warm summer afternoon. 

Looking for jellyfish and otters. We thought about going to the Aquarium but didn't really have time.

The waterfront area has changed a lot. They made it more pedestrian friendly. There were definitely a lot of tourists around, mainly people in town to get an Alaskan cruise. 

We went up to Pike's place market which never gets old. The food and fresh flower bouquets! 

The views over to Alki beach were stunning. 

After much walking and a bite of lunch we drove over to the Space Needle. We ended up deciding not to spend the money to go up this time. But it is really impressive to see from the ground too. By this time in the afternoon we were fading fast. Mostly Lily. She was falling asleep sitting up.

Then it was late afternoon. We headed up further North to Greenlake. We parked right out front of our old house! It looks pretty much the same! I think the new owners could have used some fresh landscaping though. 

We walked over to the lake and then had dinner at Duke's Seafood overlooking the lake. 

The jet lag was in full effect and we made it to our hotel in Northgate for an early night. We had plans to meet up with our besties, the Brady Fam in the AM. 

We were staying close to the University of Washington so we started our day there at the U-village shopping center. It has changed A LOT! This is where we used to take Lily trick or treating and to walk around. We met the Brady's and had a walk around the UW campus. It was so gorgeous. The campus is large and hilly. We made it around and then to the Husky Stadium. Go Dogs!

Maybe we have a future Husky in our kids. We're trying to convince the girls to go there at some point with Kat and Natalie. 

That afternoon we had planned to go to Lake Washington to watch the blue angels plane show. It was Seafair weekend and they had been flying overhead all weekend.  We found a great spot on the shore and watched them put on a show. 

After the airshow the Brady's headed home and we found a fun Brewery near UW on Magnuson to grab dinner and relax. 

We tried skipping rocks in the lake. Turns out you can't just pick up a rock and do it on the first try. It must take some secret skill.