A day with the cousins

Brian and Tara are in town and the weather turned nice!

Amy and Tara wanted to go to the Hanna Anderson outlet in Woodenville, so Brian and I decided to take the kids to the Cold Creek trout farm.
The fish were biting like crazy (even for a trout farm) we often had two fish on at a time with kids screaming excitedly. Within an hour and a half we'd landed 13 fish, two 13+ inches long.
The kids were far from squeamish and were very interested in the fish in all their gory glory, the girls insisting on watching the attendant gut every single fish.

Then we went to grandma and grandpas for a Scheuer family BBQ. The kids played follow the leader and soccer in the front yard and we ate salmon.

The kids capped off by the day with a trip to the neighbor's trampoline/urban farm (chickens and rabbits and cats...)

Now the kids are getting ready for bed and the cousins eventual departure early tomorrow morning.

It'll be a sad morning tomorrow for Anya. Being an only child she likes to imagine Mia and Cole are her big sister and little brother and she will miss them terribly.

Anya Remodels the Bathroom

Nothing drives Anya more batty than her parents doing something--anything--that she is not helping with.
Anya “helping” is great because she sits there for a long time and talks to me about stuff, but she's not the most reliable "help" and finding ways to let her help can be a challenge when remodeling a bathroom.
She's seems convinced that helping mostly involves taking my nippers and nipping things like cardboard boxes and window trim. It was pretty common during the remodel for Anya to force her way into the bathroom while Don and I were in knee-deep rubble from demolishing the room and say something like, "What a mess! You guys definitely need to sweep up," and then come back a moment later with a dust pan and broom.
That being said, I do try to find ways for her to help. She wrapped some of the valves with Teflon tape, and handed me tools and the like. She was indispensable installing the sink valves, because she could hold the valves from under the sink while I attached them from above.
My favorite was this conversation (paraphrased):
Anya: Can I help you tile?
Dad: No, honey, I'm sorry. It needs to be done fast and exactly right.
Anya: Maybe I could just hand you tiles.
Dad: That'll work. (a few moments later with my hands full and needing a tile) Okay honey hand me a rectangle tile.
Anya: Okay! Eenie meenie, miney, moe ...

Here we see Anya cutting cement board for the tub surround. (I started the line for her)
 


And here we see here helping me mud the walls (which he was remarkably good at, I might add)

Anya At The Pool

Anya has started taking swim lessons at Meadowbrook Pool. As you can tell she's pretty excited. The shot in the water, while not particularly interesting, was taken because she was yelling, "Dad are you watching me!?"