"Happy Birthday Dear Makenna and Betsy!"

Makenna turned 7 on September 12th, so we decided to celebrate by heading to Seattle to have an adventure! The kids have never been up the Space Needle, so we took them there first. Maybe not the cheapest decision, but it was a fun experience for the kids. :) Seth loved looking throught the giant "binocular".




Next we decided to take a city bus ride. The kids are always asking me when they can take a ride in a public bus- I have no idea why they are so obsessed with this idea, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to get it over with. In the downtown area, you can ride for free, so we headed for the nearest bus stop. We found a cool fountain on the way...








So, we decided to take the bus to Chinatown, so that we could get some bubble tea. The bus ride was....interesting...we sat by a great cross section of Seattle's residents. I wanted to jump and cover my kids ears a couple times, but we did meet some really nice people. A lot of people were so nice to help us catch the correct buses so we could get to China Town. It took some searching, but we found an awesome Bubble tea place- the mango was the best! After that, we hit Uwajumaya, the big Asian market across the street. The kids got some cool candy they'd never heard of. The weirdest thing we saw was in the snack section. It was a bag of little red crabs- like right next to things like chips and candy. Hmmmm.... Anyway, it was fun!





:) It's nice to visit the city, ...and then go home to our little, peaceful Poulsbo!

Back to School...

Well the girls are both going to public school this year.  I'm a little teary at the prospect of not home-schooling this year, but I know we will do it again in the future. Maybe next year??  As sad as it is to not have the girls around, I'm kind of glad for the extra time to do all my projects.  I will definitely keep myself busy this fall with all the projects around the garden!

Savannah is in 4th grade and is with Mrs. Berg.  She is SO excited to be at Poulsbo Elementry and after the 2nd day of school has concluded that 4th Grade is "so easy".  

Makenna is in 1st grade and has Mrs. Longan.  She has made a new friend named Poppy whose family is from England.  She is SO excited to eat lunch at school now that she is there all day.

Enjoy the pics of their first day!

Seth loses the training wheels!!

Our little buddy just learned to ride his bike all by himself with no training wheels.  Thys was the one helping him, and he said it only took one try!  He was off in no time.  He's getting little big for his Thomas the Train bike.  The deal was, he gets a new, bigger bike if he rode all by himself, so we'll be off to Wally-world tomorrow. :)  Enjoy the pics!

Divorce

Why? Each reason is unique to the person I guess. My buddys going
through one cuz his wife wants to bang more guys and thinks he no
longer needs her. It's hard to see him getting the shaft. 2 young
kids. God, help me love my wife more and never let it get to such an
ultimatum.

THE TAT IS ON

Getting a tattoo on thursday . . .

It's a design I've worked on for a few years now, combining the words grace and truth. It's an ambigram, which is quiet an ancient art form of combining 2 words into 1.

I'm really excited because I gave it to Amy who took it to the next level artistically. I love how she made the R and A clash like swords — it shows the tension between grace and truth both existing in Christ COMPLETELY at the same time. 

My Kids, the hikers

We took the kids on their first BIG hike, and our first hike without our trusty guide — Betsy's dad. Firstly, the kids did AMAZING!! The hike in was only 2 miles through a valley, not a big deal. The next day we did a 5 mile hike up to Tuck lake - an increase in elevation of 2,000 ft on a tough way trail . . . it took 3 and a half hours. It was tough, and I didn't think the kids would make it, but they did. I was blown away!

We used our new tents and cooking gear for the first time, and loved all of it. We took the dog, Lucy, and she had a ball. It's the first time we actually were able to wear her out!

So, hiking is officially a part of the wallwork's family vacations now. I can't wait to see how the kids do on the next one. We're going to go see an old plane wreckage from WW2 in the Olympics somewhere with Luke and Amy.

Blah Blah BLAAA

This is a test of the new blog for Thys and Betsy