June 2008

We've been going almost non-stop for the entire month of June, something we haven't really been through since December.

We went to Ellensburg for a few days to attend Lexie's high school graduation. It was the first commencement Ellensburg has ever held outside, so of course it rained. On that trip we also went to Yakima to see Grandma Marian, where my Uncle Mike's kids Katie, Allysa, and Trevor came over and played with Kyla and Blake. The following week we made another trip to the 'Burg, this time just for the day, to attend my mother's retirement party. Then two days after that was Kyle's graduation from UW's architecture program (this time Becky and the kids stayed home).

For Father's Day Becky took me to see The Incredible Hulk (normally it isn't easy to get her to see movies like this) and to Chevy's for dinner while Linda watched the kids. She also made me a nice breakfast for me the next day.

On the 22nd, the day before his 60th birthday, we rode on Bill's last commercial flight from Seatac to Spokane and back. We were a little worried about how the kids would do but Blake was fine for the most part (we brought lots of food with us) and Kyla really seemed to enjoy all of the hoopla surrounding Grandpa Bill. Before we took off from Spokane the fire trucks came out and shot their hoses over the plane as we left.

The final big event of the month was Becky and Cassie's marathon, which they've been training together for for months. Unfortunately on the big day the temperature reached 90 degrees. Amazingly they were able to actually finish the entire thing, however Becky isn't satisfied because of how the heat slowed her down and is determined to run another marathon soon for a better time.

The biggest development of the month is that Kyla can now read three letter words. We were up in the bonus room one night and Becky wrote C-A-T up on the chalk board and Kyla sounded the letters out a few times and declared "cat!" Thinking that Kyla may have just memorized that one Becky wrote several more, and she got them all right.

Blake is gaining a stronger grasp on words. When I was getting ready to leave one morning Becky said to him, "let's go wave to Daddy," (without any visual cues) and he immediately started to wave at me. He seems to know what Dada and Mama mean (though the meaning of Mama seems to be overloaded) and says "Ba" whenever we pass the garage door button because he loves pushing it.

He also has an odd obsession with opening and closing doors. He'll open it, close it, then repeat the process over and over again. His favorite doors are ones that go outside, but he does this indoors as well.

Last month I complained about the lack of warm weather, well that weather has arrived in force. Our schedule for the rest of the summer is a little more relaxed, so hopefully we'll enjoy it.