Summertime Bucket List, part 2

We worked really hard to complete as much of our summer bucket list as we could. We had a really fun mix of stuff we could do at home and lots new things to explore in the area.  

We started a Sunday  night tradition of doing S'mores in the fire pit.

We spent a glorious day at Jetty Island. This man-made island in the Puget Sound has the warmest water anywhere around. The tide goes out in the morning and warms the sand for the entire day and then when the tide comes back in, it warms the ocean water. We had such a fun time playing at the beach on this day and we would like to go back several times next year. You do have to take a ferry to the island (another item on our list) so it's not super convenient to get to but well worth the extra effort. The big kids playing on the piles of driftwood:

 Ems seriously LOVES the sand and will sit and dig for hours:

 We spent a Saturday at the Woodland park zoo. I had to have this picture taken since it is a re-creation  of a shot we took in this exact spot at the zoo in 2006.

 At the petting zoo. Ems was in awe at all the animals and loves to MOOOO at everything. She's at such a delightful age right now!

 Playing at the Seattle Center Fountain:

 More dates with Mom and Dad. I took Addison to a fun country village on Saturday morning. We played at the park, rode the vintage train, fed the ducks, looked through some shops and got a treat at the old fashioned candy store. We had a great time together.

 Allen took Carter to see The Avengers (which they loved) for their date but did not get a picture of them.

The 3 older kids completed two sessions of swim lessons at the gym. Carter and Makenna were on the pre-team for swim team and got a lot of perfection of their strokes. It is much harder to qualify for the team here and I am glad that they got some good one-on-one attention to really improve their strokes. I was less than thrilled with Addie's lessons and I felt she didn't progress at all over 2 sessions. I've decided group lessons are a waste of money at her age and have enrolled her with a private teacher for later in the fall.

 Last day of swim lessons celebration treat:

 All 3 older kids completed the library summer reading program. They had to read 1000 minutes over the summer (which they EASILY accomplished). The library had fun prizes this year and these glasses light up and blink in different colors.

We have done lots of late summer berry picking as the blackberries have come into season. Blackberries grow wild all over the place in Seattle and the kids' soccer fields are surrounded with bushes so we have been doing a lot of picking. I made a delicious cobbler with some of the berries and have frozen a bunch more for smoothies.

Overall we had an awesome summer. We didn't accomplish everything on our list but we did a TON and even added some things as we found out about even more that Seattle has to offer. We also did lots of bike riding, hiking, tons of playing with friends and exploring different parks. We ended up skipping most of the indoor activities and saved them to do during our months and months of rain.