lummi island

this past weekend tyler's mom visited us from spokane. after an awesome dinner on the patio and a post-dinner walk on friday night, we decided to head to lummi island the next day for an adventure.

we had a big saturday morning breakfast then loaded the truck with bikes and snacks and made our way to the lummi island ferry. it took about 10 minutes to cross and once on the other side we took off on our bike ride - a 7 mile loop around the north end of the island.

tyler and i were on our tandem, pulling the girls in the trailer and melinda was on my road bike. it was a gorgeous ride. i was loving every minute of it. the weather was perfect - sunny but not too hot and the views were spectacular. the girls were content in the trailer munching on snacks and enjoying the ride. we stopped about half way along the route to tour the willows inn. i've heard great things about it, especially the chef, so i wanted to check it out and possibly add it to my list of "places to go with tyler after i'm done nursing" list. it looked wonderful and i hope to be able to stay a night there someday.

we finished our ride at the beach store cafe restaurant, right next to the ferry dock, where we enjoyed lunch on the deck. we played on the beach a bit before we loaded up and caught the ferry home.

what a fun adventure! we ended the day with mallard ice cream for riley and dinner at jalapenos. thanks for coming beba!

4th of July weekend

we had a fun 4th of july weekend...tyler had just returned home from a week of traveling so we were thrilled to get him back friday night. we spent the weekend biking, playing outside, pool & dinner with friends then a bbq and fireworks on the 4th. here are some pictures from our weekend.

Teddy Bears Picnic

A few weeks back, on Father's day actually, Riley had her first ballet recital. To say that I was a proud parent is definitely an understatement. It made my heart swell to see my little ballerina on stage...hair, costume, makeup and all...very serious and performing her dance. She loves to dress up, loves to dance and in general loves to be a little girl.

They performed at the Mt Baker Theater and leading up to her recital, Riley kept exclaiming, "I get to dance on the stage at the Mountain Baker Theater!!!" (as a side note, one of the cuter things that Riley does is call Mt. Baker "Mountain Baker"...this started when Tyler took her skiing last winter) Anyway, she was thrilled at the idea of it and could hardly wait for her big performance.

My parents came up from Seattle and Tyler made us an awesome dinner of homemade bacon & onion hamburgers, homemade sweet potato fries, grilled veggies, green salad and i made this strawberry shortcake for dessert...everything turned out perfect and the dessert was seriously amazing. We had dinner, dessert then went to the show. Riley sat with us during the whole first half of the show as her class was the first act after intermission. It was at least an hour of sitting and she barely moved an inch. She was mesmerized by all the ballerinas and dancers. I was thoroughly enjoying myself as well - I always wished I was a dancer. I hear that the dance studio has classes for adults and that the adults can perform in the shows...watch out...you might just see Kari and I next year on stage dancing in our tutus!

Riley's class danced to The Teddy Bears Picnic song and when it was finally their turn and I got to see her perform it all felt worth it...the classes, the rehearsals, the amount of money I had to continually shell over for this performance...it was so fun and Riley was very proud of herself afterwards too. She did great on stage, although she had about a 10 second moment of completely zoning out and staring into the crowd. Other than that she was right on track and did her dance. We bought her a bouquet of pink carnations and gave them to her afterwards. It was a fun evening...something I know we will do again for years to come.