Back to School...Hopefully!

I cannot believe it is Back to School time already! I am certain they just got done and summer vacation just started.  Any other parents with me? Well as much as I want to deny time flying fast, it is (suppose to be) just days away. I say suppose to be and "hopefully" because as of tonight, Tacoma school district teachers have not decided on a contract which means Mykayla may not be going back to school on Thursday as planned. I am crossing fingers that they agree upon something in the next 3 nights so that she can indeed go back to school.

Every year since Mykayla started Kindergarten, we have had a Back to School Fashion show where Mykayla tries on all her new clothes and then decides what to wear the first day. The last two years she has actually stuck with her first choice! This year she has chosen to wear a dress; we will see if this one sticks. (Most of you know how Mykayla feels about dresses) This year we did the show a couple nights early so daddy could see too. She had a great time trying on all the clothes Grandma Chris and her had purchased in a back to school shopping spree a couple days ago. A BIG thank you to Grandma for the back to school wardrobe, Auntie Cookie for the zebra striped Converse and Aunti Nuni for the pink "soft" coat. She is one spoiled girl and soaks in every minute of it!!

Ok, so maybe we were a little crazy...

...but we had a great time and made lots of memories!!

7 adults

10 kids (under the age of 11)

1 dog

  5 kittens

+ Staying in a rather small vacation house

________________________

A weekend of fun in Pacific Beach & Ocean Shores. 

The last Summer hurrah before school starts!

 

Picture collage below:

Top left: This is how we woke Uncle Pat & Auntie Cookie up this morning. Uncle Adam promised the kids each an extra pancake if they could wake them up.(This was not the only "bet or promise" Uncle Adam made with the kids this weekend. He bet them all $5 at the park on Saturday that they couldn't cross the zip line type monkey bars, and every last one of them did it! Auntie MaeMae was excited about that one : ) They were satisfied with ice cream sandwiches luckily!)

Top right: Playing a mean game of "Garbage". The Anderson clan taught us this game this weekend and I am sure it will turn into a family favorite.

2 squares top left: This is what the kids (and big boys!) spent most of the weekend doing!

Bottom left:Uncle Adam having breakfast with the kiddos.

2 squares bottom right: The two youngest were troopers all weekend!

Bottom right: Dinner last night on the front lawn

We spent the weekend in Pacific Beach with family and friends. The kids enjoyed riding bikes, playing games, digging in sand and trying out skim boarding for the first time. The adults enjoyed watching the kids play, playing games ourselves and just relaxing. Saturday, we all went into Ocean Shores for the day. The men and children braved the water with skim boards while the women (and a couple kids) stayed bundled up armed with cameras catching spills and rides on the skim boards. We had Sand Castle (burgers and fries, not sandcastles : ) for lunch and then headed back to the house. This morning several of us walked to (one of) the local espresso places and had hot cocoa and cinnamon buns before heading back to pack up and head out. We were ready to go home and get all that sand off!

Living Room Transformation update - My scrapbook hutch DIY

We finished another major part of the living room transformation and I am so happy beyond thrilled with how it turned out. My scrapbook hutch has been in our family for years and was the one piece of furniture I wanted to take with me to my own home. Refinishing it was kind of bittersweet for me as I have so many memories of it in our homes (including the "interesting" Indian wallpaper on the back of it from our living room on Rucker Ave). So here is the before...

Adam did all of the sanding while rocking out to his iPhone. 

 I did a majority of the primer with some help from Mykayla and a little touch up from Adam.

 Adam did all of the white paint (& I sat and supervised : ) Actually Adam is very much a perfectionist about this kind of stuff so I was happy to let him paint because I knew it would look amazing!

 

And the final product...I love it!!!

 

 Had to show off the cute knobs I bought for it too. Now to figure out how to keep my favorite little 21 month old out of it without ruining the whole look of the hutch : )

 

I added all my scrap stuff to it and some decor items tonight. As you can tell, I have a few more spots to fill but for now I will work with it. Hopefully going to get some scrapping done tomorrow night!

 

 

So excited to have another part of the transformation done! I am actually enjoying doing a few things at a time. Gives it a new element of surprise, every couple weeks. I must give a huge Kudos/Thank you to my hubby for his hard work on it. He has been working quite a bit of OT lately and doing his best to get it done while having his nagging wife breathing over his shoulder and adding more and more to the "honey-do list". Love you Adam!! Thank you!!

 

9th Annual Family Campout- "Take Me Out to the Campout"

Every year, the Pawlak/Bach families gather together in Toppenish, WA (near Yakima) for a weekend of family, food and lots of FUN!! This year's campout theme was "Take Me Out to the Campout".
In one word, sports!
This years committee led by Papa Mike was Nicholas, Laura and Mark. (I will insert here that I think Eric also helped out and took on Papa Mike's role in his absence to his new job in Pasco) Anyway, nice job committee!! (Hope I did not forget anyone!)

We all headed out on Thursday morning with our usual stop and meet in North Bend for lunch, to gab and whatever else we do to waste time. Then we were off to the Yakima Nation RV park in Toppenish. First thing we do is set up camp...

We had 9 tents this year surrounding the trailer. Pretty much one tent or two per family and then papa and grandma camp in the "life of luxury" aka the trailer. Grandma Pawlak was in the trailer this year too.  After we set up, it's off to the pool because we are dripping sweat from being in heat that we are not used to.

Thursday evening after everyone had arrived for the day, we all went to the local Mexican restaurant for dinner.
I think we were all up bright and early on Friday morning, despite the "early morning" bedtime of some of us.  We spent most of Friday hanging out, swimming and enjoying each others company. Papa Mike, Grandma Linda and Grandma Pawlak traveled to Pasco to see Papa's office and bachelor pad while he starts his new job. Friday night we had hot dogs, hamburgers and brats for dinner. Then we had an official family meeting to discuss the next day's events and learn who our teams would be.

Saturday morning, the men all got up at 6am to head out for a round of golf-The Pros versus The Joes. Adam was none to happy about his score therefore I do not have much of a recap of the mornings events except that Mark beat all of them. So way to go Mark!! (I'm sure they are all ready for next years rematch-I know Adam is!) The women and all the children stayed back and did some more swimming before heading to Miners to meet the guys for lunch. Every year on golf day, we meet for lunch at this amazing burger place in Union Gap that has huge burgers and serves tons of fries. By the time we leave, we can't breathe because we ate too much!

After Miners, a couple of us girls headed out to do a little shopping (2 hours is not nearly enough shopping time but we made do and I enjoyed the short break from my kiddos) We had to get back for the camp out games to begin! Saturday evening was full of sports, sports and more sports! We started off with a couple games of Wiffle Ball and also played some ladder golf and Bocce ball.

 The flag building relay

 Blue Ballers vs Red Rockets

They made their own beer garden complete with music : )

The final results of game day: The Red Rockets won! (Unfortunately I don't remember the scores) and the Blue Ballers took second. I was on the Orange Mounds and do remember that our score was slightly way below the other two. Oh well, maybe next year! Auntie Laura had a great time putting together ribbons and gathering fun goodies for the kids to receive on Saturday night. We also celebrated Griffen's 13th birthday with a giant chocolate chip cookie cake. 

Sunday morning we all packed up and headed home exhausted but looking forward to next year-the 10th annual! Next years theme-"Family Feud" game show style. I am on the committee and am looking forward to working with the others to make it a memorable one!!

 

2nd Annual Kingston Campout

We spent a relaxing, fun filled weekend with some great friends' at their home in Kingston. This is our second year having the Kingston Campout. We take our tents, sleeping bags and food and hang out in their yard huge amount of acreage complete with swimming pool and trampoline. The kids have a great time on the toys and the adults enjoy catching up and playing games. (I will add here that I dominated on both games of Yahtzee and will return reigning champ next year!)

The Anderson Family, our awesome hosts' (and their dog Zoe)

 The other place the kids lived all weekend besides the pool

 Some fierce Apples to Apples competition

 Enjoying the beach

 Got in some soccer practice too!

 Justin and I in the best tree I have ever climbed. Best part was, Justin (who is 5) climbed it way faster than I did : )

 Roasting marshmallows. Actually playing with fire, typical boys.

 Mykayla and the boys. This is just like the old days, I have several pictures of Mykayla, the Anderson boys and her two boy cousins.

Looking forward to the 3rd Annual Kingston Campout!!

The best benefit of my job...

So I must start by saying I am doing a blog post while "camping". Technology is so neat these days, yet so addicting! You would think while I am enjoying the great outdoors I could stay off my phone but not this time : )
Scratch that, Blogger would not let me upload pics.  Maybe technology isn't that great after all : )

So instead, here is Friday evenings post on Sunday evening.
Today's post is mainly pictures. I had to brag about the best part of my day. I get to see my favorite little man at any time I want to. This morning my school agers happened to be on the playscape the same time as Michael's class. Only a fence separated us. I had fun snapping a few pics of him (and yes I had an eye one my class also :)

 

This is my favorite picture of the group! Love his eyes!

A Wednesday (3 day late) weekend wrap up

We had a fun, busy, exhausting and awesome long weekend up North. Michael and I headed out as soon as "we" got out of work. After a short stop for a snack, we were on our way. Wish I would have known we were going to sit in traffic for 2 1/2 hours to get there, I would have left a little later or tried to get off a little earlier. We did finally make it after dodging traffic and taking some back roads. Good thing I am way more comfortable on the roads than I used to be!

First stop was Blazing Onion (a Kinyon, Pawlak, Brannon favorite) to celebrate mom's 60th birthday

Mom got this yummy, very rich dessert for her "cake". Looks much better than the Ding Dong dad got at MOD pizza for his bday cake : )

Saturday morning, Kattrina, myself and my children headed to Celia's.

Mykayla got about 6-8 inches cut off her hair and then Darcie curled it for her and made it bouncy and fun. She promptly went and put on her bike helmet and that was the end of that : )

It is so much easier to take care of now. I love it and so does she.

We spent the rest of the day preparing for mom and dad's 60th birthday party and it all went off well! Everyone enjoyed themselves, enjoyed some good food and enjoyed getting some "old people" jokes in too.

Sunday was girl's (and Brooks & Michael) shopping day in Alderwood. The (little) boys were troopers as we drug them around the entire mall and a couple other stores. After shopping for the day, we headed to Comcast Arena to watch Uncle Pat, Uncle Kevin and Uncle Nick play hockey.

Monday we spent the day at Birch Bay Waterslides with the family!

We enjoyed hanging out with Uncle Jay, Aunt Carmen, cousin Amanda and her daughter Grace who were here from Redding. We will go ahead and give them the credit for the sunshine this weekend : ) Mykayla also became a pro on her bike over the weekend, thanks to Uncle Jay who gave her some pointers for riding. She was circling the cul de sac like she owned the place! Uncle Jay taught me to ride a bike when I was little so this was pretty neat for me.