Tigard Festival of Balloons 2016

The Festival of Balloons is one of our favorite summer activities! Here is Emily waving from the giant bear ride. 

Riding on the swings!

The classic tiger roller coaster! As you can see from the look on Emily's face, it's not quite as thrilling once you've ridden the roller coasters at Six Flags. :P

Riding motorcycles.

The girls were excited to discover that they are tall enough this year to go on some of the bigger rides!

 The guitar ride ended up being one of their favorites!

They loved the El Nino too... WOW!

They also visited the Haunted House for the first time this year.  

Fighting tiger!

The girls' taekwondo instructor, Master Eric, was at the festival too.  He let the girls practice board breaking!

Emily breaking a board. 

Enjoying greasy french fries and sugary slushees.

This weekend we also went swimming followed by a snack at Krispy Kreme. 

Emily got a maple bar and Lauren got a chocolate bar. Yum!

Last Day of School, Swimming, Orange Bear

Emily and Lauren on the morning of the last day of second grade. Congrats on an outstanding year!

We went swimming on friday afternoon at the Tualatin Hills pool... it's HUGE!

We had the entire shallow end to ourselves!

Afterwards we went out for french fries and milk shakes. 

This weekend we had lunch at Mio Sushi, one of our favorite restaurants. Our server brought out this cute orange bear with our bill. :)

Day Trip to Skamania Lodge

Last weekend we went on a day trip to Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington to celebrate our friend Amanda's eighth birthday!

Amanda, Lauren, and Emily sitting on a rock with the lodge in the background. 

Singing happy birthday!

After brunch and cake, some of the kids and adults went ziplining.

The girls had a blast!

Emily ziplining...

Lauren ziplining...

Emily ziplining...

Lauren ziplining...

Taekwondo- Green Belt Testing

Emily and Lauren took their taekwondo green belt test last week.  Lauren is on the right, closest to the camera.  It's harder to see Emily on the right, furthest from the camera. 

Lauren doing self-defense maneuvers. 

The girls both passed and received trophies for succesfully completing one year of taekwondo!

So excited to be moving on to green belt rank!

Video showing self defense maneuvers...

Video showing their form routine...

Book Fair, Grandpa's Birthday, and Photo Booth Pics

We went to the Alberta Rider book fair at Barnes and Noble this weekend. Emily's first grade teacher did one of the book readings!

Ruth Musgrave, author for National Geographic Kids, gave an interesting presentation on sharks followed by a shark art project and book signing. 

We also celebrated Grandpa's birthday this weekend! 

Our neighbors had a party to celebrate their daughter's high school graduation. We stopped by to congratulate her and took some fun photos in their photo booth. :)