Updates Along With Grandpa and Grandma Grant's Visit

I keep meaning to blog about this or that, but life gets busy, and time gets away from me.  One of the things I had meant to blog about in May is that Eli learned to ride a bike without training wheels.  I was fearing the worst (lots of crying, bruises, possibly broken bones), but it turned out to be surprisingly easy.  Eli decided he wanted to take off his training wheels when Josh was at a conference in Seattle.  I begged him to wait until Daddy came home because I really did not want to be the one to teach him.  He insisted that he could do it, and he was right.  I held on for a little bit, and before I knew it, he was riding by himself.  I told him where to position the pedals, and after a few tries, he was starting by himself.  Phew!  I'm not sure it is that simple for everyone, but I'm definitely glad it was for me.  Now he loves riding his bike and is very proud of his new accomplishment!

Eli also took swimming lessons for the first time in May and June.  He has never really liked swimming, so I have been hesitant to invest in lessons, not because I don't feel it's important to learn, but because I didn't want to waste money and time sitting on the sidelines with a screaming little boy.  Since he started to show improved interest, I enrolled him in a class, and it was probably perfect timing.  He was certainly one of the oldest in his class, but because he was a little more mature, he could sit still, listen, and follow instructions much better than some of the others.  Also, most of the other kids had been in the class two or three times because they weren't ready to move up to the next level.  By the end of his class, Eli was one of the few kids who the instructor said was ready to move up.  The difference was probably his age because he certainly didn't love the water better than any of the others.  In fact, he had one day where he suddenly freaked out and started screaming (the instructor came out of the pool and carried him in), but by the end, he was quite proud of himself.  I had told him he would only have to take this one class and then he could choose if he wanted to continue.  I was surprised and pleased to hear him tell me that he definitely wanted to take another class.

He likes practicing his swimming in the bathtub.

Over the 4th of July my parents came up for a visit.  This was their first time visiting us up here, so we went quite a number of places.  For the 4th, we stayed here and went to Aberdeen's Splash Festival.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the event because I didn't realize my camera needed to be charged until we were already out of the house, but my parents have pictures that I'll have to get from them.  At any rate, we got to go aboard the Lady Washington, which was built in Aberdeen.  The Lady Washington was the ship they used to portray the HMS Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.  We went to a comedy magician routine, and since Eli loves magic these days, he loved the show.  We also saw fantastic fireworks that they set off over the Chehalis River, which is right next to where Josh works.
 
We took my parents to Westport, which is about half an hour from us.  Westport is one of the two beach towns near Grays Harbor where Aberdeen is located.  The other is Ocean Shores.  Westport has a large marina, so we took a stroll along the pier, and then we went to the beach.

 One of the reasons Aberdeen gets so much rain is that it isn't that far from the only rainforest in North America (and by rainforest I mean temperate, not tropical--either way, there are lots of trees and rain, but one is warm and one is cold).  We took about an hour drive up to Lake Quinalt, which is part of the rainforest and home to the world's largest spruce tree.  We took a beautiful hike to some waterfalls, and then we let Eli play in the lake.

This was the world's largest spruce tree.

This was just a cool tree on our hike.

 Josh had scout camp while my parents were here, so we had to leave Josh out of some of the activities.  (In case you were wondering, Josh is the scoutmaster in our ward.)  We went into Olympia on one of the days and toured the capitol building.

 

We also drove up to Bremerton and took the ferry into Seattle.  I had taken the ferry a couple of times before--once when I was eight and once when I was dating Josh--but Eli had never taken it.  It was his first time in downtown Seattle also.  We had a very enjoyable day.

My parents left a couple of days after Josh came back from scout camp, and Eli was sad to say good-bye to them.  He always has a hard time when family leaves or when we leave them.  He says it's too quiet and boring around here without more people, and he's probably right. :-)