Her Red Tricycle

Morning

Picnic with kids & friends

July 3rd, 2013

My friends and I had been planning to have this picnic for a long time but there was always something going on that we kept postponing it until today. I was glad we made it because it was such a beautiful day out there. 

We decided to go to Scenic Beach State Park in Seabeck. It took us 30 minutes to get there.

 These were some of the views that we saw along the way.

I guess I was busy eating that I didn't even remember to take any pictures of our picnic table so I went to search for old pictures of this place. This one was taken way back in Aug 2010. I still remember it was our first time here and we were fasting in Ramadan. 

 I was eating (again) when I saw this sail boat passing by and quickly grabbed my camera and took a few shots of it.   

It was low tide while we were there. The boys had a great time in the water.

Amazing view of the Olympic mountains.

Sarah loves the water. 

I had to take Sarah out of the water after awhile because she started to shiver a little bit. Her brothers follow suit not long after that. The two ladies in the picture are the only Malay friends that I have in this area. 

Meanwhile Ezzat kept swimming for a long time. The water was just nice but once you get out of it, you could feel pretty cold due to the breeze.

Sarah is easy to warm up to new people. She had a short stranger anxiety moment when she was younger but now she can be pretty friendly.

Finally Ezzat decided that he had enough swimming for the day and Sarah gave him a hug.

My sweet little girl. Thanks Grammy for the swimming suit. Finally she's able to wear it.

Our Saturday at the park

Although living in Washington means that we have to endure grey weather pretty much 80% for most of the time (I am not even exaggerating here), but whenever the sun decides to come out, it can be really pretty out here. This weekend has been exactly that. Sunny and breezy. 

We spent half of our Saturday at the Silverdale waterfront park. I got them some donuts and milk and they were pretty much happy campers. 

Emir didn't look too good with his mouth full of donuts and it was hard to get Sarah to look at the camera.

She was still holding the same piece of donut that I gave to her earlier. She is not exactly a good eater. But she loves swings now. And don't be fooled by her serious face. For some reason whenever she's on the swing, she always have that serious business like look. 

How much fun will it be to learn how to sail?

Watching her brothers climbing up a tree.

Time to go home

Mmm...no, not quite

Sarah in her tent

Feb 17, 2013

Artwork from the boys

Ezzat's design of his airport

 Farhan's Valentine's card

Spring Break

The boys are having their Spring break for a week.  This week's weather has been pretty miserable; it's mostly gloomy and rainy.  It makes me want to camp out on the sofa with a blanket and nap all day long. The thought has not materialized so far. I got busy with daily routines and the boys kept themselves busy with story books, math practices, Legos, toys, TV and bikes but we did go to some parks nearby.

Here's the boys' favorite new park, Poulsbo's Fish Park. I used to think that the park was pretty small considering it's just right off the busy Lindvig Way road. It never did catch my attention until Emir mentioned it to us when he went there on a school field trip. He came back from the trip, all excited about the park and  told us about how he released his salmon fries into the streams at the park. Emir has been studying salmons since Fall and he has a Spring break challenge in which he has to create a Riparian ecosystem model that is best for salmon development. 'Ripa' means river bank in Latin.  I thought going to the park would give us an idea on how to build the model. So we did. Two days in a row.

At nearly 21 acres, the park is certainly larger than it looks from the road. I'm glad I took the kids there. There are a couple streams running toward the Dogfish Creek. 

The trail at the park is almost 1000 feet, a combination of wide wooden boardwalks, gravels and dirt. Hundreds of bird houses are scattered throughout the park and we did see a lot of birds.

 Can you spot a bird and a seaplane?

Poulsbo's waterfront is just across the street so this plane might landed there because it flew pretty low above us.

Enchanted forest

The boys found their favorite place to play right away.

I found mine. A big cherry blossom tree with white flowers.

The boys declared this place as their secret hideout. This is actually underneath my favorite huge cherry blossom tree. They cleared some of the fallen branches and they got this nice space to play. 

This was the view when we looked up