Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone out there had a nice 4th of July.  We were a little caught out by actually having nice weather here in Seattle.  The local saying goes that summer doesn't start until the 5th of July in Seattle.  With the weather nice we decided to meet up with some friends and check out some fireworks.

We met up with our friends the Dunn's who have three kids of their own.  Their son, Gavin is Max's best buddy, then they have another son Ella's age and a daughter who is just a little older than Ella.  They live in Sammamish which is close by and Sammamish was having their own fireworks.  So we headed to the City park and took up a nice spot on the hill.  They had a bunch of things for the kids to do to keep them occupied, bounce houses and things like that.  Then we settled in for a cool fireworks display.

Ella broke her arm

We have the first broken bone in the family.  About 2 weeks ago, Ella fell off the monkey bars and broke her right arm.

The crazy part is that she hobbled around with it for two days before we finally took her to the doctor.  She never really complained about it hurting, it didn't bruise up or really swell at all.  She complained a little about the pain that first night, but we just gave her some aspirin and then she never complained again.

It's a new car!

We finally had to trade old Betsy about 2 months back.  Our 8 year old, 160,000 mile, Buick Rendezvous was starting to show it's age and it was time to upgrade.  After shopping for a few weeks, and looking at the Buick Enclave, the new Ford Explorer, and the Audi Q7, we went with another Buick.  You just can't beat that GM discount.

So now we are the proud new owners of a 2011 Buick Enclave, this baby is fully loaded, leather, navigation, rear seat DVD (which we did not want but got kind of stuck), AWD, the works.  I have to say it is really nice, we are really happy with it so far.

Ella's 7th Birthday

I cannot believe that it has already been a month since Ella turned 7.  She is already acting 17, gets her feistyness from her mother obviously.

For her birthday, Ella took a few friends to the movie to see Hop.  The kids all wore bunny ears during the movie, we had about half a row filled with little girls, then Sarah, myself, and Max.  The theater brought a little kids meal thing to each kid with some popcorn, candy, and a drink.  Ella also got to bring home a movie poster from the movie which is now hanging in her room.  I need to get a real movie poster frame that lights up and makes it look cool.

Trip to Vegas

A few weeks back now Sarah and I enjoyed a nice complementary (prize from my poker championship).  We had 3 nights and 4 days at the Wynn at the end of the strip.  We were hoping to get some nice comps just from our name, but none really came.  One pit boss asked for a raise, and a lot of people would do a double take when they saw our name.

We had a great time, the room was fantastic, it is a really nice hotel.  So nice, that we didn't do a whole lot at the other casinos.  Most everything we did was on the Wynn property, we walked the strip a couple of times and checked out a few things, but it was so convenient to stay that we often did just that.

Our home away from home

Our room

Our view of the strip