The sun has been out in Seattle and my kids aren’t sleeping. That about sums up my past few weeks!

I can’t even describe how magical the PNW is in the summer. Seattlites are SUPER happy lately, everyone wants to get together for playdates, and it is suddenly a bijillion times easier to entertain my active girls toddlers.

Of course, this means that our ‘schedule’ is chaos and we’re constantly running from one fun activity to the next! Isabelle has been forced to sleep in the car for a majority of her naps and Clara has been skipping her afternoon naps frequently out of necessity. We’re just having too much fun to go home to sleep!

This also means that I’ve had zero ‘free time’ for myself. And by ‘free time’ I mean ‘time when both girls are napping.’ Gone are the 2 hour chunks of time when both girls napped and I could blog in peace. Ah. Memories.

I’m so thankful for every second we spend outside, because it’s one less second my girls can create a huge mess in my small house. I even bought a small child-size picnic table (similar) for our front yard so that I can feed them every meal outdoors. My kitchen floor has never been happier cleaner.

Here’s what we’ve been doing…

+ Exploring parks in Seattle. Toddler friendly recommendations include: Magnuson Park, Carkeek Park, Discovery Park, Green Lake Park.

+ Jumping in the bounce house. My in-laws gifted our girls with this bounce house from Amazon and we’ve been using this thing CONSTANTLY in our yard. For toddlers who always need to be on-the-move, this is perfect. A trampoline would work just as well, but I wanted something I could put away in between uses.

+ Walking/hiking. All of the parks I previously mentioned have great (short!) hiking trails for little legs. There is nothing I love more than walking with other moms and toddlers for a play date.

+ Picnicking. After we walk, we eat! I don’t go anywhere without packing the girls a picnic lunch so that we can eat before we go home. Because remember, I don’t let them eat lunch in the house when the weather is nice! I bought some picnic blankets from Gathre and I am obsessed.

+ Playing at playgrounds. My girls love climbing! Even Isabelle, who can’t yet walk, loves to climb on playground equipment. Needless to say, our walks and picnics also usually include a playground visit. All parks mentioned in the first bullet points have hiking trails, picnic spots, AND PLAYGROUNDS.

+ Visiting the zoo. We have a membership to Woodland Park Zoo and we are there often! It’s only a 10 minute drive from our house and the girls love going to see the animals, and I love walking around! I only go with friends, though, because Clara isn’t the best at staying next to me (she tends to sprint in the opposite direction!) so it’s nice to have another adult to help monitor the kiddos.

This morning it’s actually a cloudy, dreary day – hence the opportunity to write a blog post (for the first time in 9 days – YIKES!)! I feel like I’m officially a PNW’erner because I enjoy a good cloudy day to slow down for a bit – the sun shine gets exhausting!

What were you up to this week?!