June Fun

As the month draws to an end here's a look at some of the things we've been doing with our free time.

Grandma Knight was crazy enough to invite all the in town cousins over for a sleepover (except Megan).

 They all stayed up later than usual, then got up well before normal wake up time. Ryan napped every day that week (not a regular occurrence since March), either trying to catch up on sleep from the sleepover, tired out from the heat and all the swimming we've been doing, or perhaps slightly anemic or some other side affect from the gluten-challenge we're doing right now. We'll do the blood test in a couple of weeks to see if Ryan is ok eating gluten or if he really does have Celiac disease.

Megan has become more adventurous this month. She likes climbing on these little chairs.

 She is also finally trying to walk. May 31 Megan took a couple steps a couple of times, then decided she had had enough of that idea for a while. 2 weeks later I looked outside where Megan and Ryan were playing and Ryan moved a chair Megan was holding onto away from her and she took 3 steps forward to get to the chair. But if we tried to get her to walk she would just sit down. Then last Monday she finally decided she was ready to start walking and has been having fun practicing this week. She is our latest walker and it has been great not having a little one who can get into everything quite as much as she could if she were to walk everywhere. She'll be 12 months old on Saturday and she's just starting to take steps, probably 2 or 3 more weeks before she can really walk well. The other girls started walking at 9 months and Ryan at 10 months. I guess she's more of a sit back and watch the entertainment kind of girl, rather than a join in and chase everyone kind of girl.

Annie found the camera and caught the two clingy kids on camera one morning. Sometimes mornings can be tough. 

 Annie also caught Rachel on film... um, memory card.

 Rachel was reading her Book of Mormon. You can see her Reading Rewards calendar from Chuck E. Cheese in the foreground. I decided that my kids needed to see me reading my Book of Mormon every day so they would know it is important, but thought the only way that would happen is the kids helped me remember and read at the same time as I did. Which would help with my other goal to get the girls in the habit of reading every morning before they go to school (a habit that is easier to start when school is not in session).  So we set a goal of reading individually every morning for 2 weeks. With the rewards calendar from Chuck E. Cheese as incentive (they each get 10 free tokens for completing it--and there are a ton of rewards calendars to choose from), Annie did a great job at reminding everyone every morning, and is still doing it even now that the calendar is full and tokens are redeemed. Success so far. We'll see how the transition goes once school starts. For now Ryan and Annie watch a scripture story video online for their BOM reading. We tried other things, but everything else required me to be there to help them, and then I didn't get any reading done myself.

We went to Chuck E Cheese for Family Home Evening once everyone's rewards calendar was full. The kids had a ton of fun doing a few rides and playing the games.

10 tokens was just about perfect to occupy the time that it took for our pizza to be made, then we ate, the kids used their last few tokens, got their prizes and we headed home. They even have gluten-free pizza, so it was a win for everyone. The kids are still asking to go back.

Once summer started I tried to convince Rachel to join the swim team or the synchronized swimming team at our neighborhood pool. She resisted at first, but after days of telling her how much fun she would have, and finally showing her some videos from the olympics and some from kids her age that were much less skilled she gave in and agreed to do Synchro. She is one of 3 kids on the team, one of the other girls is in her class at church, which was also a selling point.

 They had a skills meet a week ago where they got to show off their pinwheel, sailboat and oyster. At noon on the hottest day so far this summer. Those of us watching were cooking.

 Rachel did a good job and got 8th place in the beginners group out of 14 or 15 girls. The water show is coming up in a few more weeks.
Annie is so looking forward to joining synchro next year. I told her she had to be able to swim well and tread water to do synchro. She has been improving a lot this year and can swim an okay freestyle well enough to be able to go 20 or 30 feet with taking several breaths. After showing me how far she could swim one day I commented on how great she was swimming and she got all excited and asked, "Can I do synchro now?!" I told her a few more things she needed to work on and we've been working on treading water and swimming backstroke since then and she's catching on pretty well. It's a little hard to have a decent lesson with Megan in my arms and Ryan trying to swim to me with no regard for his safety, but we manage a little bit every time we go swimming.
Ryan is really a great swimmer for a 3-year-old and can swim about 10 feet no problem, but can't get his head out of the water for a breath to save his life. Literally. But he doesn't care. A little water never scared that kid. We try to stay in the 2 1/2 feet area when we go swimming so he can touch and not drown. So far so good.

 As we've been systematically cleaning the house room by room and reorganizing and getting rid of stuff we don't need, we finally made it to the under the stairs closet that we use for some of our food storage. When we moved into this house 2 1/2 years ago a friend that has the same floor plan said they cut a hole in the back of the closet to use the space under the landing on the stairs for extra food storage. I've been meaning to do the same since we moved in. I finally got around to it.

 

 Not the prettiest of jobs, and the placement of the studs makes access kind of a pain in the neck, but it works. The kids, especially Megan, love the holes. 

 Because it's hard to access, I just put stuff that we won't need for 20-30 years unless for some reason we need to live off of our food storage: white rice, potato flakes, sugar, etc. We'll rotate it in 15 years. :)

While I was busy with the saw and Megan was sleeping, Ryan was painting outside. But not painting what I thought he was painting.

 The boy was covered in blue and after his bath, so was the tub. Some of our cement in the back yard, as well as a spot on the stucco of our house also have blue paint.

For Father's Day we made Jacob a t-shirt with a picture of his favorite kids on it. Here are a few from our photo shoot.

Last week we went to the Children's Museum with Grandma again. There was a dancing dinosaur. Megan was grooving to the music and McKenzie was intrigued with the dinosaur costume. She couldn't keep her hands off of him.

 This random kid was climbing all over the dinosaur and his mom was no where in sight. He joined our family for the picture.

At the little kid play area Ryan and Megan had some fun while the bigger kids did crafts.

 Overall it's been a really fun June. I appreciate summer more now that kids are in school. It's fun to have no schedule (besides Megan's nap schedule) and stay home and do nothing some days and get out and do things we don't normally do other days. And knowing that school will be back in session in a few more weeks and I'll have a break from the constant fighting that happens some days helps me endure the bad days. :)