More summer fun

I think the kids are having a fun time on their summer vacation. It feels a little too busy to me to be called a vacation, but I guess my vacation starts when the kids get back to school in a few more weeks.

Last week Annie had a cooking camp for two hours each day where she got to learn some new recipes and kitchen techniques. It was perfect for her since she loves cooking (and sweets). They had 5 different themes: breakfast, lunch, tea party, dinner, dessert. This is the delicious parfait with a homemade triple chocolate brownie in it that she made on the last day:

Each day she came home with some foods for us to sample. Today she made the cinnamon scone she learned how to make at the camp for our whole family and it was DELICIOUS. We're looking forward to more delicious treats from our budding chef.

Monday we went to workout group, which we've been missing more than going to this summer, but at least I've made it a couple of times. (A bunch of ladies in my ward get together every MWF to workout while the kids run around, and a few of the more athletically minded take turns teaching.) One of my friends, Jillian moved across town this week, so she had all the kids get together for a kid picture to remember the workout group fun.

 I'm thankful for good friends for me and for my kids.

After synchro on Tuesday we squeezed in a visit to the Arizona State Museum down at the U of A before we had to run Annie to her cooking club. It was all about the different Native American tribes in and around the state of Arizona and their cultures and beliefs in the afterlife and how they weave together.

 They had several "please touch" displays throughout the museum, including some carvings, this drum, a mask, and more.

 We finished up at the museum, grabbed an Icee for the kids, then ran Annie over to her cooking class. We went home and had lunch and hanged out for a while, then went to pick up Annie and headed to Clements Pool to swim with some friends (the Reimanns and Neffs). This is all the skinny little kids warming up in the sun after swimming until their teeth were chattering.

 The next day after the girls were done with synchro and piano we headed in to eat lunch with Jacob at his work. We picked up Chipotle and ate in one of the little kitchens at work. Megan was boasting to the kids that she already got to eat lunch a couple times in Dad's work. Since most of the building is restricted access, we never really go see him at work. I think I've been inside the building maybe 5 times in all the years he's worked there.

 And of course Ryan loved rolling down the little grassy hill a few times before we left.
We took Annie to her cooking class, then when we came back to pick her up we headed to the library for the 3rd time this summer. (3 weeks, 3 visits, we're on a roll.)

Ryan has been eyeing the computers the last few visits and this time he jumped on a free one to explore what he could play with. They had a coding game he played around with for a while before we had to head home. He wants to try Minecraft next time.

 Nearly every day Ryan's friend Alex comes over to ask if Ryan can play. She was in his class at school and they have fun together. They live down the street far enough that it's a little hard for them to hear me when I call out, but close enough that I can see them mostly when I go out to check on them. Alex's mom has a rule that when playing with neighbor friends you have to stay in the front yard, which is working out pretty well for us.

 Except they come back all red-faced because it is pretty hot at 3pm or even 5:30pm when she tends to come ask to play. But they hardly notice the heat, and it's nice to finally have some neighborhood kids to play with.

Thursday we stopped at a couple of stores for some back to school shopping. At Goodwill Rachel and Ryan both bought some huge stuffed animals. Ryan's was $10 and Rachel's was $7, I think. They must have an upholstery cleaner or something because both smelled freshly cleaned and looked real good. When I went in to check on Ryan that night I couldn't even see him in the bed. I had to walk around to the head of his bed to see where he had disappeared to under the bear.

Friday we went to check out the new splash pad at Palo Verde Park. It wasn't much, but it was fun enough to keep these kids entertained for a while. Until they got too cold, anyway.

 Rachel went to a goodbye party for her friend, Ally, who is moving in a few weeks. But we brought along our neighbor, Alexxa, and they had fun splashing around.

Saturday Rachel and Annie had their Skills Meet for Synchro. We headed in a little early so we could eat dinner at SmashBurger before the meet started. They all agreed that the burgers were better than McDonalds (except Megan who got chicken strips and has no opinion on that). 

 Ryan and Megan are such good friends so much of the time. I love that they get along so well most of the time. They sat together to watch the girls doing their skills.

 Annie, as a beginner, had to do a sailboat, oyster, and pinwheel, and Rachel, as an advanced swimmer, did a barracuda, ballet legs, and

They both did really well. Annie got 8th place in the Beginner group and Rachel got 3rd place in the Advanced group. All the girls on the team are from our ward. Which means in a couple of weeks when we go to girls camp, all except Annie will be gone. That also happens to be the last week of practice before the final Watershow. Oh well. They'll figure it out.

June fun

We got back from Utah on June 1, ready to start our summer vacation. I guess the Utah trip was vacation, but it feels even more vacation-y being home and not going to school.

Annie and Megan felt like being twinners to church the next day. 

Monday Karolee invited us to join her and Jill and their kids at a park with a tennis court. The kids had fun hitting the tennis balls around (and the guys on the other court were very kind about all the balls that ran onto their court, even gifting us with 3 extra balls when they left). We had brought our scooters, too, so the kids spent a lot of time going around the park on the scooters and on Steven's little wiggle bike since there was a hill perfect for that. Peyton and McKenzie had stayed overnight at Grandma's house the night before, so they came with us and had lots of fun, too.

 Once we got too hot to stay at the park we packed up and headed to the library where everyone could pick out a free book as part of the summer reading program. It was basically a ward party there with Karolee, Jill, and I, plus we saw Stacy Compton, the Sorensons, and at least one or two other families, too. Then we headed home to try to salvage some of our house from the dumping of all our trip junk in the front room when we got home. That took a couple of days.

Grandpa bought a new pool, a step up from the kiddie pool. It's about 3 feet deep, and 10 feet across and the kids love it. It is amazing how long they can stay out there having fun. It was a brilliant buy.

 They really like to all get going the same direction and get a whirlpool going, then lay back and float as it turns them in circles.

 Ryan's hair has been getting super shaggy. At church one day I finally convinced him he should cut it and he agreed only if I would take him to a real haircutting place to do it. So I had him point out one of the young men whose hair he liked and I went in with a picture of him for the stylist to copy.

 He was very happy with it and has been styling it most days.

 Just a super cute picture of the kids:

 We made some prototypes of the unicorn headbands for Megan's party to figure out how to make them most efficiently. They actually turned out to be pretty easy. And cute.

 One day we decided to go check out the new Burger King by our house for lunch because it had an indoor playground and it was way too hot to play at an outdoor playground. I read a book while they played for probably an hour.

 Jacob suggested Baskin Robbins for an FHE activity last week. No one argued. :) They had this photo op set up...

 And the sky put on a beautiful display as we were pulling out to head to ice cream.

 We've had a lot of reading going on this summer. Not quite as much as I would like from the younger two, but a bit more than I would like from the oldest.

 She's not the best worker when she has a good book to read. Nor is she the most gracious when responding to a request to come do something when she's reading. Her theme song is Julian Smith's "I'm Reading a Book." 

We found a swim teacher that will come to us to do swim lessons, and since our neighbor is nice enough to let us swim in his pool, we have been using it for swim lessons, too, and it's going great. Megan especially is gaining confidence and endurance in swimming.

 Of course our neighbor's pool pump broke on Friday, so we imposed on another neighbor to have our swim lesson and they were kind enough to let us, and to let us stay and play afterwards. Their daughter is going into 5th grade, and the kids like to play together, so it was fun for them to swim together.

We plan on going back again tomorrow to swim more. We've also made it to Clements to swim last week for a little variety.

 Rachel and Annie have been doing sychronized swimming most every morning, but this past week they also did a drama club that my friend, Karolee put on. They had just 5 days for 2 1/2 hours each day and managed to come up with 4 awesome plays. Rachel was a mermaid and Annie a pirate in the Mermaids vs. the Pirates play. In Cinderella Mad Lib Annie was a town crier and Rachel was a town girl. And in the best of all the plays, SuperHeroes to the rescue, Annie was a song girl and Rachel was Raphael of the Ninja Turtles.

 The kids, including Ryan and Megan, also did a lip sync to Da Coconut Nut. They did great and even though they were super nervous beforehand, it turned out fabulous. We all had a really fun night last night watching all the performances.

And today was Father's Day. One of Dad's presents was a bunch of duplo-sized blocks. The kids were all over them. I see many hours of fun with (and without) Dad in the future. :)

Mid-week this week we will hit the halfway point of our short summer. We've managed a lot of fun. Here's to a lot more fun.

Megan's birthday party

Megan isn't quite 5 yet, but she had her birthday party early because she wanted to invite friends from preschool and I thought expecting them to keep track of an invitation for over a month was asking too much. So we just did the party a month early.
Megan has had MANY ideas of what she wanted to do for her party over the last several months. She wanted it to be a swimming party at the pool, and jump on a bouncy house and unicorns and mermaids and I don't even remember what else. So we settled on a Unicorn and Mermaid theme, Mermaids being covered with a kiddie pool and a slip 'n slide, and mostly really just having a unicorn party.
The kids had colored pencils and glitter glue to decorate unicorn heads, then we attached them to some PVC pipe for a stick horse (stick unicorn, I guess).

 The boys (led by Ryan) were a little too loud and aggressive with the water squirters for the girls to want to go play in the water much at all. But the boys sure had fun.

 Cake time had little unicorn cupcakes with toppers Megan had picked out in a moment of decisiveness.

 You can see the unicorn headbands Rachel and Annie and I helped the kids make on some of their heads.

 We used a headband, some pipe cleaners, and fuzz balls attached with hot glue to make the unicorn horns and Rachel and Annie were great helps. They even came up with unicorn bracelets out of the pipe cleaners, too.

Megan wanted a piñata, she informed me a couple days before her party. I always make the piñatas because it's way cheaper that way, but we didn't have time, so I suggested candy fishing and she was ok with that.

 There was a pipe cleaner bent into a circle at the end of the fishing pole string and whatever candy was touched by the pipe cleaner Rachel or Annie would clip on the clothespin for them to reel in. It worked out better than I thought and they all had fun.

After everyone had a few turns fishing we went inside for presents.

 Then with the extra time before parents arrived Annie used her "leadership" qualities (she's not bossy, she's just a good leader) to run the unicorn races on their stick unicorns.

Everyone had a great time and thank goodness for Rachel and Annie. Without their help I couldn't have pulled it off. I didn't quite realize what I was getting myself into hosting a party on a weekday without Jacob to help and without the parents sticking around. But they both stepped up and helped a ton and made the whole party a success. 

Utah Vacation-Friday

Friday we scrapped our original plans to go to Temple Square and instead went to Nephi to play with the cousins on their cool playgrounds at the parks there. 

The kids had fun, and were happy to go back to Grandma's house to play the rest of the afternoon.

 Jacob, Rachel, Annie, and I left early afternoon to head to Salt Lake to see Sharon sing in a special concert at Abravanel Hall. It was amazing. Heidi (and Andrew when he got off work) babysat Ryan and Megan for us, and they had a fun time with cousins and movie night. Sharon is a part of the amazing Millenial Choir. They are going to sing in Carnegie Hall next summer. It was an amazing concert. The first two songs were super powerful and I could really feel the Spirit. Towards the end they did a specially arranged version of the song Jericho and it was incredible. You could feel the music in your bones. The whole thing was just really touching and powerful. The girls liked it, too. It's not everyday you get to see an amazing choir (choirs, really, because there was the adult choir, the teen choir, and the children's choir and with different combos on different songs), all accompanied by a wonderful symphony orchestra. We were able to meet up with Sharon outside after the performance to say one last goodbye before we headed back to Arizona the next morning.

 After some lines and traffic hassles we finally made it back to relieve our babysitters. The cousins had to say goodbye until next time, but there were less tears than in times past, so that's something.

It certainly helps that we get to video chat with them often. It was a great vacation, and the drive home was our best one yet, only having to stop 3 or 4 times on the way home.