Megan's birthday, Sharon, and the 4th

We brought some of Utah to us, since we couldn't go there in the form of Sharon. She happened to come on a super fun-filled week. Monday is the cheap admission day at the Children's Museum of Tucson, and the kids had listed that as one of the things they wanted to do before summer ended, so off we went.

 Of course Ryan loves all things mechanical and loud. A motorcycle seems to fit the bill.

 Annie made electricity:

 Megan's favorite part of the museum was probably the grocery store room. Luckily we were able to snag a grocery cart as a girl was just getting ready to abandon it. There were so many kids in there, the grocery carts were in high demand.

 The next morning I noticed some skeletonizer caterpillars on my grapes, so we rushed off to Civano Nursery (which is a cool place to go even if you don't need anything for your garden). We saw a pretty butterfly.

 And we pet the goats, tried to catch the bunny, and looked at the chickens from afar.

 Then I left the kids to play in the sandbox/boat while I went to ask questions about trees and tomatoes.

 I got what I needed and we headed home just as it was starting to get hot.

Megan's major request for her birthday was to go to Jump, an indoor inflatable gym. They were closed for the 4th, so we went the day before for some fun.

 The kids seem to spend more than half the time on the game projected on this floor screen. It happens every time we go. It's so funny. We go for the inflatables, then spend the time on the video game. It is pretty cool, though.

The jumping pillow is a big hit, too, though.

All around, really, it's a pretty good deal. The kids had a great time and got all their energy out.  We went home and Sharon had their undivided attention reading books to them for a while.

 That night Jacob wasn't feeling fabulous, so we left him at home and headed out to Vail to watch the fireworks show they put on on the 3rd of July. It was a great show, and we hit the traffic just right and were home in 15 minutes after it ended.

 The next morning we woke up and headed to church for our ward's annual 4th of July pancake breakfast and parade. There were a ton of people.

 A good time was had by all. I didn't even get a picture of the candy cannon, but that was probably the biggest hit of the morning. "If a piece of candy is on fire, DON'T PICK IT UP!" was the watch-cry of the day.

That afternoon we headed down to Sierra Vista to check out The Cove, an indoor acquatic center with a couple cool slides, a big pool that was NOT 85 degrees, no matter what they say, and a smaller heated pool. Once we found the warm pool it was hard to want to go in the other pool. But the slides were pretty cool. After swimming there for a while we headed back home for some kabobs on the barbie and Megan's birthday party.

 The other kids were, of course, more than happy to help her open her presents.

 She was pretty excited to get a new baby doll from our awesome neighbor, Shannon.

She wanted rainbow cupcakes. I should have gotten a picture of our awesome job at making the actual cupcakes layered in different colors, and the icing on top swirled, along with rainbow sprinkles. Rainbows all around.

 Megan got some blankets from Grandma Campbell that she promptly put to use for her little baby dolls, including the new one she got.

 And she was excited to get all decked out in her birthday clothes. She had already been wearing her skirt and shirt all day, but her new socks matched perfectly, and she got some star necklaces that matched the whole star motif as well.

  The next morning everyone was sad to see Sharon go, but glad she had been able to come and write many poems, and play many games, and read many books while she was here.

 Aunts coming is always great, but then when they leave it's no fun. Maybe they should all just move here permanently. ;)

A friend in the ward invited us over to swim on Thursday afternoon. The kids had a great time, and Megan was all about showing off her swimming skills.
After a while I was done being in the pool, so I put Megan in a Puddle Jumper so I didn't have to worry so much when she was climbing on the floaties and such.

 We brought Amber and Jesse home with us since their mom was going to help someone clean. Megan was happy to put on her new clothes after her bath and thought she looked so cute.

 She was right.

Ryan and Jesse had a great time together. I came out from getting Megan dressed to find that Ryan had passed along his ninja outfit to Jesse to wear, complete with black underwear for the head. 😂 I texted a picture to his mom so she could laugh along.
They eventually quit with the ninja stuff and got to more important stuff like making a car or airplane out of the box.

 It was a good way to spend the afternoon and get their minds off of missing Aunt Sharon.

Summer activities

With the move, and Girls Camp, and our summer being pretty short in the first place, we got to a few weeks ago and I realized summer was almost over. We had to get to some of our summer fun list! Then I looked at it and realized we had already done some of the fun stuff: swimming at various pools, watching the Incredibles 2 at the movie theater, library fun. But we planned out the rest of the summer to cram in more fun activities.
I got to go to the Food Bank of Southern Arizona with the youth and help bag meals for several hours on a Saturday morning. It was a good time and a worthwhile way to spend the day.

 That evening we went to Rachel's synchro skills meet.

 Half of the girls at the skills meet were from our team. Rachel competed in the Advanced category for the first time and did a great job, tying for 4th place.

 The kids have been really burning through our paper this summer writing and illustrating stories, and just drawing awesome pictures.

 The above picture is Ryan's picture explaining the characters in a book he was writing about Big Foot and Fred.

Annie found a canvas and wanted to paint it, but we only had 2 canvases on hand, which had all the potential to end in a fight. Luckily Grandma was over and lives super close, so she took the two younger kids over to her house while the older girls stayed here and painted.

 Annie gave her masterpiece to Megan for a birthday present.

 Both are budding artists.

We had planned on going up to Utah for the week of the 4th, but didn't end up having enough time off of work, so we decided to go camping instead. And bring a little bit of Utah to us in the form of Aunt Sharon.

We invited McKenzie and Peyton to come along and they were super excited for their first time ever camping.

 We went on a small hike to explore the area.

 Grandma Knight came along for the daytime fun, but headed home to sleep in her comfy bed. We pulled out the mouthpieces for the Say It, Don't Spray It game and had a little fun with it.

 McKenzie got in on the action, too.

 The campsite we chose ended up being very private. There were 10 or so campsites in the area, but no one else ended up camping there (they all went further in where there were spaces for campers rather than just tent camping where we were). So the kids took over the nearby campsites, as well. They collected all the pine cones and built a big mountain out of them.

 Some of the kids were worried about bears and sleeping with the wind blowing the trees made falling asleep a bit difficult, but the Knight kids, Annie, and Jacob slept pretty darn well. Megan slept well after she finally fell asleep. And the rest of us were happy for a good night's sleep the next night back in our own beds. :)

When we got back home we did a little pampering. Face masks, baths, though I don't think we ever got to the fingernail polish like we had planned.

 Other summer fun: Watermelon eating. You can't beat that!

Ryan sometimes turns into the black ninja. You can't even see him. (Yes, that is underwear he's using as a ski mask.)

Rachel occasionally takes to making her dinner plates extra creative.

Notice the eyebrows and mustache above.

And the "heart"y stir fry.

She has come along way in her bubble blowing skills.

And still, that's not all of our summer fun...

Summer-cousin time

Ryan, Annie, and Megan did a session of swim lessons once school got out. They all improved by leaps and bounds. Ryan got good enough at freestyle to do side breathing, Annie picked up backstroke real quick and started learning breast stroke, and Megan went from working on strong kicking with sandwich hands to swimming with big arms and being able to take 4ish strokes, take a breath, then take 4 more strokes, and repeat several times. She can swim all on her own about 15 feet now (not super great form, but moving through the water and taking breaths).

Todd and Eloise were able to come into town for McKenzie's baptism. It was good to see her get baptized.

 We missed the other Knights that couldn't make it this time, though.

 The cousins all sang "the rainbow song" also known as "When I am Baptized" and did a great job.

 After the baptism we went out for lunch at Eegees, per McKenzie's request, then headed to the pool (without even waiting a half hour after we ate!). We went to Quincy Douglas Pool, which has a splash area in the beach entry area, a splash pad, and a big slide.

 The kids all had a lot of fun. Except when I convinced Ryan to go on the slide, then traumatized him by sending him down the slide when he wasn't ready. He yelled at me the whole way down.

 We had to pull out the waterproof camera to cheer him up.

The next day we celebrated Peyton's 7th birthday at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

From McKenzie to Peyton we've got 4 girls turning 8 within just over a year: McKenzie, then Annie, then Eloise, then Petyon. It's fun to have cousins so close.

After Eloise and Todd had to go back home, Rachel and Annie participated in a drama club my friend, Karolee put on for that next week. They met a couple hours every day and by Saturday had a series of skits/plays ready to perform. Unfortunately Annie was sick off and on for several days that week and missed out on some of the fun. And she was SO sad to miss it. It was really fun for her. But she was feeling better for the performance and they all did a great job.

 Annie was the sign man for the Rocket Man skit, and Rachel was one of the Engineers back in Houston.

 It was a funny skit.

They did some other nursery rhyme sketches, and a big play with everyone called Rockin' Robin.

 It turned out great. It was also a fundraiser for Jessica Schillinger, Karolee's neighbor whose one-year-old baby was born with bad kidneys. He's been on dialysis since he was born and has to travel up to Phoenix so often for hospital stays and treatments. He's old enough for a kidney transplant now, but waiting to be healthy enough for one.

 She was able to come to the play and feel everyone's love and prayers for her. And the kids were able to help raise a lot of money to help her family out.

Speaking of prayers, the LDS members in Arizona were asked to fast and pray for rain for Arizona on the first Sunday of June. We did, and the kids did a great job at remembering and reminding us to pray for rain every time we prayed for weeks. As the week of drama club was wrapping up, a storm system moved in and was projected to rain all day Friday and Saturday. Karolee had everyone pray that the rain would hold off in our area long enough for the performance to go forward. It rained good on Friday, and on Saturday there were lots of rain clouds. During the performance we could tell it was raining in town, but we stayed dry. Then as we drove home afterwards the rain drops started falling. It was a double-decker faith builder for the kids and all of us. It never rains that early in June, almost always waiting until the end of June for monsoons to start. But it did. And looking at the doppler radar, our area of town was like a donut with rain all around. I'm glad Karolee had the faith to ask the kids to pray for that, so the show could go on, and they could have that faith building experience to know that God answers prayers, and cares about what we care about. Sometimes he is just waiting for us to ask.

Kicking off summer break

We started summer break with a nice hike up Sabino Canyon on Memorial Day. We have always hiked out to the dam, but figured there wouldn't be any water, so we decided to branch out and hike up the other road a while.

 We made it a mile in, had an injury, had some otter pops, and turned around to get back before it got too much hotter. Rachel was a party pooper, avoiding the camera (like she often tries to do).

 It made me want to go hiking more. Then the heat of the summer kicked in and we haven't made it out for a hike since then. Maybe once more this week, or maybe we'll wait until fall when the temperatures are more conducive to hiking.

Much of our summer has been spent with Legos spread all over the floor.

 We're getting to the point that there is hardly anything left in the box to build with, so we're going to have to have a massive dismantling party soon and make them break apart their creations.

Jacob's work had their annual family picnic at Golf 'n Stuff this year. In June.

 We got out early to try and beat the heat. Megan gave up on mini golfing pretty quick, so I took her on the bumper boats, which she enjoyed. When we were done we went back to the golf course and grabbed the rest of the family who were ready to call it quits at the half-way point to go get splashed by some cool water in the hopes of cooling down.

 The water, though pretty dirty looking, did cool us down at least.

We tried out the go carts, then headed inside to the arcade until lunch was served.

 We enjoyed some lunch and Eegees, played some more arcade games, then headed out. Definitely a winner of a work family picnic.

The other major happening to kick off summer was Grandma and Grandpa Knight moving out of the house they've lived in for the last 30ish years.

 It was quite the undertaking, but we managed to pack up the truck in pretty good time, then sat around impatiently waiting for the loan to record so they could get the keys to their new house so we could unload. When it finally recorded, they got the keys and I texted a bunch of young men in our ward who had volunteered to help and they came to help unload the truck. We were done in just a little over an hour.
We're so glad to have them so close to us now. Literally less than a minute away driving. The kids are happy to have Grandma and Grandpa so close. If any one else wants to move close to us, let us know and we'll keep a look out for houses nearby. We do happen to live in one of the best wards in all the church.

The day after Grandma and Grandpa moved in, I headed up to Girls Camp on Mt. Lemmon. Cari flew in for a few days, as well. She and Grandma and Grandpa shuttled the kids around and kept them entertained and fed while I was at camp and Jacob was at work. Apparently they were having so much fun that they forgot to take pictures.

But of course, I was at Girls Camp surrounded by teenagers who like lots of photo ops. I got lots of pictures.

I got to be with the 4th years that didn't go on the 4th year adventure. We were a small group, but had a fun time on our own adventure up to Inspiration Point bouldering around, and going up to the Cookie Cabin and the top of the Mt. Lemmon highway.

We also had some good ward-bonding time. Our ward did a lip sync to I've Got a Dream from Tangled. Sariah did up Ceara real good with facial hair to look like one of the thugs.

Ours was one of the best lip syncs, for sure, but the stake leaders' lip sync was pretty darn good, too. And they definitely won best costumes.

They danced to Super Trooper. It was awesome.

Here's our ward:

I got back from Girls Camp on Friday, Todd and Eloise got into town that day for McKenzie's baptism the next day, and Cari headed home the following morning. All the kids were sad to see Cari go, but Rachel especially had a hard time and would tear up at random times throughout the next few days. "I miss Cari!"