Father's Day then heading to Utah

The kids woke up Sunday and set about making Father's Day special for Jacob. Ryan made a Father's Day sign for Jacob, and some of the kids made breakfast for him.

 Among other things he got more of these Duplo-style blocks, some of which I ordered because I knew he wanted them, and some he ordered because he didn't believe me when I hinted at it being a Father's Day present. Now we have 900 blocks, I think. Plenty for all the kids to build with without fighting.

They made a super tall tower then knocked it down. They were going to make it into a Bad Moby stop motion video, but I don't know if they ever did.

 Rachel made a cat:

 We hosted church and lunch at our house. Afterwards B and Ryan found a creative spot to eat their slush:

 Grandma Campbell started reading books to Megan. It was like moths to a flame, attracting one kid after another to come listen.

 Another of the kids' creations:

 I think they made it into a Stop Motion Video, too.

Monday we spent the morning getting everything packed and prepped for our trip. Grandma and Grandpa Campbell's flight left a little before 4, so my mom took them over to the airport around 2, and we left to drive up to Utah for the Campbell family reuinion.

 Since we couldn't leave until afternoon we just drove as far as Flagstaff that first night. Turns out we chose a nice hotel to stay at, and we pulled in just in time to catch the last 10 minutes of the complimentary dinner they were serving.

 We also took advantage of their pool and delicious breakfast. The kids loved the hotel. They thought the balcony was particularly cool.

Tuesday morning we woke up, ate breakfast, then headed for Utah, arriving before dinner time. A relatively easy road trip, especially when compared to the trip home. (A story for another post.)

Ryan's baptism

Ryan turned 8 in March and was all set to be baptized when COVID came and shut everything down. He could have been baptized still on his original baptism date, but was only allowed to bring 10 people, including 2 people from the stake, so we would not have been able to have even both sets of grandparents there. We decided to postpone. Stake baptisms were canceled in April and May, so Ryan was excited to hear that they were back on in June. And we could have up to 20 people come, including one member of the bishopric, so 19 people. The Knight clan numbers 18, so adding in Grandma and Grandpa Campbell would put us at 20. Marie, however, only had 6-8 hours to sleep between shifts at the nursing home she works at, so she sat out (or slept, actually) and all the rest of the family was able to attend. 

 Tucson's mayor issued a city-wide mandate that started Saturday morning requiring a mask for everyone in public areas where social distancing was not possible (because Arizona is the COVID hotspot of the country right now), so we had to bring our face masks along.

Ryan with his grandparents:

 Jacob and Ryan came already dressed in their whites to make it easier since we were supposed to limit as much as possible what we touched in the church so the stake leaders (who waited outside while we were inside for the baptism) would have less to clean between baptisms.

 COVID definitely made Ryan's baptism one to remember.

 Because of the restrictions on who could come, they allowed other family to join us via technology as long as we weren't recording or taking pictures. So Ryan's aunts and uncle in Utah were able to join us remotely.

 We got everyone together for a big family photo with everyone who came, but it unfortunately did not turn out. :(

We did get a family photo both with and without masks.

 (Look how tall Rachel is. She's almost caught up to me (especially with her platform shoes on).

As we were leaving Rachel's friend, Chelsea showed up for her brother's baptism. They were both wearing green striped dresses. We had to snap a social-distance masked photo.

 Ryan was very happy to have finally gotten baptized. Afterwards we went to Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house for Eegees and lunch and swimming.

Ryan and Jacob got matching ties for his baptism since he doesn't get a baptism dress like the girls. He also got a CTR tie clip. Those are two handsome men. 

Our neighbor, Shannon, has come to Rachel and Annie's baptisms and comes to the kids' primary program almost every year. She loves the kids, and was sad to have to miss Ryan's baptism, so she got him a necklace that says "Try God" and a bracelet that says "I love Jesus." You can see the bracelet in the above picture. She's the best neighbor.

We're so proud of Ryan for choosing to follow Jesus Christ by being baptized.

Another couple weeks of summer

We've gone swimming in Manny's pool a couple of times over the last few weeks. The kids are getting better at diving and have had fun racing. I got a few good photo bursts which the kids thought were hilarious to watch backwards so it looks like they're flying out of the pool back onto the deck. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to embed GIFs on the blog, so I'll just share a few still shots instead.

This is an awesome one of Ryan mid-dive:

And this caught Rachel in good diving form:

I showed the kids a picture of a dress someone had made out of duct tape that was amazingly intricate and detailed. Rachel decided making your own dress sounded like a cool idea. But with a limited duct tape supply she went the garbage bag route:

Last Saturday the Allens invited us and the Reimanns to a Luau. It was super fun. The kids played on the slip 'n slide (but if you said the word someone else could steal your lei), did the limbo, shot each other with water shooters, and just ran around having a good time.

They even set up a Hula Hoop conga line.

And there were glow sticks for fun when dark came on.

Seeing the kids running around with friends in the dark seemed like the ideal summer evening. And it was made all the sweeter because of how limited our interactions with friends have been over the last several months. Us adults enjoyed it at least as much as the kids did, too. I always enjoy my time with Karolee and Jill, but we never get a picture together. We really need to remember to do that sometime.

Sunday twin hair:

We got new carpet last week so we spent a good bit of time getting bedrooms cleaned out and stuff stashed downstairs in the office in preparation for new carpet being installed. They moved the big furniture, but all the toys, books, clothes needed to be moved out by us. Even though we just decluttered and organized when everyone switched rooms a few months ago over Spring Break, there was plenty of clutter and disorganization to wade through. A few before pictures:

 During:

 After:

 Ryan always loves watching people who come to our house to fix something. And this was no exception. The whole crew spoke Spanish, some with very limited English, so while Ryan watched everything they were doing, he also would occasionally put his Spanish that he's learned over the last few months to work asking "Quieres agua?" or "Tienes hambre?" Then he brought them water and strawberries and carrots. One of they guys pointed to Ryan at one point and told me "Good helper" because Ryan had been pitching in with stacking the scrap pieces he cut off as he was doing the stairs.

With the carpet in, and all the painting of bedrooms, desk and dresser done, we moved everything back into the rooms and hung pictures. Here are each of the kids' rooms after pictures.
Ryan's:

 Megan's (guess we took hers before we hung the pictures):

 And Rachel and Annie's:

 Notice their dresser and desk. We repainted the whole dresser as well as the drawers to the desk so they would all match. I think it looks great now.

 The day we got our carpet we also finally got to have Peyton's birthday party.

 We had planned on celebrating on her actual birthday the week before, but then we found out that Marie had been exposed to COVID-19 at work, so we postponed it until after she got tested just to make sure.

 The carpet people had said it would probably take 1 day, but might take up to two days so I told the kids we might have an indoor campout if we had to have the furniture out of our bedrooms overnight. The carpet was actually installed very quickly and only took about 4 hours, including furniture moving, but the kids still wanted a campout, so we built a fort in the loft for them to sleep in, except Rachel, who prefers to sleep in her own bed if that's an option.

Savannah's sister runs an Astro Camp every summer, but because of COVID it is all virtual this year, so we signed everyone up for camp in a box. They have youtube videos explaining principles that go with activities that were sent in the box. Last week they started learning about the principles of flight. They learned about weight, thrust, and lift. And have many more activities to come.

 Grandma and Grandpa Campbell came for Ryan's baptism this weekend. The kids are happy to have them visiting, and are super excited to drive up to their house for a family reunion this coming week.

 The kids' swim team had their first swim meet yesterday afternoon. It's a non-competitive swim team, so the idea is each meet they're competing against themselves, trying to beat their own times.

But they do give out trophies for the fastest per age group. So there is some competitiveness they let in. The kids all did a great job. They don't give out trophies and ribbons until the next swim practice on Tuesday, so they don't actually know how they've done quite yet. But I was very impressed with how well they swam. I tried to take a few videos, and did get some, but more often accidentally took pictures when I thought they were videos. Rachel and Annie even swam butterfly and did really great at it. I'm looking forward to seeing how much they improve this summer.

The summer of swimming

Since we started talking about painting Rachel and Annie's room, Megan was determined to have her room painted, too. So we prepped it Monday fixing many holes in the wall and the door, then painted Tuesday. I got one gallon of paint, but it was really close to me needing to go get a little more to have full coverage. But we managed to get it covered well enough that it won't bother me, so I didn't end up going and getting another pint. My mom helped paint, and Megan and Annie were both excited to be in on the work for part of the time, too.

 As long as I had all the paint stuff out and the new carpet is coming next week, I figured it was a good time to go touch up Ryan's walls, too. We painted the back of his door blue with white fluffy clouds to look like the sky. Then I went around the wall getting all the marks and pen and holes so by the time I was done it looked like his room was mostly freshly painted, too. All in a day's work.

Thursday Megan's friend, Emma, came over for a playdate. Megan has been looking forward to this for a long time, so she was super excited that Emma's mom was ready to let her come out to a playdate.

 They played in the back yard for a while running through the kid car wash, then came inside and did a treasure hunt Ryan had set up for them. They also played with blocks for a long time and enjoyed some time playing in Megan's bedroom. As the youngest Megan doesn't always get to choose who we do playdates with so she's always super happy when she does get a playdate just for her.

We've had some really awesome people offer to let us swim in their pools. Our neighbor, Manny, said we could come swim whenever we want, even with all the kids' cousins along, making 10 kids plus adults. So we swam there last Monday. Then Wednesday Mary Spear invited us to her pool. She has a diving board and some floating toys and they had a great time. And finally on Friday Sue Wagner in our ward had invited Savannah's kids to come and said the rest of the clan was welcome, too. As we left she said we are welcome to come swim any time since she only uses it in the mornings to swim laps, and she's happy to have it get more use out of it.

 We are so grateful to such generous people willing to let us swim since that's really the only thing outdoors we can do right now, because 1. it's so stinking hot, and 2. everything is closed because of Coronavirus.

Between swimming at all the friend's pools, and swim team T/Th/S, a lot of the kids swam every single day last week (except Sunday).

Thursday night Grandma invited all the grandkids to her house for a sleepover. Apparently after swim team is the perfect time since all the kids are so worn out they fell asleep pretty fast and made it an easy night for Grandma. I loved this picture of Megan and Peyton walking home after swimming Friday morning:

 Those girls love each other so much and really get along great all the time. We are so blessed to have so many cousins live where we can see them often.

 Strawberries are on sale this week, and after swimming Saturday night Jacob had a bunch of fruit waiting for the kids to devour. Nutella was out, too, so the kids took advantage of some delicious strawberries with Nutella.

 Megan really enjoyed it. I'm not sure how she enjoyed it all the way to her forehead, though.

More random coordination for church. Today was flower day, I guess:

 The kids' big kick recently is Hatchimals colleggtibles. They use their allowance to keep buying more and more. I guess it's better than buying candy. And they actually keep very careful track of them. Rachel decided to lay out every single one of her Hatchimals to see what she's got.

The other kids don't have nearly this much each, but between the 3 of them they may have nearly this much again.