Memorial Day

For Memorial Day we thought about following the hordes of people going up the mountain for a picnic, but sleeping in and relaxing won out, so instead we had a BBQ at our place in the afternoon. We pulled out the camera in an effort to remedy our lack of pics with Grandma and Grandpa Knight (and to capture the fun on "film").

 

 

Matchy matchy.

 

Trying to get Ryan in a picture:

 

but he wanted to dive onto the water table instead.

 

Hot dog heaven:

 

And the rest of the clan with food in their mouths. :)

 

For dessert Rachel and Annie had popsicles they had bought from the ice cream truck for the first time ever. They've been noticing the ice cream truck go by most days, so Rachel was so excited to be out on the street when it was coming. I grabbed her money for her and she bought herself and Annie a huge popsicle each. The rest of us that cared about dessert (mostly just Ryan, I think) had a fudgepop.

 

 

Playing on the swings:

 

Since it was Monday evening we had Annie give her favorite FHE lesson. The one she gives EVERY time it's her turn to teach: "When Jesus was died, then he was in the tomb with the rock over him. Mary was sad and the angel moved the rock and Jesus was resurrected." We have pictures I've laminated that she uses every time. McKenzie was especially interested in them, but let Annie hold them long enough to give her lesson (30 seconds). 

We always talk about getting together once a month or so for an extended family FHE, but it doesn't usually happen. Maybe we should make it happen more often. Like schedule it on our calendars or something. :)

Happy Summer!

Fire station visit

One of my visiting teachers arranged a visit to the firehouse for the kids she watches, and even though they didn't end up being able to go, we jumped on the chance to go on a tour of the fire station. The kids got to climb in one of the big trucks and sit on the chairs and everything. The oldest and youngest liked it, but the 2 and 3 year olds couldn't be persuaded to climb in.

 

Annie prefered to stand by the fire fighter equipment.

 

We got to check out the ambulance and ride on their new gurney that has buttons you push to raise and lower it. 

 

Rachel got to hold the hose head and see how heavy it was.

 

They turned on the fire engine so they could spray some water out of it. Annie was not a fan of the noise.

 

Then those who wanted to got to take a turn at spraying the water out.

When Rachel's friend Lydia was adjusting the spread of the spray she got me real good. :)

A picture of all of us that went:

 

After checking out all the equipment one of the fire fighters dressed all up in his equipment and showed them what would happen if they were ever trapped in their house in a fire. 

It was really cool. I had never thought about doing anything like this before, but after having been through the tour I think it's a good idea for everyone to do. They teach the kids that even if firefighters look a little different (ie. scary), and sound like aliens with their masks on, they're there to help. So that hopefully they don't freak out and try to run away from them if there's ever a fire they need to be rescued from. They talked about what the kids should do if there's ever a fire and they can't get out of their room (lay by the window, not hide under a bed or in a closet, and make lots of noise) and about never playing with matches or lighters. 

If Rachel ever wants to be a firefighter she's got a lot of growing to do. ;) 

This tour of the fire station was definitely one of the highlights of the month for all of us. And it's free! All you have to do is call and get an appointment. We'll have to do this again in a year or two.

Preschool graduation

Rachel had her last day of preschool yesterday. She had a special preschool graduation party that we got to go to. 

Waiting for the preschoolers to come out:

 

 

Grandma Knight was happy to have an excuse to take the 2nd to last day of school off from her crazy kids at her school. And I realized I have more pictures of the kids with their grandparents who live hundreds of miles away than I do of them with the ones that live less than 10 miles away. Maybe I should take pictures of them more often than never.

 

The preschoolers have been learning sign language all year since Mrs. Heather is deaf. She has hearing aids that help, and lip-reading helps, and because of that the kids have actually learned to wait their turn to talk and speak while making eye contact so she can understand them--all good communication skills to have. Anyway, they signed The Bear Necessities from The Jungle Book for their performance.

 

Then the kids were all presented with little packets for their graduation.

 

 

Apparently Rachel needs new shirts that are long enough.

 

We're really proud of Rachel. She's a really good friend and problem solver. Her teacher told me that she is really good at helping other kids work out their problems when they're fighting and is a good peace-maker. She's also a hard worker. She is reading like crazy these days. She reads Junie B. Jones books all the time--whenever we go to the library she gets a few more. One day when Rachel brought one of her Junie B. Jones books to school for show and tell she met me at the door after preschool and said, "That girl can really read! She showed her book for show and tell and I asked her to read it thinking she'd read a few words, or stumble around a bit, but she read the whole page without any problems at all. She is going to do great in school. I have one son that was like her, except he wasn't reading that well until the end of kindergarten. She's going to be taking honors classes and advanced placement courses and do really well in school." Yeah, we've got a smartie pants on our hands. And now we'll just hope for a kindergarten teacher that can handle her. Luckily she's happy to just go with the flow. Hopefully that continues in kindergarten. In the meantime, summer vacation, here we come!

Camping

Last weekend we went camping. As I was packing the car I thought, "How will we go camping if we ever have another kid and one of the kids has to sit on the back row?"

 

Notice the kids playing in their seats while I arranged the junk in the back.

Annie sat in her seat for almost an hour in the morning while I packed things in. Then when I was putting the last few things in in the afternoon while waiting for Jake to get home from work she climbed in again and wouldn't get out. She was soooo excited to go camping. Even though she had no idea what that even meant, having only gone once when she was about 9 months old.

We went down to Patagonia Lake, a little over an hour south of here. It was beautiful. After we got the tent set up and ate dinner we headed down to the lake to throw rocks in the water.

 

 

 

Family picture:
 

The boys:
 

On the way back to our tent Annie and Rachel put on their headlamps to light the way. Annie's slipped a little, then of course, when we laughed at Annie, Rachel had to join in the goofiness.

 

 

Ryan thankfully loved his little camp chair that I got for him the day before. It was the only way we could get him to stay in one place. If he wasn't in it he was wandering around trying to check out the fire, or go down the steep hill, or trying to find the dogs he kept seeing walk by (every time saying "Eese!"--Reese is my parents' dog, and apparently all dogs now go by that name). Anyway, stick him in his chair and he was happy as a clam, and stuck in one safe spot. 

The girls were excited to roast marshmallows. They didn't care that their roasting sticks didn't even reach all the way to the fire. 

They were happy to try out s'mores for Annie's first time. Ryan was not such a fan of them. The sticky fingers kind of bugged him. Rachel happily ate his s'more, and he enjoyed a plain ol' marshmallow.

Ryan was not a fan of the tent. I think it was a little scary for him. Jake got him settled down eventually in his pack 'n play, and to keep the girls from waking him up we didn't go into the tent for our bedtime stories. Instead we sat in our camp chairs and read. 

When it was finally time for sleep I went in and laid by the girls for a while in the hopes of helping Annie fall asleep more quickly. Rachel fell asleep pretty quickly, but Annie did not. After trying her sleeping bag, then our blow up mattress, then back to hers, we eventually tried the back of the minivan. She fell asleep around 10pm (two hours after her normal bedtime of 8pm), then we moved her back to the tent. She slept pretty well the rest of the night, only waking up once. Ryan woke up several times until I decided he was waking up because he was cold and moved him to my sleeping bag around 2am. He slept well the rest of the night. And I was once again reminded why I could never co-sleep. I sleep horribly with someone else so close by. Lucky for me I went into the camping trip expecting a horrible night's sleep, so expectations met, no problem.

Ryan woke up at his typical 5:45 am, and instead of leaving him to play quietly for a half hour or hour like I can at home, I was happy to give up feigning sleep and get out into the beautiful morning sun. 

Ryan was happy to be up and about, too.

 

By the time Jacob and the girls got up around 7ish, Ryan was apparently ready for a nap.
 

Too bad for him, he didn't get a morning nap like he usually does. He toughed it out and was pretty happy all morning anyway.

We had eggs and sausage and chocolate milk for breakfast.

 

While we tried to clean up camp Ryan and Rachel warmed up our beach toys.
 

And like usual, we get one picture of what's really going on, then Ryan looks up when he hears the camera and says "tsees!"

 

We went on little hike past the beach where we'd come back and play a little later, and along the lake to a big tall bridge that we didn't get a picture of. I was happy to see that Annie does have a little healthy fear built in and may have inherited a bit of my fear of heights. 

 

 

Ryan was in a daze on the hike. I had hopes that he'd fall asleep and take his morning nap while we hiked, but it was not to be. 

 

After our hike we packed up camp and headed over to the beach to play in the sand and water for a few hours before heading home. We also had borrowed my parents' inflatable raft, so we took a couple spins in that, but Rachel was the only one interested in going out on the water. The other two kiddos were content with the sand. Of course, we didn't get any pictures at the beach except of Ryan as he chilled on the chair while the girls played.

 

We headed home and within about 5 minutes both Ryan and Annie were asleep in their car seats. We had successfully worn them out. :) Of course we were pretty worn out, too. It was pretty fun. But I remember now why we don't go camping all that much these days. It is so much easier to camp without kids. A friend of mine whose 4th and youngest child is Rachel's age keeps telling me there is light at the end of the tunnel and eventually it gets easier.  Maybe then we'll go camping more than once every two years.