The end of summer….

The week before school started I just felt like I had so many plans for summer and so few of them actually got done.  I think this is one of my biggest personal struggles; balancing time between just being together and really completing things.  So one afternoon while a friend and a cousin were over playing I decided that we would try out some homemade bubbles.  The end product was only mediocre – but hey, we were doing it together.  We tried all  kinds of “wands”: CD’s, funnels, bracelets, paper tubes, canning rings, etc.  Mark and his friend and Abbie lasted the longest and actually got a few decent sized bubbles.  They loved trying to cut the bubbles and poke their fingers through them without the bubbles popping. Neil just loved being outside.Abbie and Spencer love coming in my room to see Neil first thing every morning.  What a bunch of sweeties I have.Jessie has learned some new friendship bracelet patterns and has really built up quite the stash to share with friends, brothers and sister.Jessie was bugging Uncle David all summer about extra cardboard boxes he can get from work.  So one day he called me up and said he had 3 1/2 refrigerator boxes for me.  I thought it would be a great surprise for the kids and so I arranged to have lunch with him and pick them up at the same time.  We were running a bit behind schedule and bought lunch on the way instead of picnicking.  I took pictures of the kids and they took the one of me with Neil and Spencer – I thought it was great how the light coming though the trees made me look like I’m wearing the Phantom of the Opera’s mask. After lunch David invited Jessie and Mark for a tour of his work while Abbie, Spencer, Neil and I drove around the building to pick up the surprise.  Jessie was so excited!!  It was a little unnerving driving home with the boxes making noise on the top of the car.  David really tied them down well, but it just sounded scary.  Neil needed to eat part way home so we stopped at the Springville library park for a bit so the kids could run around while he ate.One of the chickens we acquired from our neighbor turned out to be a rooster.  We posted it on KSL and someone came and picked him up just a few days later.  Jessie was really sad about the whole thing because they were “just going to kill him,” but that’s what we would have had to do too, so I’m not sure why it was such a big deal.  Anyway, Jessie has been learning “paper twirling” or quilling as it used to be called and came inside and made a little paper rooster that was an impressive replica.  Then she made a grasshopper too, so that her paper chicken wouldn’t be lonely.  I still need to get a picture of them.  She did an awesome job.Speaking of my crafty girl she also made armor for Spencer one day.  It started out as just a helmet and a shield…but ended up as the whole getup. Spencer decided that he wanted it to be a robot outfit and so he asked me to put the numbers and his name on the front, “because that’s how real robots look.”  I didn’t quite get it how he had pictured it, but he decided that it was good enough.  He also made sure I took two pictures “because you can’t see my smile when my helmet is down.”  Jessie made herself a set too.

We watched my friend’s baby for a couple of hours one afternoon and the kids had a blast playing with him.  Neil looked so small in comparison.We took the kids down to the Utah County Fair for the horse show, but it was cancelled do to the rain we’d gotten earlier that day.  We looked around at the small animals (I don’t know why the first thing we looked at were the chickens, we can walk out our back door and see chickens, we’re so silly) and then ended up watching part of the hog judging.  The judge looked like he was only a late teenager, but he was totally interesting to watch because he was so good at explaining what he was looking for and how he was judging.Abbie and Spencer wanted to go see the sheep and so Ken took them around.  There was a super nice guy grooming his sheep and he let the kids pet his sheep and get their picture taken with it too.  I just love the picture of Spencer baaing at the sheep.

We had a couple of really good POURING rains….now if we could only get some really good thunder to go with it…then it’d be just like home.  After one such storm the kids when out puddle jumping and took our old camera (that has been dubbed the “kids camera”) with them.  Here’s what they came back with.