Summer is wonderful

I love summers!  I love my kids being home!  I love kids piling in my bed in the morning.  And this morning Neil brought a game to play. (It seems that Neil is never without a game.  That boy LOVES games!) So while I nursed Emma, the boys played Rat-a-tat-cat.

At Rachel’s work they were tossing several garbage sacks of bread…so she asked if she could take it to feed the ducks…and they said yes.  We joined her at the duck pond and went to a second pond but she had so much bread that we took a trash bag home and came back the next day with the Albertsons and still the ducks were too full when we left.

Nothing like a good rain to make the day fun...

….and silly.

For activity days we had a water day.  We first played “splash” with everyone sitting around a shallow pan of water.  If you rolled doubles then you got to smack the water with your hand to make a big splash all over everyone.  Then we did a water relay where you stood in a line and passed the water over your head by pouring it into the cup of the person behind you.  And the last person tried to dump theirs into a bucket (pouring over their head still) until the bucket was full.  Lastly we made homemade ice cream in a bag.  One of my kids had brought the recipe home from school a couple of years ago.  It was so easy….and way fun.  So fun in fact, that we made it again later that afternoon with the Alberstons and Rachel and Becca. 

Ice cream in a bag

1 Tbsp. sugar

1/2 cup half and half

1/4 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup rock salt

ice

In a pint size ziplock bag combine sugar, half and half and vanilla. Seal tightly.  Fill a gallon ziplock 1/3 full with ice and the rock salt. Place the pint bag in the gallon bag and seal.  Shake the bag until the milk mixture turns into ice cream.  This will take between 5 and 10 minutes.  (You may have kids asking for gloves….because it gets really cold).  Enjoy.

I had to put this fuzzy picture in because while I was running errands my kids wanted to surprise me and they all helped mop the floor; and one of them took a picture.

Jessie’s quilt came back from the quilter first and she and Grandma got together to finish their summer sewing project and bound the edges.  Isn’t it amazing!

Oh my goodness, Isaac didn’t get a nap this day and we went somewhere right before it was time to fix dinner in the car and when we got home he was falling asleep on the couch sitting up.  Mark and I were laughing so hard at him fighting to stay awake.

Ken had some work meetings in Disneyland and sent us some fun videos of a water and light show he went to.  On the train ride home from the airport he saw Renee.  Boy were we excited to see him when he got back.

While Ken was gone we got one cool picture of a humming bird at our cannas.

The kids and I went to the quilt show at the art museum.  Jessie and Abbie had a new appreciation for the quilts we saw.  The two end pictures on the top and bottom row are the same quilt.  This quilt was made out of 1/2 inch squares!!!! I can’t even imagine working on it!  The museum had a fun scavenger hunt to go with the quilts.  Neil joined Abbie and Spencer in the hunting and really loved it.

We tried making some “play dough” from conditioner and cornstarch….a pintrest find….more like a “nailed it” find.  At least it smelled good while we tired to play with it. :-)

Mark is really enjoying cutting out animals on his saw.

We also visited the Dino museum.  So many cool things there.  Abbie got half a dino put together…man it was a lot harder than you would think and the bones were even grouped together….but there were bones from 4 dinosaurs all mixed up.  It gave us a new appreciation for paleontologists. And why is Neil frowning on the dinosaur…because he loves to be funny.

I love this picture of Mark and Jessie going dinosaur hunting.

We were going to pick up some wood for Mark that he found on KSL and so had a bit more time to kill so after the museum we went over to the gardens and ate some snacks we brought and enjoyed a little sprinkle of rain.

Yea!! Dad is home!!  Enjoying some strawberry orange julius popsicles we made.

Abbie got her quilt back too and she and grandma got to finish up the edges.  So exciting!!! Even Mark wants to make a quilt with Grandma next summer.  Thanks for such an awesome experience! 

The 24th etc.

As part of our pioneer celebration the kids slept outside in Scott’s tent with Rachel.  We only got pics of the girls, but Spencer  joined them too.

Some of our friends from college came over for a visit.  They younger kids had fun playing with each other while we caught up and then we headed outside for ice cream in the back yard.

For the 24th we had a bbq lunch with Ken’s family.  Instead of lot of junk to go with the burgers and dogs, we’ve started doing one family brings fruit and the other a veggie and it’s been great.  You just feel better when you eat better.  Yea!We did dinner with the Albertson’s but Neil wasn’t feeling very well, so Ken and he and Isaac stayed home.  They had cream of wheat for dinner and then took a play bath in the jetted tub in the basement and watched some fireworks online.  The boys thought it was great and they were in bed early.  (Poor Neil did get sick later on that night. :-(. )  We did some sparkers and fireworks after dinner.  The Albertson’s had picked up some smoke bombs too and boy were my kids impressed!  They were the favorite…..they all ran to the gutter where the first one rolled and pretended they were making potions.  It was SO fun!!  The very last firework, went a little haywire and sent some pieces in the general direction of the kids….that was a bit crazy/scary, but no one got hurt.We headed down to the sports fields for the big fireworks and were not disappointed!  I covered Emma’s ears, but she quite enjoyed it, a great and pleasant surprise.  Rachel, Becca and some of their roommates also joined us.

On the 25th we picked Mark up at the airport….boy did I miss that boy!!!  He had ridden back to Missouri with Grandma to keep her company and visit for a week.  He got to do a bunch of fun things like the zoo and Worlds of Fun (I was a bit jealous he got to go on rollercoasters :-).)  He had a great time.  Thank you so much Heather and Mom for taking care of my boy!

After picking up Mark we stopped to see David and Lisa’s new apartment.  While we were there David took Abbie to get one of her Christmas dates…popsicles for us all.  Yummy!

Man, this boy was tired.  I just had to chuckle once he FINALLY feel asleep still holding the toy train he was playing with.

Returning from running errands we got stuck waiting for a train.  Neil and Isaac LOVE it when this happens, but Neil wasn’t in the van with us, so we took a picture to show him. (Actually I’m completely amazed that we almost never get stopped by a train…especially since it seems like they are running all the time and blowing their horns.  They especially love to blow them nice and long when it’s dark out….annoying!!!  But in the last two years I bet I could count the number of times on two hands still that we’ve been stopped, that’s why it’s still “fun” to get stopped.)

Neil passed his flu through the family.  Mark was bored on the couch wading through his turn at it…..

We had a great rain storm come though and the the kids were in heaven.  Jessie had a camera heyday taking pictures of the kids and flowers.

I thought I had missed the flu…but no….at least the kids were pretty good while I rested.  What started out as a Mark selfie that day ended up as a group picture.

Look at the eyelashes on this sweet baby…she can thank Dad for those.

Mark is our weeding maniac!  (Plus he was doing jobs to earn money to pay for his plane ticket home from Missouri.)  I’m not sure if I’m more proud of his work or more frustrated at the number of weeds that are still left in that darn flower bed.  But anyway….nice work Mark!!

Time to finish picking apricots….and clean up all the ones that were gross on the ground.  All the kids pitched in to help a little better after we found some plastic gloves for them to wear, so they wouldn’t have to touch the slimy things.

Here are some surprise pictures I found on the camera…so here’s the first one…

…and the second…

….and the third.

We spent a day up at the Farm and Country section at Thanksgiving Point.  It was a bit more fun for the little kids than for Mark, but he was a good sport.  We did see the fattest goat I have ever seen in my entire life, and the coolest part was the peacock who showed off for us.  It was SO cool to see his dance that he did with his tail all displayed.

Spencer was playing with Emma and stuck the reindeer antlers on her and took some pictures.  He asked me to post one to Instagram for him.  What a fun brother!

We had a late-over with some of the big kid’s friends….that turned into a water gun fight and then dessert afterwards while everyone dried out.

Mark is excited for band this year and wanted to get a head start on a design for the shirt competition.  Here’s what he came up with.  He and I had a lot of fun playing on Wordle together….and we stayed up kind of late…silly us.

Rachel got tickets for the Harry Potter Heber Creeper train ride.  The kids had a blast dressing up again  (well, Mark was in Missouri for the library Harry Potter party, so this was his first time dressing up).  There favorite treat of the ride was the pumpkin tart.  The grass and dirt flavored jelly beans were…um…gross. :-)

And our final picture is one from Jessie of our dinner.