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!