Summer part 2.5

The show the kids put on at school was really cute!  They all picked what character they wanted to be, and then worked as a group to decide what story would happen with all of those characters.

They made a poster in art class that showed the beginning, middle, and end of their story in comic strip style.

First, Ruffy dog was guarding the princesses at their tower while the train came along the tracks.  The train broke down, but Mario fixed it and they kept going.

Once they found the princesses, Indiana Jones used the Crystal Skull to scare Ruffy dog away so they could rescue the princesses.  Ruffy was supposed to run away, but he came back a time or two before he truly ran away. :)

And then they had a party to celebrate the rescue - and bowed at the end of their play.

Needless to say, Kaitlyn loved every second of the spotlight.  Tyler seemed mostly excited to pretend to be Ruffy and play with his costume and dog.

The song they sang from their music class was one of Tyler's favorites.  He loves pointing out things that are silly, and this song was about fishes that woke up from their nap and then took a shower ("washing their fishy beards") or rode their bikes all over town . . . until they said "wait a minute, we're fish!  Let's go swimming!"

But during the actual performance, Tyler just sat.  All of his class was "swimming" in circles around him, or sleeping on the ground, and our little guy just sat and watched the world go by.  Sigh.  His teacher tried to get him involved, but he was content.  Unfortunately, that is one of the biggest issues with Tyler's learning progress.  When he is engaged, he moves forward, and when he just "checks out", he doesn't have a care in the world.

Of course, Jasmine wasn't all that interested in the show.  But the PEZ in my camera bag kept her happy for a while.  And then she decided that opening and closing it in Daddy's mouth was quite hilarious.  The things we do to keep babies happy!

From there, Grandma took over and Daddy and I headed off to freedom!  It was our 10th Anniversary that day, and we had a grand weekend getaway.  We shopped the outlet malls (which is glorious without kids in tow), checked in at Little America (where we stayed on our wedding night), and had dinner at The Roof (an amazing buffet at Temple Square that is worth every penny and calorie).

The picture isn't the best, but the view from the restaurant is wonderful.

And at the risk of sounding sappy, I have to say that I'm grateful I got to spend a weekend just celebrating how awesome my marriage is.  The kids might drive me crazy some days, and my house might look like a tornado hit it, but I have never for one second wanted a life without this guy in it.  That part of my life is always awesome.  He knows all of my flaws and faults (and I've found a few of his, over the years), but we make a fantastic team.

He cracks me up, though.  One of his running jokes this weekend was bringing every conversation back to the Argo somehow.  He is pretty excited about his newest purchase.

This . . . vehicle . . . is hilarious.  Somewhere between a tank and a four-wheeler, it is a loud and slow machine that can power up anything.  Eventually.  The coolest feature about it is actually one we don't intend to use, unfortunately, since we don't have any water nearby.  Because this crazy thing actually floats on water.  If you look on youtube, you can find videos of people not only driving these into lakes, but even running them down ramps and jumping into the lake.

We bought it because it came with snow treds.  While things went rather smooth last winter trying to bring all the kids up by snowmobile to the cabin, it was not ideal.  We used to all fit on one snowmobile, but we just can't anymore.  And I can't hold a baby and drive a snowmobile at the same time.  So we had to either leave the kids at one end or the other and hope we would be back soon to get them (they are usually pretty good kids, but leaving them alone while you drive a mile away is not a good plan at this age), or put them bouncing in a sled behind the snowmobile, eating the exhaust and snow we kicked up.

This thing, however, fits all of us just fine.  And by all accounts, it should take us up the hill through some decent powder.  Here's hoping!

And while I am posting, I figure I should toss in some pictures from last night.  Our neighbors let us come swimming, and we are always game to take them up on that offer.

"Please!"  She wanted to go swimming, even if their pool only has stairs that are shallow enough for her to play on.  And even if Mommy grabbed a swim suit that was too small for her.  The bottom fit, but that top was a bit small for her and I have to admit we ditched it.

Tyler and Daddy had a lot of fun, since Tyler takes everything as hilarious.  Even if you take his noodle away and make him sink, or chuck him to the other side of the pool.

And of course, they loved the diving board.

So then Jasmine decided she needed in on the action.  (Sorry, half naked baby alert!)

She was so determined.  Too bad she is too young to even know how to jump.

Eventually, I lowered her down to Daddy.  But she decided it was still so much fun that she asked to go again a few more times that night.

Silly girls!

Summer, part 2

Part 2: summer school!  I don't have pictures of school itself, but it really was a great thing for all of us.  Tyler got some much needed practice at sitting in a class and listening to a teacher again (hopefully he can retain some of that for school in a month, because he struggles to pay attention big time), Kaitlyn LOVED every second of having drama class, music class, and art class with lots of other kids, I really enjoyed the parent class and felt like I got a lot out of it, and Jasmine learned how to stay at home with a babysitter all by herself and be okay with that.  Lots of progress!

I was going to wait to post this until after the final show, but I have too many pictures piled up an waiting to get on here!  So here are some happenings while school has been running.

We tried for a week to find a spare evening and get to the pool, and of course we picked the night that ended in a thunderstorm.

Thankfully, we had a couple of good hours first.  Jasmine loved the slide, the kids all loved the lazy river, Tyler loved the big slide, and all was well.

Jasmine loved having a float to hang onto- and I just wanted to play with those toes!

We've also spent a LOT of time painting.  We are probably 90% done at this point!

Before (when we first purchased the cabin):

After:

The biggest improvement, to me, is getting the top and bottom to be the same color.  That has given my eye twitches since I first saw it.  And the red color is really growing on me.

The setbacks in the painting have been hilarious, though.  We wasted a week testing colors, and when we finally had the right colors it rained every night so we couldn't paint as much.  Last weekend we ran out of paint early in the day, wasting more time, and then when I brought up more paint yesterday it turns out that the guy at the store mixed the wrong color so we still couldn't make any progress.  We'll get there eventually, but the delays in home improvement projects never cease to amaze me.

Let's see, what other random pictures do I have to put up here?  I have been shopping at the outlet mall a bit lately.  Kaitlyn loves when she can match Jasmine in some way, so Gymboree has been great.  I want a better picture of them together, but this will have to do for now.

And I took some pictures the other night after our "triangle picnic".  Calling it that made me feel better about pizza for dinner again!  And I think we should do that more often.  The kids loved eating outside, and when we were done, Jasmine's pile of pizza, watermelon slices, and everything else was just left in the lawn.  Less clean up!

And of course, we finished off with triangle ice cream cones.

I love the foot propped up on the swing!

So, to get this shot, I used my foot to tickle her and make her laugh.  And then Jasmine asked to get out of her swing and quickly came over to put her foot on Kaitlyn's tummy too!  I guess that looked like fun.

And the way to get this guy to smile is to chase him.

If only every picture I took of my kids was in the magical evening light!

Oh, and this pictures is one that is just classic Jasmine.  She has a few signs at this point - "more", "all done", "please", "water" and "milk".  But for each of those her vocalization is just "eh!"  Her only pronounced words are "MAMA!" (as in "get over here right now"), and "Shuzzzzzz".  This is the face she makes on the end of the word.

She wanders around the house taking all of our "shuzzzz" and putting them on her feet, and then leaves them in the most random of places.

In other Jasmine news, she is finally weaned!  I know, I know, she went a little over the usual 12 months.  But she loved nursing, I liked it because it keeps my weight down and it was the only snuggle time she would allow me, and I figured it wasn't hurting anyone.  But our tenth anniversary was coming up, and we couldn't leave her at Grandma's house without weaning her.  She was pretty upset for a few days, but she got over it.  The glare I got when she signed "milk" and I handed her a sippy of 2% was just classic.  And now sleeps through the night, to boot!

This last Monday, we made the trek up to Lagoon.  We hadn't gone since I was just barely pregnant with Jasmine, so the kids were really happy to run around all of the rides again.

Daddy, as always, got a big kick out of scaring Tyler.  He's a good sport about it, but Wicked (the biggest coaster in the park) had Tyler fairly concerned.  He told Daddy afterward that it was fun, but he was done with the big rides.

Thankfully, he is just barely short enough to ride the little ones with his sisters, too.

Jasmine only rode a couple of rides, and she wasn't sure what to make of them, to be honest.

This is one of my favorites to ride with the big kids - quick, fun, and easy for them to handle!

At that point in the day, Jasmine just broke down in sobs on another little ride.  I know, I tortured her, but this picture makes me laugh anyway.

Nap time!  She was so tired that all I had to do was drape a towel over her a bit and tell her to go "night night" as I took her for a walk.  Out cold.

Once she woke up, we headed into the water park for the heat of the day.  Once she discovered this slide, she dragged me around the path up and down the slide at least 15 times in a row.

I think that was everybody's favorite part of the day, actually.  Kaitlyn even (voluntarily!) worked on using strokes to get across the pool a bit.

Back out in the park . ..

I think the carousel was the only ride Jasmine truly liked.  She thought that was really awesome.

Whew!  Summer is always busy!

Summer, part 1

Summer has three distinct sections for us this year.  First up, Swim lessons for two weeks, with a July 4th party at the end!

I didn't take very many pictures at swim lessons, but the kids did great this year!  Kaitlyn has taken them twice before and honestly been worse by the end of the week than she was at the beginning.  And Tyler has never been potty trained enough to go before.  But they really did improve this year!  Tyler's forte is jumping in.  He has NO fear of the water, and just giggled with joy the first week and a half of lessons.  He would fling himself off the diving board with glee, and can even pop up all by himself and attempt to get to the side (he usually needs help with that part, since he has his legs down instead of flat in the water).  We loved watching him because he would spend all of his down time in the lesson putting his head in the water and then coming up, laughing, and going back down.  Kaitlyn had a bit more of a struggle- she was better at following directions, but a bit more scared about it all.  Every time she jumped off the diving board she would say "I'M NOT READY I'M NOT READY!" before finally letting go of her instructor and trying to swim to the side from there.  Stinker.  They had a great time with their cousins, though!  One of the cousins was even doggy paddling by the end, and even the 3 year old made great improvement.

After that it was a week at the cabin, painting and getting things ready for our annual party.  This isn't the most recent picture, but at least you can see some of the progress!

We now have the two "ends" of the cabin done.  The front still needs a bit of trim to the right side there, and the dormers are on their way.  And then the back side of the cabin hasn't been started.  I'm just glad we got colors that we like.  The new red has a lot less purple in it, so in the shade it is a nice dark red, and in the sun it just looks more like a bright, primary red.  I think it will look great once we are done, which should hopefully be soon.

In fact, we were still painting when our first guests showed up for the annual July 4th party!  We always host Christopher's entire family, and it is a lot of fun.

That isn't even the whole group!  I'm just glad we get to host up there, where it is 15 degrees cooler than in the valley.  It was still hot up where we were.  We smoked some pulled pork for the occasion (Christopher has been obsessed with his new smoker lately), and I had fun trying out some new cookie recipes.

Of course, the day before, I got the urge to make outfits for the kids.  I tried to put that off, but when I saw a tutorial for my new(ish) serger, I couldn't resist.

It turns out I have a ruffling foot that does this by itself! It took me longer to find the fabric in my stash and cut the strips than zip the skirt out.  So cool.

And if I have a crafting addiction, the least I can do is spread the love.  This "crafting table" is always a hit.  Over the years I have learned to just put out suplies and let the kids go at it, rather than dictating a particular craft to make.  They have a blast, and they come up with things they love that I never would have designed myself!

For example, one cousin decided to proclaim her love for her shoes.

Tyler made . . . I have no idea what this was.  But he loved it.  And the other 5 objects he put together.

And Kaitlyn taped together this gigantic book all about her day.

Translation: "Once upon a time there was a girl named Kaitlyn and she was having a party with Miriam."  She might have misspelled almost every word, but I love that she is figuring it out as she goes!

In fact, my kids were still at that table, working away, even after everyone had gone home and everything else was cleaned up.

In the meantime, there were lots of friends to play with . . .

. . . doggies to run around with . . .

. . . swings to ride on . . .

. . . and most of all, dirt to get all over yourself.  Apparently.  

A good time was had by all.

And now, onto part two - summer school starts tomorrow!