Summer imaginations

I love summer!!

I love the sun and the beautiful days. I love the Fourth of July and parades. I love vacations and the beach. I love all the yummy summer foods and picnics. I love that my kids are home and can help with chores. I love the freedom of not having to go anywhere or be any place at a certain time. I love to hang out around the house and be lazy if we want to.

One of the best things about summer time though, is that my kids can just hang out and be bored. This is the reason that I don't put my kids in any activities over the summer. They need this time to be bored so that they can learn to entertain themselves. When we were little, my siblings and I would play all day long together. Our two favorite things to play were "school" and "office". My dad had built little desks for each of us and we would line them up and down the hall way and one of us would be the teacher. We'd make up assignments for each other and grade papers, etc. It was a lot of fun. For "office," half the fun was getting our desks and phones set up. We would take up the whole living room and get out all sorts of things. We would be there for hours playing. Sometimes, it would even be set up for days if we were really into it. I can't remember what we did to pass the time, but I do remember how much fun it was. We also played Barbies for hours and built our own furniture out of tissue boxes and scraps of material. We would build forts in our living room out of blankets and would play under there for days. To accomodate my brother, we would play out in our back yard as spies and spy on the ladies doing aerobics at the church that was behind our house. I always had such a good time playing with my brother and sisters. We have some great memories together.

Now that I get to be the mom, I get such a kick out of watching my kids all playing together. They like to play "restaurant", "hotel", and their most recent one is "animal clinic". For hotel, Bella and Paige had actually packed their little suitcases with some clothes and books to make it more authentic. I love how they all work together to make it fun. For animal clinic, they bring out a lot of their stuffed animals and the "customers" bring their animals to the clinic and they wrap up broken legs, give them baths, walk them and brush them. Maggie always seems to be the receptionist for whichever game they are playing because she likes to use the phone/computer. :) They've made forts out of blankets and they play outside together alot too, but I love it when they use their imaginations to play. During school, they just don't have time to play these things, so that's one of the things that I love about summer.

And finally...the rest of May

That same afternoon of Lydia's field trip, I got to get away for a girl's weekend with some friends from my ward. We all chipped in and rented a house in Manzanita, just a little past Cannon Beach. Unfortuneatly, the weather was still a little chilly, but it was still a lot of fun to hang out with such fun people. We got to the beach around 4:30 or so and then ate dinner, courtesy of the fabulous Rockelle. She made a yummy dinner for everyone...I think she really likes to cook.

Shelley, Leslie, Mindy, Sydette, Robyn, Beth and Jessie

Holly, Beth, Olivia, Rockelle, Mindy, Shelley, Leslie, Sydette,
(bottom row) Suki, Kate and Robyn

Then we took a stroll on the beach, then came back and talked, played games, snacked on desserts and stayed up WAY too late! The next morning came way too early! I don't like mornings as it is. But, since we had to be out of the house by 11 and there were 12 women that had to get ready, we had to get up and at'em. After breakfast, we went shopping in the little town of Manzanita and then had lunch at this yummy pub. Some of us had to leave by then, but the rest of us drove down to Tillamook for squeaky cheese and ice cream, then headed home.

All of us shopping in Manzanita

On the 27th, Intel had a night where the employees got a cheap rate to go to a kids science museum in Portland called OMSI. We were all going to go, but it was going to be too late of a night for Noah, so he and I stayed home and Garrett took the girls. They had a fun time. I think we've only been one other time and that was when Maggie was a baby. We need to get out more!

The next night, there was a Stake Temple Night, and since it's been ages since Garrett and I had been to the temple, we decided we had better go. We rode there with our good friends, Aaron and Terri and then went out to dinner after. It was a nice night out.

The 30th was Memorial Day. We didn't do anything grand or exciting. In the morning, we had a picture appointment for Maggie's and Bella's birthday pictures. (Yes, I'm usually a month or more late in getting pictures taken.) Maggie's turned out really cute. Bella, on the other hand was very excited about picking out what dress she wanted to wear and to get her hair fixed cute, but she wanted NOTHING to do with getting her picture taken when we got there. She wouldn't have anything to do with it. So, we walked away with no pictures of her.

I think I'll try it again when I go to get Noah's one year pictures taken. She can be so stubborn sometimes. :) We did a little shopping after that and then came home to enjoy the sunny day. We played outside and jumped on the trampoline--even me. It was a lot of fun. And the girls got a kick out of watching me jump. I'm sure I was quite the sight! Then when we were getting ready to bbq, it started raining. It didn't rain too long, so we were able to finish cooking our food, but then ate inside. It was a nice relaxing weekend anyways.

We were trying to get a picture of Noah and his curly locks. It's funny that of all my kids, he's the one that's getting curly hair. I guess we'll see what happens when I trim it for the first time.

One last picture of Bella...doing one of her favorite things...puzzles!

And that was May.

May

Moving on to May now...I think this is going to be a longer post, just because I feel like I'm not giving enough detail of our lives in my blog. And, essentially, since it is for my family and it's like a "journal/personal history" then I better start recording all the things that happen.

My calling in the church is the Relief Society Activities Coordinater. A.K.A Enrichment Leader. My mom has had this calling dozens of times, but I guess I never noticed all the time that she put into it. I was a kid...kids don't notice those types of things. :) I think she really liked it though. She's a crafty person. It DOES take A LOT of time and preparation, though. Our activity for May was a Parenting night and we had a panel of 6-7 moms there to answer questions that were previously submitted. We wanted it to end up being a discussion with all the ladies there, so our panel was there to get the discussion rolling. It wasn't one of our most highly attended activities, but I thought it turned out really nice and the ladies that were there came away with good suggestions and advice.

That weekend was our ward's annual Father/Sons Campout and so Garrett went to that and camped in the rain. He bunked in a cabin with a friend and his son. Garrett being Elder's Quorum President was in charge of breakfast in the morning. Since none of his counselors was able to make it, he was THE chef and THE clean-up crew. But, after the campout, he and some buddies were able to go shooting for awhile. So, it was all good.

That same night that he got back, Maggie had her very first piano recital. She takes lessons from a friend of ours that is in our ward and lives down the street. It's so handy for her to be able to walk down the street for her lesson every week. She's taken lessons for about a year and has quite the skill for piano playing. It's getting her to practice every day that is the hard part. She did really well at her recital though. She played "The Entertainer" and the theme from "Swan Lake". By the way, I took these pictures from a video that I took at her recital. I didn't take any still pictures, but figured out how to get them from the video. I'm pretty impressed with myself! :)


The next day was Mother's Day. My family always takes really good care of me. I got breakfast in bed and was able to read by myself, in quiet for awhile before getting ready for church. I also got to open all the girls cards and homemade gifts then. I love getting those. They are so sweet. Garrett stayed home from church because he came home from Father/Sons with a cough and a cold. When we got home after church, Garrett had set a nice table and had everything prepared for barbecuing fajitas. He broke out his new grill and barbecued for me...IN THE POURING RAIN!! Now, that's love! It was a delicious meal! After dinner, I got to open my gift from Garrett which was a Cricut. I was really surprised, because I had only mentioned it one time to him that I wanted one. Very exciting! He also made strawberry and peach shortcake for dessert! It was such a nice day!

On the 11th, Paige had her Kindergarten Celebration where they sang songs they had learned during the year and then took the parents through different stations showing us what they've learned throughout the year. She really enjoyed going to school and had a good time in Kindergarten.

Singing songs

She knows her numbers...
Making animals out of numbers. She made a bear out of a zero.

I hardly ever get to volunteer in the girls classrooms, just because it's so hard to find babysitters, plus it's usually around Noah's naptime. So, I don't think I've volunteered since Lydia was in kindergarten. She had field trip on the 20th and asked if I could come. Luckily, Garrett said he could stay home with Bella and Noah so that I could go. The second grade has been learning about birds and so they took a "walking field trip" to a part down the street where they had 6 stations to rotate through to put their bird knowledge to use. I was looking forward to rotating with Lydia's group, but unfortuneately, I was put with another group and only got to see Lydia in passing. It was a beautiful day and the kids had a lot of fun building birds nests, having a bird scavenger hunt, finding birds with binoculars, making bird feeders, etc.

Lydia's group making bird nests
Mrs. Bayley. Lydia's teacher--she's had her every year since kindergarten and we LOVE her.

Mrs. Weimer, the principal with the kiddoes

All the second graders

These are the birds that Lydia's student teacher brought into class for the bird unit. The kids had a great time with the birds.

It's getting late, so I will finish the rest of May in another post!!

Stub Stewart State Park

We decided to go camping one weekend in May and had a hard time finding availability at any of our normal campgrounds. We're always so last minute about these things. So, we decided to go somewhere local. We went to a State Park outside of a small town called Vernonia. Our ward had it's Father/son campout here the week before. It's a fairly new campground, I think it's only been open for a couple of years. But, it was a nice place to get away for the weekend. We went Friday and came home on Sunday evening. Friday and Saturday were actually sunny and beautiful, so we were able to hang out outside that whole time. Then it rained all day Sunday. I guess 2 beautiful days is better than none at all!

Bella practicing her casting and reeling.

Garrett driving his remote control cars.

Washing dishes
Our campground was right next to the playground and the girls were there playing practically the whole time. There were two other kids at a campground nearby and so they all played together.
Maggie reading every second that she could find
Looking down at our campsite from the playground.
Sitting around the fire
S'MORES!


This was Sunday morning. Someone had brought along one of our plastic swords and Noah got a hold of it. This picture looks really morbid, like he just stabbed himself. His expression is too funny though.


Playing Uno
Happy Noah

Random April Pictures...Yes, April...I am that far behind!

These are just some cute pictures that I thought I would post before I move on to blogging about May.

Noah's first ride in the wagon

Lydia giving him a ride...he loved it!

A close-up of my cutie pie

Lydia and Noah playing with "punching balloons"

Garrett brought back these dresses from Spain for Paige and Bella.

Flamenco dancers (just ignore the white socks)

Noah giving his "cheesy" grin

For Easter, my mom sent some Easter goodies for each of the girls and included silly string. They had a good old time spraying each other.

Of course, Garrett had to get in on the action.

I love this picture of Lydia cuddling with Noah while they watched tv on a Saturday morning

This is a sand/water table (minus the sand) that Bella got for her birthday.

Just hanging out in the grass.