July Phone Dump

In July we tried to finish crossing things off our summer bucket list!

Lydia had so much fun playing with her new little felt boards.

Henry, Lydia and Alex had a great time at Lego Club at the library.

We all painted a little bit of canvas art to decorate their rooms.  Everyone did a great job.  I even gave them sparkling cider to sip while they worked.

 Their final pieces!

 Lydia loves to wear everyone's shoes around and she likes to take my old purses.  She was walking around like this one day:

The kids all had a great time playing with my instagram filters.

 It rained in the desert!  We had to run out and enjoy it!

 We did our favorite experiment: diet coke and mentos.

James, Alex and Henry made some delicious ice cream!

We picked one morning to take a bike ride to GVG for donuts.  We left early... but not early enough because we were still sweating when we got there.

Henry, James, and Alex had a fun time at the library Star Wars event.

Rich was asked to help clean up Warm Springs so we tagged along and swam for a bit.

William gets some pretty crazy hair.  We joke with him that he's trying to look like Steve from Stranger Things.

We held our annual Lemonade Stand.  We have great neighbors and ward members who came to support the kids.

Lydia just looked super cute this particular day in her OU shirt and cowgirl boots.

Lydia really got into her baby dolls at the end of the summer.  I helped her swaddle them many times a day.

We even squeezed in a breakfast at IKEA.  You can't beat $1 breakfast.

Lydia was able to go into the play area at IKEA and this was James's last time.  That means that I only had William as a shopping buddy.  Henry got a coloring page there and was super proud of his coloring job.

Only a few weeks left of summer!

Beach Days

We had a super fun week! We left Tuesday morning to head to Elise’s house.  We got there in the afternoon and swam at her neighborhood pool. 

In the evening we played some pioneer games and ate pie for Pioneer Day.  That night Elise and I stayed up talking and finishing her gifts for Macey’s birthday.  

Wednesday was Macey’s 1st birthday.  The boys and Lydia played Beanboozled in the morning while we waited for Macey to take a nap.  It is the grossest game!  The gross jelly beans even smelled like what they were supposed to taste like (barf, fart, etc).  I honestly don't know how they played it for so long--especially Henry who kept picking the gross flavors!

We went to Corona Del Mar and had a great time!  It was a HOT day.  Our feet were burning on our way to and from our spot on the beach.  There was so much seaweed though!  It was kind of gross.  As Elise and I were sitting on the beach I looked up and saw my aunt Heidi! There were so many people on the beach that is incredible that we saw her and that our spots on the beach were so near each other! We had a nice time chatting for the rest of the time there. It would have been really fun to stay for the bonfire but we had tired kids asking to head home around 6:00. 

The kids had a great time playing in the water and sand.  They couldn't go too far into the water though because the water was rough.

It was really fun to take the kids over to the tide pools and let them explore.

James was brave to get buried as the tide was coming in.

James tried some honeycomb that Elise had.

On Thursday we headed to the beach again.  The boys didn’t want to risk not being able to go out far and have a ton of seaweed so we tried out Bolsa Chica.  It was not crowded and ended up being a really nice day despite the chilly weather.  William and James braved the cold water and boogie boarded a bit.  

Lydia loved collecting shells.

Lydia and Vance needed to warm up every once in a while.

Vance and Lydia were such cute little friends all day long.

On the way home we grabbed some Panda for dinner.  Lydia loved trying chopsticks.

That evening Elise and I snuck away for a minute to try the dessert waffles near her house.  I highly recommend the creme brûlée waffles!  They were so so good!

The kids had so much fun playing in the toy room and Lydia really loved dressing up!

Friday morning we headed home.  We had fun listening to the Wow in the World podcast that Elise recommended. 

I let the boys stop at Eddie World (a really awesome rest stop with lots of fun treats and really clean bathrooms) and bought some treats to share.  

Elise and I stayed up so late every night... and I needed a nap when we finally got home.  We really loved our short trip!  I’m glad that Elise let us stay at her house and hijack her week.  She and I decided it needs to become a yearly tradition.