Celebrate!

August is birthday month at our house. 

We start celebrating early and party all month long!

Brittany & Levi and Rick & Sharon came early in the month. We had a fun party weekend with them which included a day of shopping and two yummy cakes.

Zane wanted cupcakes, Spiderman cupcakes, on his birthday. The neighbor kids joined us for cake and presents. He was in heaven!

Morgan was thankful to celebrate her birthday this year before school started. She wanted watermelon for her birthday so I tried to turn it into a cake. She loved it! And since she is now double digits she got one candle. She thought that was pretty silly. (I actually couldn't find any more candles in the house. Too many parties!)

We also celebrated another weekend with Brit & Levi. (I told you it was a month long celebration.) The kids had so much fun at the farm in Arbon!

And it just wouldn't be a celebration with out some shooting practice. The kids had to show off their skills for Rick & Sharon.

Happy Birthday!

Gold Medal Gymnast

Morgan has wanted to do gymnastics since she was about 5 years old. Finally, we live close to an awesome gym with great coaches! So, we decided to try it out this summer.

She had some friends in Nebraska who had shown her a few things on recess so she was able to jump right in and do a cartwheel. A month later she is learning how to do a round-off back handspring. She's landed on her head a few times but absolutely loves her class.

We also discovered that her lower leg muscles are extremely tight. She struggles to point her toes and has to do lots of extra stretches to loosen up the muscles. 

And what does Zane do during gymnastics?

  He hangs out with me in the loft.

Morgan has a new goal - gold medal gymnast.

Joy of Learning

My approach to Summer School is different this year. Instead of “let’s see how much learning we can do while having fun” I’m trying “let’s see how much fun we can have while learning.” Instead of announcing it’s time to do school activities I simply pull out a game and they don’t even know they are learning to count money. 

Our first project was an autobiography. We learned the difference between a biography and an autobiography by looking at two books about Helen Keller. (Morgan loved Helen's example of determination and perseverance.) Then the kids worked on writing their own. It amazes me how different my two learners are.

 Morgan worked carefully. She thought about what to write and wrote slow and cautious. She drew her pictures with great detail. Zane quickly wrote a few sentences and wanted to draw his hand for every picture. He had two pages done and Morgan was still working on her first.

We've done a few "boring" worksheets as well but tried to focus more on reading. Fortunately, both of my kids LOVE to read. We've had some great conversations about the books we've read!

I saw this cute idea for an "I am" poster. I can't find the website now but it's somewhere out there.

Morgan helped me create a list of words that describe her and then I printed them in different fonts. Then we created a face that looks like her, with a flower in her hair.
 

 
We cut everything out and glued it all on pink cardstock to create her own "I am" poster so she can remember how amazingly wonderful she is.

The best part about Summer School... learning in your swimsuit. Yes!

How do you stay cool?

It's been hot! Not quite Nebraska hot, but still HOT. We're thankful that it does at least cool down in the evening but during the day...

 

We find ways to stay cool!

The kids have had so much fun on the Slippin' Slide!

One day we made sponge balls and had a great water fight!

Morgan discovered that if she sprayed blocks of wood with water and then drew on them with wet chalk, it's kind of like paint. And it looks so pretty! Zane helped out by spraying water.

 

This summer, we have eaten our weight in popsicles and spent a few hours laying under the ceiling fan. Sometimes, we turn on Christmas movies and pretend it's cold.

How do you stay cool?

4th of July

Our little town put on a great 4th of July celebration! Scott went to work early so he could be home by 10am. Then, we went to the church park where they had LOTS of booths set up. We walked around for 20 minutes trying to decide what to eat for lunch. 

And then there were games to play and faces to get painted. 

Morgan wanted a butterfly...

and Zane wanted a bat.

Zane even won a bottle of soda in the ring toss game!

Then there were scones to eat and snow cones for the ride home.

We had a few friends over for a barbeque dinner of shish kabobs and patriotic fruit pizza. Yummy!
Brittany and Levi showed up just in time for sparklers.

It was hard to stay up until 10:00 for the big fireworks but we did it. We were so glad we were able to walk down the driveway and watch them from home.


We skipped the 4th of July parade because it was in the afternoon. Who does a parade in the afternoon?! A couple of weeks earlier, we went to the Rigby Rodeo. We watched the parade in the morning and went back for the rodeo action that night. The kids thought that was the best day ever.

It's much better to watch a parade wearing jackets!

When I asked the kids what they liked best about the parade, other than the candy, they both agreed that the fireman band was cool. Zane said he liked them because they played "manpipes"... Ummm... Do you mean bagpipes? Yep! That's it.

Morgan loved all the horses and especially the Rodeo Queens. It is now her goal to someday be a Rodeo Queen, and wear a hat with a tiara on it, and a sparkly shirt. A girl can dream!

Bear Lake

When we drove from Nebraska to Logan we would often drive past Bear Lake and go through Logan Canyon. We always thought it looked like a fun place but were too anxious to get to Brittany & Levi's house so, we never stopped. Now that we live close, we had to see if it was as fun as it looked.

We drove around to the south end where there weren't as many people. As we carried everything down to the beach, we wondered if we had picked a good day to come. The sky was overcast and it was a little chilly. We spread out the blanket on the sand and sat and watched a thunder storm roll over the other side of the lake.

Soon, the sun was shining bright and it was time to put the canoe in the water. 

We played for a few hours and grilled some hot dogs for lunch. We fed the seagulls our leftovers and then it was time to pack up and head home. But first, we had to stop and get a famous raspberry milkshake. It was a long line but worth the wait. As we wound our way through the canyon back to Logan, Morgan and Zane both fell asleep. I had to finish Morgan's milkshake for her. Bummer.

This was the BEST DAY EVER!

Adventures in Oregon

 We packed up and headed to Oregon...

We drove across Idaho and then through the Blue Mountains...

 And we found Grandma and Grandpa's house! The kids love playing with their cousins and all of Grandma's fun toys! Lloyd's boys showed us some funny video clips and iphone games. But most entertaining was playing with Jack and Jill, the new kittens. 

Zane and Morgan love Grandpa's fun tree house! They figured out how to climb from the playhouse into the actual tree. The first time, Zane couldn't get back down. Morgan came in the house but forgot to tell me he was stuck. He finally came in wiping his eyes and that's when I found out he had been stuck out there. He said he was really scared but then he prayed and was finally able to climb down. He was so happy that his prayer was answered that he wasn't even mad at Morgan for leaving him stranded.

 We had a great time with Scott's family, without him. Cousin Zack graduated from college and is headed to Idaho to teach 5th grade. Woot! Cousin Ali just graduated from high school and is headed to Idaho for college. She is amazing! We're so proud of them both!

Brittany and Levi were able to come over for a few days and it was fun to hang out with them too.

We even managed a visit to Great Grandma!

 While we were there, Scott had flowers delivered to me at my parents house. 

Happy Anniversary!

(It looks like the dalmatian is eating my head. Hummm...)

We also found time to have a picnic at the park with more family and swim with Melinda's kids. Wish we could have stayed longer but so glad we could go. 

Next time, we take Dad with us.