The upside from getting back from Mexico and cancelling all our plans to continue traveling was the way it opened our schedule up for other things that we didn't plan...liking spending time reconnecting with friends.
Shawna Banagas came out for a pool day with Penny...and missed it thinking it was in the afternoon....so Penny created her own pool at at the Hale's house. (She was very sweet to let us all swoop in last minute to swim with her family)
It was fun and crazy having a pool full of friends that haven't seen each other in a while...Pendeltons, Banagases, Smiths, Beaulieus and Hales.
I was puzzled when the kids dragged out a broken coffee table from the side of the house until I saw...
it made the coooolest slide! (It was actually a lot sturdier than the regular plastic slides that you see in the old school pools :)
Here is Taylor demonstrating the "choking trick" in the pool. (Jacob is standing on his leg and Taylor is pretending to choke him.
It looks soo bad :)
They tried to demonstrate it to Jeff but he was so embarassed because it looks real, he told them "don't do that again!"
That night (because I wasn't gone in Arizona) I also got to go to our Relief Society activity at Kristin Thompson's house.
Teresa Rassmussen came down and showed us how to bottle meat. She loves it and uses her bottled meat all the time, even on vacation, and swears by it. She had been officially Utahfied and was very excited but I have to say we had some sceptics in the house :)
Maybe they'll have to try it to see if they like it. Of course without our very own basement and "food storage room" to store all our canning in, not to mention not owning any canning paraphenalia many of the sisters might not be able to test it out very easily.
Not to mention...what happens in a California earthquake when all the jars break when we need them (ha ha my friend had to point that out to me)
Teresa brought back fond and not so fond memories of my mothers noisy, whistly, forever percolating pressure cooker that kind of scared me every time she opened it (I secretly thought we would all be covered in hot steam or it would explode). I did like all the things my mother made in it however and the fact that we would rock out to ABBA music while she was canning stuff. Fond memories :)
We had so much fun on Wednesday that Shawna decided to plan a day for us to get together again on Friday. We planned to go to the community pool and waterslide but when we got there it was already filled to capacity and they were turning people away so...
plan B we went to Rusti's apartment (Shawna's sister-in-law) and got into her pool.
Just our luck it was only 1/2 full. Oh well it was water and it was hot so we swam anyway and Jacob was able to touch all the way to the deep end :)
The downside was the boys couldn't resist the hoses. We all got turns getting squirted at some point :)
It was nice to let the kids play and catch up with Shawna and Penny and Cindy!
On Thursday Taylor finally went to run for the first time at his cross country camp. (He missed 1/2 of it while we were out of town) His first day and it's the 3 mile time trial! He made the qualifying time to make the team with 2 minutes to spare. Way to go Taylor!!
On the next Monday we went to our 1st beach day of the summer. The ward has been going on Wednesday but we've missed every one (It's been cold anyway) so we finally got to go to 18th street.
Jacob spent most of the day in this chair.
Taylor and bigger boys always love digging. The lifeguard came over and told them no holes deeper than waist deep though...otherwise they are deadly. So I guess no more deep holes for Taylor.
That's OK Once it filled up they really started having fun. Jacob even got out of his chair and joined in...it was about this time that Taylor was complaining to go home...right as the other two were having fun. It seem like that always happens at the beach!
Tuesday we went to Legoland's aquarium with Heather Anderson's group. She's does these mom's group things and every summer we try to do something with her groups and we haven't seen her since they moved so it was nice to get together with her.
The downside was that I didn't think this one through very well. The admission into the aquarium was like $40.00 to get us all in...but I was thinking something like Long Beach Aquarium...when I thought to look into this aquarium the day before we were going I was a little worried when it said "geared for a child's 1st aquarium experience" I warned the kids that it would be geared for younger children.
So after a looong drive, $12.00 for parking (because you are in the Legoland parking lot) we met up with the other moms.
The fish were great, and the displays were very accesable.
Jacob getting an up close view...
Ashley too...you could tell that the place was geared for small children because everything was Ashley's size. She absolutely loved it! Taylor on the other hand had to constantly bending down to see things.
I can tell I'm not as used to being around a lot of younger children. There were all kinds of little kids and summer camp groups at the aquarium too and all I could hear was adults calling to kids "Come back here," "You're too far away!" "Stay with me"...I think I learned 1/2 the kids names because of the adults calling after everyone!
We liked this shark encouter walk through area. I know this isn't the best picture but there was this unreal sting-ray passing over Taylor's head and I was trying to capture the size of it! This was a favorite.
Here was a Diver "show" where a guy was interviewing the scuba diver in the tank.
What was a crack up was all the lego guys throughout and inside the aquarium...of course it made Jacob want to go to legoland. (I don't think most people come just for the aquarium) There even was a movie that we let the kids watch...it wasn't anything about fish...it was a lego cartoon about finding Atlantis!
In the end we were done in two hours. (Jacob and Jeremiah long before because they kept racing through everything) I was very proud of how patient Taylor was. I asked him how he like it in the end he said "The fish were fine but I could'nt handle any more screaming kids!" Hmmmm I'd have to agree.
I was very happy when Heather suggested lunch at Islands on our way out. It was nice to talk to Heather some more. We miss them from the ward but they are doing well, and are happy.
And it was nice to reward Taylor for his patience with a yummy hamburger. (I think he ran 6 miles this morning so we had to rev up his calories anyway :)
The next day was Pool Day at the Thompsons!
Lots of fun (and a little scary) to have a pool with a slide and kids jumping off of rocks.
On Friday I took Taylor and a group of friends out to Knotts Berry Farm. Some of his friends had never been there before, or hadn't been there since they were little, so he arranged a day to have them all come out together.
We had Lauren, Becca, Maddison, and Garret... and us it was a full car :)
Here's the silly girls in the car.
Jacob and Ashley flew through some kiddy rides while they tried going on some of the bigger ones.
Ashley's tried this ride where you pump yourself around the track. The stinky thing was she was stuck behind a little girl that thought the ride would move by itself so she wouldn't do anything and Ashley struggled to push both of them around the track! :)
For lunch we came out and ate packed sandwiches and some of the kids at Pinks!
I left the teens early because I already had planned Jeff's birthday dinner (didn't realize we had a conflict until later) so they ended up staying later and getting a ride home with Becca's parents.
One of the moms was worried about them being there alone but it wasn't long before they ran into another mutual friend whose parents were there. The other parents were glad that they had adults with them and the lone boy was glad to have 5 instant friends to hang out with on the rides!
Meanwhile I raced home and got ready for Jeff's b-day dinner at TGIF.
We had a small intimate group since most people invited coudn't make it. We had the Pendletons, Stubbs and Thompsons. It was very nice to hang out with them and enjoy their 2 for $20.00 meal deal. Yum!
The next day we had Grace McAbee's 4th b-day party for lunch, Madison Williamson's 4th birthday party for dinner, and going away game night for Curls at the Elsworth's house.
Busy week.
By the time Monday rolled around again nobody wanted to do the beach. So we spent pretty much all week of doing errands and other stuff like...
Watching 5 year old Wyatt for a morning. Jacob played a racing video game with him and told me later that he kept trying to encourage him to help him feel better. When Wyatt was in 12th place (which is last) and was discouraged Jacob told him he was 12th out of a 100. He said all the other guys were so far behind him he couldnt' see them. When he came up on the board last and said "I did horrible because I was last!" Jacob told him that the other guys did so bad they weren't even on the board! (I laughed where does Jacob think of this stuff!)
I took them to see Karate Kid at the $2.00 theater. It was good but I was suprised at the fact that it was a little slow...and long. I was almost late for getting Taylor home for mutual!
When Jimmy Job asked if Taylor could come over I had Jacob go with them. Taylor's phone died while he was there. Jacob told me he was going to take Taylor's phone and text me "I pooped my pants" I'm glad he didn't because his phone would've been dead and I wouldn't have known if he really had or not...I'm wondering if getting a phone for Jacob's birthday is going to be a good idea!
We wrote girls at girls camp, Taylor wrote the girls he knows and we all wrote Jenae (I heard she like the letter). Taylor was so silly and of course didn't write a normal letter. It was full of crazy stickers, inside jokes and the line "I know that you guys like getting letters at girls camp so here you go A B C D E F G ..." Crazy kid.
Jacob had a Birthday this week. He got his phone in the morning when he woke up (he's been waiting for that phone forever and couldn't wait until friends were awake so he could call them). And luckily his friend Ryan asked him over to hang out because we were getting ready for his party and hadn't planned on doing anything very fun. I did make him his favorite dinner though :)
On Friday we cleaned the house and then I finally convinced the kids to go one last time to the beach.
It helped that Taylor brought a book. We hung out with the Bagley, Whitehead, Quist family. It was there last full day at the beach house so we knew we'd have buddies when we got there, and the Orr's were there too so Jacob had Ryan to hang out with.
Ashley liked feeding the birds...
and trying the homemade slide...I know where all that sand ended up!
I feel like summer is winding down and now it's time to start getting everyone to bed earlier, getting our school clothes and prepping mentally for crazy school schedules!
1 comment:
You have been busy soaking up all that is summer! Loved spending the day with you at sea life... miss you guys!
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