Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Summer...so far!

Sorry for the long post but I just haven't been up to posting much! This one's a doozy!!

So you know what? Summer is almost over! I guess that's all depending how you look at summer and I'm looking at summer as the summer that the man...aka public school system...has set into place. I swear it gets shorter and shorter every year. But imagine my shock when just a few days ago Nick asked me when summer was over and I looked at the calendar and realized we had just one month...one month!!...until the man says we have to go back to school and hence, summer fun is over. Boo! I wish it could last forever! Especially since this year, with me being all sicky preggo, I've felt like we haven't done much. I'm usually one to have all sorts of fun adventures planned for my kids and I feel like I've been quite the slacker this year. But my camera would beg to differ. We actually have had some good times. Here's a quick review of summer...so far:

We started out summer going to the Orem Cemetery Memorial Day Service with the Tongs to see Spencer's mom be among the honored as Mother of the Year. It was great to have the kids see the importance of the day. The kids also loved seeing and climbing on the Apache helicopter, tank, and firetrucks. We met up with the Mailes and were able to spend some time at Naki's grave remembering him. It was a wonderful morning.
























We spent the rest of the day at Grandma & Grandpa's pool getting in the first swim of the year.









We've almost gone every week to craft time and Canopy Capers at the Provo Library. The kids loved having a picnic lunch while watching puppet shows and listening to stories.









We got to go to Ben's work party at Lagoon. Now I'm not a huge fan of Lagoon, but I love it when you don't have to pay for it! We had a great time!

















We headed to the canyon with our friends the Coxs for dinner and yummy s'mores.









My niece, Marisa, came to stay for a week. I'm sure she was bored out of her mind but the kids loved having her here and she was such a help! We went bowling and had a campout in the backyard!









We took the kids to the Owlz game!
















We had our annual cousins sleepover with Cass (Sky's age) & this year Eli (Nick's age)even stayed! We wish we could see them more but love this tradition!









The kids have been begging to take soccer forever and I've been resisting because of the amount of time I've heard it consumes. We decided to give it a try with a week long soccer camp to see if they actually liked it. They loved it!
















One of our favorite traditions is getting up way too early and going to see the hot air balloons to start our 4th of July celebrations. The day we went the balloons didn't end up going up due to the wind, but the kids got to climb in a hot air balloon and each take a turn on the burner so it was totally worth it!

















Afterwards we went for our traditional yummy Magleby's breakfast and then went to feed the ducks.

















We had a fun BBQ with the Tongs and then headed out to watch the PG fireworks from the hill at the park. Too bad we went out a half hour too late so the fireworks never showed. Oh well, we had fun anyway.
Ben and Skylar ran in the Freedom Festival 5K along with the Mailes. They had such a great time and did so well!

















We went to the Grand Parade where we got to spend some time with our friends the Chases, the Quinns, and the Jensens. What a blast!

















Later that night we did some fireworks with the Jensens.








We went to a luau that our Hanamaikai friends' daughter was performing in. We love luaus-great food and great entertainment. Ame was awesome-what a dancer! They also had an amazing 7 year old fire dancer-wow!









We took one final trip to the Ogden Dino Park with our annual pass. The Tongs joined us. It was really fun but really hot!

















The kids took swimming lessons at the Lindon Pool this year. Skylar has advanced to learning the different swim strokes and Nick and Kade are still attempting to be fish. Both Alexis and I loved the fact that they let her play in the shallow water even though she wasn't in lessons-what a sanity saver. She especially loved playing with Kade on the last "fun day" of lessons. Lindon Pool is our favorite!

















Ben and I got to celebrate our 13th anniversary a couple weeks late with a weekend alone in Park City! We were so thankful for my parents being willing to watch the kids and for my dad hooking us up with a nice condo for the week. We were able to eat at some good restaurants, see the movie Inception (wow!), relax a bit, and the main reason we went was to get to see one of our favorites, Ben Folds in concert with the Utah Symphony in Deer Valley. It was such a great weekend!
Since my dad hooked us up with a condo, we were able to bring the kids up to Park City for a couple of nights. The kids were so excited to have a little mini vacation. We went to the PC Family Tree Center, the kiddos and Ben did the Alpine Slide and Coaster, went swimming, and visited the Olympic Park. Someday I may get around to a whole post devoted just to our fun little trip.
So this year we planned a big camping trip with the Tongs and the Hoens...for Memorial Day...when it snowed. The trip got postponed a bit but we finally made it happen. We went down to Fremont State Indian Park and had a great time seeing the Indian petroglyphs and pit houses, camping two nights, and even making a stop at Cove Fort for some Pioneer Day fun. Yet another get-away that needs its own post...someday.



We got home just in time from our camping trip to attend the annual Culdesac of Fire event in our neighborhood. It was hilarious to see who the real pyros are in our neighborhood!









We went to a fundraiser Luau for our friends, the Mailes, at the beautiful Noni Tahitian gardens. I'm pretty sure I could eat luau food forever and never get sick of it. My kids are in agreement and begged me to get some recipes. We watched a great show-Alexis and Kade kind of participated-and had a great time!









So there you have it...summer so far. We better get crackin' on some more summer fun...time is running out!!