Summer Fun

I love summer, I wish it would never end.  The kids have had so much fun playing outside.  So here's a quick recap of what we've been up to.

We took another trip to Antelope Island. Much better without the walk down to the beach, although the island was a lot stinkier this time. We also visited the ranch on the island which was fun and saw a few animals.









Someone turned two! She's now wearing onesies because she's started stripping. We keep getting her up from naps and finding her laying on the floor naked. Not cool at all, diapers should remain on.  She also got her 4th haircut.





And lots and lots of playing outside riding bikes









I also colored John's hair blue, with food coloring. We tried Kool-Aid first but he said it burned his scalp and we had to wash it out fast. So then we went with just food coloring and it worked great.



Then Bella wanted her hair colored too. She's actually been begging me for months to give her blonde hair. So anyway I did red and she cried when I was done because she expected bright red like John's. I can definitely see the red but she still isn't happy enough with it.

Week 6 & 7

We're still doing school at a slow pace as we enjoy summer.  It's a bit easier to sit down and do the work now though since it's too hot to be outside during the day.  We go outside after dinner and stay there until dark now.  And the kids have made a ton of friends in the neighborhood this year, it's great to see them playing and having fun.

Handwriting is still a struggle with John.  Last week we got to the letter K and he simply refused to do it.  He did the page in his book, but then when it was time to practice in his wipe of book he flipped out.  Finally I just went outside with Bella (who had already finished) and told him to let me know when he was done.  After 10-15 minutes of all out wailing he was done.  And we had a complete replay the next day.  I'm sure it'll happen again this week as he still needs practice on K.  So here they are, he claims he can't do it but his work says otherwise



and Bella's



And we learned about the Vikings in history so we decided to pretend to be Vikings.  Our wagon was the ship, we taped a dinosaur to the handle to scare away others and then pretended to steal stuff from each other.









We also made a tornado in a bottle.  Everyone loved this.  Corey and I couldn't walk past it without flipping it over and giving it a whirl.  Lots of fun.



We also made medieval pouches while learning about the middle ages.

Family Pictures

We finally got some new family pictures taken.

I Love You

Corey taught Phoebe to sign "I love you" and she can now say it.  She's said it to me twice out of nowhere and it's the sweetest thing ever.  She also started saying "thank you" this weekend.  She still only talks while she's signing but it's becoming more frequent and the words are getting more clear too.

Quote of the Week

From John

"Mommy, will you be my girlfriend forever?"

Singing

Just some video I got of the kids singing.



And John, he starts out with a Billy Joel song and then makes up some song about trucks

Antelope Island

Today we went to Antelope Island State Park.  We had never been before, in fact after living in Utah for over 4 years we had never even seen the Great Salt Lake until today.  It was beautiful and brought back many memories of Hawaii.  The smell especially did it.

We started out with a picnic, surrounded by beautiful sand.





And then we began our journey to the water.  This part, let me just start out by saying I never plan to walk down to this beach again, like ever.  I'll just stay at the top and enjoy my picnic at the pretty sand next time.  See it's not the shortest distance and the sand is HOT, and in certain places it's quite deep.  So we set out to the water, two adult and 4 kids.  One that walked great and did not complain even once, one that cried pretty much the whole way, one who's legs are too short to really walk in sand and had to be carried and one that can't even hold up her own head.  PLUS a bouncy seat, a bag, and a gallon sized water jug.  It wasn't fun and the whole time down there I dreaded going back up.  And once we got down there the bugs were awful.  There's this black haze you can see along the sand by the water and as you approach you realize this "haze" is alive.  Kind of gross and kind of cool at the same time.  The water was warm and the older two played in it for a bit and then we went back up.  In the 15 minutes we spent at the water the sand got even hotter, a lot hotter.  So anyway I didn't particularly enjoy that part.



I hear there's great wildlife on the island but this little lizard is about all we saw if you don't count the millions of bugs.  And I won't even get into the spiders (luckily they were only viewed from a distance.)  But I guess there's like 500 bison roaming about, we'll have to go again sometime when it's not the peak of the summer heat.









And this is the causeway that connects the island to the valley.  I can't wait to go back again sometime.  We only saw a tiny portion of the island so there's still a lot to see next time.

Happy and Healthy

On Tuesday Phoebe had her 2 year check-up and Hazel her 4 month.  Both are doing great.  Hazel weighs 13 pounds, she's in the 34% for weight and 94% for height.  She seems to be over the colic and we were even able to wean her off her meds and she's still happy.  Lots and lots of smiles and she's started to coo.  And drool, so I think some teeth may be in our near future (all the others got teeth around this age.)

Phoebe, same old story with her.  She weighs 19 pounds now, not 20 like I thought she was.  She's still WAY below the 0%, even further than she was at her 18 month checkup.  At least she is gaining weight and not staying the same.  And she's otherwise healthy and is very happy.

Hazel

Milk

I love breastfeeding.  Trying to breastfeed Bella and John was no easy task, John never once latched on and both lasted about 6 weeks on breast milk (with me pumping.)  With Phoebe I was so determined and didn't give up, but still it was hard.  I spent two months pumping exclusively and another in excruciating pain but finally found success and had a wonderful experience with her.  This time I knew we could make it work but totally feared the pain and frustration of the early weeks.  It ended up being the easiest thing ever, Hazel latched on in the delivery room and nursed for 30 minutes.  The first couple days were painful due to a shallow latch but after a quick re-read of my breastfeeding book we fixed that and never had any other issues.  I'm so grateful, the first few months were crazy enough with my mom's death and colic, I honestly don't know if I could have done it with problems.

Children's Museum

We got a membership to the children's museum awhile back.  It's lots of fun, as long as you don't go in the winter when you're guaranteed to pick up some nasty virus.  We only got a 6 month membership so ours will expire just as cold/flu season starts up.  Anyway we took a trip there today, John, me and the babies did anyway (Bella and Corey went to the Planetarium.)  So John and I played around and had fun.