Summer Adventures I

After getting back from Utah, we gave Adaline her main birthday present: a hand-me-down kitchen! Both kids have loved making strawberry pie, throwing all their toys down the sink, and, apparently, climbing in the oven. I looked up one day to see Matthew completely inside with the door closed. He's hilarious.

The kids still love playing on the top bunk of Adaline's bed and no one has fallen since Matthew when we'd just gotten it.

I have no idea what their games are most of the time

Jumping from the ottoman to the couch is easily one of their favorite games. Especially if they have a friend over.

My mom sent some popsicle makers for the kids and they LOVED getting to make and eat them-they really hated waiting for them to freeze though.

The library finished off their month of focusing on "The Last Stop on Market Street" by releasing the butterflies that they raised in the library. All of the kids loved it.

I don't normally take pictures of my food, but I wanted to remember that we ate this and it was delicious. Pizza crust, thin sliced potatoes, mozarella, leeks sauteed in bacon, and feta. It was amazing.

Matthew and Adaline have started "pre-school" twice a week. One week we'll have a little girl just a bit older than Adaline come over and the next week Matthew and Adaline go over to her sitter's house. We read tons of books, color worksheets with letters/numbers, sing songs, jump on the couch, and have lots of play time. It's really not that different from what we normally do, just more focused attention and then it means that I have free time twice a week every other week! I can actually run errands without kids sometimes!

They both love to play with the dogs when they're at pre-school. Adaline put Stella to bed for a nap.

I've been really surprised by how well she can trace letters since we hadn't tried that before.

This week they made ducks. So cute!

All the new books we bought! It was like Christmas!

These are the only ones we kept out for now. The others got packed away to be birthday presents, Christmas presents, etc.

May was such a crazy month; one Saturday was especially nuts. In the morning I went to help set up for a funeral luncheon at the church, after getting set up I ran to the store to finish getting a baby shower gift, order balloons, and pick things up from my house that I needed for the baby shower. Then I went back to help serve the lunch but the funeral went really long so, after waiting a while, I had to leave to go help set up for the baby shower. The shower was super fun (the food was AMAZING which I can say objectively because I wasn't in charge of food) and I am so excited for my friend to have her little girl. Towards the end of the shower, Andrew called and said Adaline's fever was 105. He gave her some medicine to see if it would go down in the time it took for me to get home. It didn't, and he said one temp came in at 105.9, so we took her to the ER. This all happened right at 5 when the urgent cares closed so we had no other choice. She was already starting to perk up a tiny bit by the time we got there and after the medicine and all the waiting, she was chatting up a storm and way more herself by the time we headed home, plus her fever was totally gone. I'm so glad she was fine and it wasn't a big deal, but it was such a bummer because we had friends in town and were supposed to meet them in the city for dinner that night. We didn't end up getting to see them at all and I was so disappointed.

Waiting in the discharge room and feeling way better. The popsicle helped her and Matthew both feel great

She was totally fine by the next morning and no one else got this weird 24 hr fever only thing

Playing with the new game from Aunt Sarah and Uncle Stephen

Last year we lucked out and got a spot camping with some of the families in our ward during Memorial Day Weekend. Since we were there last year, we got a spot for this year too and we were so excited to go again. The drive up there really sucks. I passed out the dramamine to everyone, we tried to leave around nap time, and there was still a lot of complaining of hurting stomachs. BUT at least no one threw up this year, so we're getting better! We were the first ones there out of our group this year, so we set up, got our coals going, and started cooking our dinner. The whole weekend is basically all the kids playing while the adults sit around the fire talking (it's chilly basically the whole time since it's right off the river and covered with redwoods). We brought Adaline's bike this year and she loved trying to keep up with the bigger kids and riding over to the playground. There's also a group of 4 or 5 that are between Adaline's age and Matthew's age, so they stuck together exploring the woods and climbing the tree stumps. Adaline and one of her good friends explored a little too far into the forest and I had a small panic attack while we tried to find them. But otherwise, they were pretty great and had so much fun.

Roasting marshmallows and cooking crescent rolls with daddy. We haven't tried doing the rolls before, but they were delicious!

Hunter wasn't feeling well during the trip, but he was still so patient and sweet with Matthew. Matthew was in heaven with all the dogs around to play with.

I sprayed bug spray all over her multiple times a day and she still got tons of mosquito bites. So we started trying to just cover every body part in multiple layers. Matthew, on the other hand, I sprayed the first day and he got no bites so I didn't spray him anymore and he never got any bites. Such a lucky guy.

These four were such buds the whole time. The youngest turned 2 in March, and Adaline is the oldest and she turned 3 in April, So there's less than a year between them all.

She wore her helmet almost the whole time, I guess so that she could jump on her bike and go whenever she needed to.

Most of the littlest kids-missing 1

The kids found plenty of ways to entertain themselves while Andrew and I unpacked and put away camping stuff after we got home.

Adaline rarely participates during storytime at the library so I was shocked one day to see her following along with the actions.

The weekend after Memorial Day was my birthday! For some crazy reason I signed up to do a race in Sacramento on my birthday. Luckily, Andrew had the day before off of work, so we mostly celebrated that day. We went to breakfast at Lumpy's because breakfast is probably my favorite meal to eat out. It also happened to be national donut day so we went to Krispy Kreme for 2nd breakfast. Then we browsed World Market and I bought some earrings. After everyone took a nap, we got some groceries for a birthday get together the next day.

As much as I was regretting my decision to run this race when we left the house at 6:30, I was also excited since I haven't been running as much lately. This was the weirdest race I have ever done. No one else was running! Okay, that's not entirely true, but it was only like 5% of the people in it that ran. They also had 3 heats: 8am, 9am, and 10am so they just started waves about every 1.5 minutes until the start chute was empty. This was fine, but because of it, the runners were mixed in with all the walkers instead of being towards the front and together. I spent the whole race trying to dodge groups of people walking in a row and lots of time just running next to the course because there was no room to get through. It was definitely more of an opportunity for everyone to take pictures as they walked through and played in the bubbles. (I'll just add this was also really frustrating to try and navigate through.) Oh, and I think the course was a little short because my time was a little too fast and I don't think I was actually that fast. In spite of the inconveniences, it was still really fun and I'm glad I did it. It felt good!

After the race, we stopped in Walnut Creek for lunch and to pick up birthday cheesecake :D Then we all took naps again! I woke up just a few minutes before the baptism for a young girl in our ward was starting, so I helped quickly get the kids ready so that they could go with Andrew and I used the quiet time to work on my lesson for RS the next day. It was so nice to have a quiet house. After they got home, we went to a little dinner at their house and then migrated over to the Moons for kind of a birthday party. My favorite things in life are hanging out with my friends (family included) and eating good food, so this was the prefect way to celebrate my birthday. Chips and queso, strawberry lemonade, watermelon, cheesecake, and s'mores, yummmm. We played Reverse Charades and I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. It was fantastic. Thanks to everyone who made it happen and for all the birthday wishes. It was such a great day!

My adorable cheerleaders.

They're so lucky I love them enough to run with them on my birthday.

Andrew asked if I fell because my knees were all red from the first bubbles I ran through and then the other colors all mixed and dripped down my legs to look like mud-super sexy

Just like momma

The color from the bubbles even got through my shoes and socks and stained my feet.

For my birthday, Andrew said he's doing 25 days of celebrating. Day 2 was foot exfoliation and massage. He is seriously the best.

She and Matthew were great voting helpers. They just sat at my feet eating cheez -its

Last week, our friends invited us to go to Six Flags with them because they have guest passes with their season passes. The kids haven't been on any amusement park rides before and I wasn't sure what they would think. Adaline loved every single ride, wanted to do them all again, and cried her eyes out if she wasn't tall enough to go on one. I was pretty shocked by all of her "woo hoo" -ing and waving her hands in the air as we rode. She had such a blast. Matthew liked all of the rides he went on except for the one that plunges. He hated it both times (he didn't remember how much he hated it and wanted to ride again) even with me trying to calm him down. This park is pretty cool because it has all the normal amusement park things, plus tigers, elephants, giraffes, a butterfly room, and some Sea World type exhibits. They also have a big playground with sand, a splash pad, and lots of play structures. It was super fun. Thank you to our awesome friends for taking us with you!
The kids were so tired by the time we got home but somehow managed to stay awake in the car. I was SO grateful since it was almost bedtime when we got home and that would have been a really poor time for a nap. Andrew surprised us and was home when we got back. He had already made dinner, served us all, and helped me get the kids bathed and in bed. He's amazing!

She thinks she is his momma and Matthew does not like being bossed around, but they usually get along pretty well.

I don't think Adaline cared too much about the Loony Tunes show since she has no idea who those characters are. Still fun though!

He could not keep up with the big kids

They are so weird. I don't know who started it, but it was so weird.

Waiting for the dolphin show to start! It was amazing and we got soaking wet.

This was the only big kid ride that Adaline could go on and I was surprised she liked it because it was fast. But after going on it with Jessica, she went on it with me too.

I put sunscreen on the kids...just not myself. Ouch, it hurts just looking at it.

Last week we got to watch Adaline's pre-school buddy for two whole days instead of just during pre-school time. They had so much fun getting to spend the entire day together even though she and Matthew don't get along super well. They did play-doh, dry erase books, painting with water, climbing/jumping/running/flips/driving toy cars outside, and we even went swimming. My goal was to keep them as busy as possible so they would be tired enough to not have an issue with all 3 of them napping in the same room. They did great and Adaline loved getting to sleep on the top bunk of her bed. I was a little nervous to have her up there at first because we don't have a rail and Matthew's crib is right next to it, but she had no issues.

Matthew took about 50 of these.

Earlier this week, we went to Brentwood to pick strawberries and then go to the splash pad. Two families from our ward came, Jessica, and some of our friends from Oakley. Matthew only ate one strawberry while we were picking (HUGE success), Adaline picked ones that were actually ripe, and we got there early enough that it wasn't crazy hot yet. Woo! I was still sweating like crazy by the time we finished, but I'll blame some of that on carrying one of Jen's twins in the carrier for her. After the strawberries, we went to a splash pad and it was even better than I expected. In addition to the sprinklers, they had lots of play structures and even lots of benches with umbrellas for the parents to sit under. When we got home, both kids had berry beards/mustaches and Matthew had dumped his bucket everywhere. I didn't even think he could reach it! We picked around 5 pounds of strawberries and bought a small basket of blackberries, and by noon the next day, they were all gone. Dang!

Trying so hard not to eat them.

This was all that was left by 9am of the next day. Those kids sure love their fruit.

Since I take all my pictures on my phone now, I've sort of let Adaline do what she wants with the camera. She has taken some very "artsy" pictures and, most amazing of all, usually gets her subjects head in the photo now. Lol Here are some of her masterpieces.