Gorilla Bars, Fathers and Sons, Dance Recital, Random Barfing, Trails Day, Sad Dog

Summer is in full swing at our house.  We haven't done too many activities yet because I am trying to get stuff together for Girl's Camp in a few weeks.  Eeeek!!  It is really coming up soon!  Hopefully I will remember everything I need to do and get everything done I need to as well. I am keeping my fingers crossed!!

Just in time for school to be out our air conditioner stopped working.  BOO!!  We called to get someone here to fix it, but they were all backed up.  We finally got someone here Tuesday morning.  He checked everything out and nothing was wrong with our unit which is good news.  The bad news is someone has been letting freon out of our system for 'personal use' if you know what I mean which has depleted the freon.  BOO!!  Luckily, they were able to refill it and now we have a cool house again.  We are going to have to look at getting our yard completely fenced to try and stop it from happening again.  I thought having a dog would prevent this, but she doesn't seem to be a very good guard dog--haha!  At least she is cute!

 Matthew has started his summer program and is having fun.  They get to go swimming twice a week and the other days they spend going to museums, playing at parks, and having fun days at the office.  He is really enjoying himself.  He is pretty funny kid, though.  Anytime he does anything he asks someone, anyone, to take his picture and send it to his mom.  I end up with lots of random picture texts from phone numbers I don't recognize, but they always show a smiling Matthew so I assume he is enjoying himself.  Here's just a few from this week alone: 

Josh finished up his last few days of school.  The Jr. High actually had a field day.  Josh was excited about it.  I should have known something was up because he came home from school Wednesday and begged to mow the yard.  I thought that was weird until he finished mowing the lawn and then asked for his lawn mowing money right away.  He wanted to bring the money to school for field day the next day.  He seemed to have enjoyed himself.  He got his face painted for BYU and got some candy.

Another exciting news--Josh got another 4.0 for this semester as well.  Wahoo!  We are going to take his report card over to Krispie Kreme soon since you can get a donut for every A grade you get.  Way to go Josh!!  Aaron also did get a chance to take Josh to do some Baptisms for the Dead last week.  It was a nice relaxing afternoon for them both.

Noah, Sarah and Daniel are all still doing baseball.  Noah is a bit of a goofy kid.  Right before I took this picture he was turned around on the base with his helmet on backward trying to be funny.  What a crazy kid!

 I think Noah is doing baseball just for the treats.  He was so excited after this game because he got a water bottle and a gorilla bar (granola bar).  He's so cute--I could be a bit biased, though--haha!  Here he was telling us about his gorilla bar:

 I took the first day of school pictures and the last day of school pictures and put them side by side so you could see how much the kids have changed during the year.  It is crazy how much they grow--especially Josh.  He has gotten so tall!

 Noah got a 'Nerds Award' from kindergarten.  It said, "Nerds Award Noah for your intelligence and hard work in all areas".  Wahoo!  Noah was just excited for the candy.

After the end of school Friday the primary had a party to celebrate reading half of the Book of Mormon this year.  They had lots of Super Power games the kids played.  All the kids also got a superman cape to wear.  Here's Daniel playing a game.  He is the one in the plaid shirt standing at the back of the line with the long shorts on.

Friday night was the fathers and sons camp out.  Aaron was a brave guy and took all 4 boys Friday night.  He didn't stay overnight, but until the program was over that night.  It looked like it was fun.  Here's a picture of some of the rowdy scouts--Josh included:

 They did quiet down when they retired an old flag.  Josh got to help out with that ceremony:

Later that night when it was time for Aaron to come home, he went to go round up all four boys.  While he was trying to track down Daniel, he left Matthew, Josh and Noah at the fire pit to wait.  That's when the real fun began.  Noah started barfing.  I guess he barfed a few times by the time Aaron found Daniel and brought him back to the fire pit.  Poor Aaron.  He had to try and clean it up the best he could since Noah had barfed in a pretty central location of the Fathers and sons camp out.  On the way home I got a play by play from Josh and Daniel while Aaron drove.  Here's how the conversation went:

 Reading about the experience it makes me not want to eat Sam's Club hot dogs anytime soon!!  GROSS!!  Oh well, Aaron did take a selfie before they left to come home.  Noah is all smiles despite him not having a shirt on since he got barf on it.  What a crazy evening!!

While Aaron had the boys Sarah and I joined up with some other girls and had a girl's night.  It was fun to visit and have adult conversations while the kids played.  It was crazy to be down to just one kid/girl, though!!  I think we all had a fun night at least I did.  I don't think Aaron's night was as fun after Noah barfed.

I was worried that Noah was really sick since he barfed Friday night, but he was just fine Saturday morning.  I guess it was just a random puking.  Weird!!  Anyway, Saturday was National Trails Day.  To celebrate (and since Noah was feeling fine) we went on a family bike ride that morning.  We were sad they didn't have any booths set up along the trail with prizes this year, but we still had fun riding.  We ended up going 10.6 miles.  The kids were all pretty good, too.  Noah is still learning to ride so he got the best seat in the house in the bike trailer.  However, he is getting so big that he doesn't fit in it very well anymore.  He will have to learn how to ride his bike without training wheels soon because he is quickly outgrowing the trailer!

 Of course we stopped along the way for water breaks.

 It is so nice to have boys big enough to help Aaron muscle the bikes around on the bike rack now.  That is a lot of bikes.  There is even one more in the back of the Suburban along with the bike trailer.  It was a bit of work to get everything ready to go for everyone so it was nice to have some extra help from Josh.

 Of course we stopped by Fiiz for a cold drink afterward.

 Monday after Family Home Evening we played a few games of Suspend.  You know it was a few good games when a few of the kids end up in tears after losing...Here's the last round between Aaron, Matthew, Noah and me.

 Poor Sophie.  She got spayed Tuesday morning.  It took a whole 5 weeks to finally get an appointment to get her in to get it done.  I dropped her off at 7:30 am and picked her back up at 11 am.  The poor thing was so loopy after I picked her up.  You could tell she did not feel good at all as you can see:

 She stayed a bit loopy for about 24 hours and then perked right back up.  We are supposed to keep her from jumping and running for the next 10 days.  I am thinking that will be impossible since we are on post op day two and she is running around like a wild dog.  You can't even tell her tummy hurts at all!  You can see she is ready to join in the action and looks tons better than she did right after the surgery:

Tuesday was Epilepsy Day at Lagoon.  We, of course, had to go and show our support.  You are supposed to wear purple to show your support.  I was able to find a purple shirt for Sarah, Daniel and me, but not one for Josh or Noah.  3 out of 5 was still good, though.  We got purple wrist bands, too.

 We could only stay a few hours because we had to be back in time for Matthew when he got home from his summer program.  We made the most of those two hours, though.  Despite her face in the picture Sarah did have fun.  Daniel is on the back side of the ride.  You can barely see his smiley face.

 Noah had fun, too.

 Tuesday afternoon Josh went and got his allergy shots.  We have finally made it to the maintenance phase of his treatment.  He only has to go in once a month for the next 3-5 years and hopefully his allergies with either disappear or dramatically decrease.  Wahoo!

Tuesday night was Sarah's dance recital.  She loves getting all done up especially the makeup part.

 Here are the girls getting ready backstage:

 Sarah did great.  She is getting old enough that she can remember the dances and perform well.  Here she is in the very middle of the picture:

 Of course she got flowers from Dad after the performance.

 Afterward she came by to give G&G T some hugs.

 The title of the recital was Dancing Through Time.  Sarah danced a Charleston Dance and to the song I Want to Be Loved By You.  After the recital all the girls got Time Turner (from Harry Potter) necklaces for a gift.  Sarah hasn't taken it off since the recital.

 Yesterday was mine and Aaron's 16th wedding anniversary.  It is crazy to think we have been together that long.  We have gone through A LOT in those 16 years (who knew Aaron could deliver babies at home--haha!!) and there is no one else I would rather have by my side.  I love our family!  I look at our freshly married selves and then look at our 7 member family and think, "How did that happen?!"  Yes I KNOW how it happened, by it just has gone by so fast!!

 There's a new Smith's Marketplace that opened up by us yesterday.  It is a big mega store that has a grocery store as well as clothes, shoes, furniture, etc.  They had big grand opening event yesterday morning.  We went to check it out.  We got a few freebies.  We were able to pick up two containers of cherry tomatoes for free.  They didn't last too long when we got home.  Noah ate both containers for lunch.  He LOVES tomatoes in any form.  I am just glad he is potty trained and can take care of the aftermath himself if you know what I mean--haha!

 We did meet up with the Einzingers to go bowling this morning.  I got some free bowling coupons from the school so we didn't have to pay anything.  Wahoo!  It was crazy, but fun.  Two adults with 8 kids weren't very good odds.  Luckily, the kids were pretty well behaved and we were the only ones bowling, too.

 Afterward we had a fun lunch together.  Hopefully, we can do more fun things this summer.