Catch Up Part 1, Father's Day, Manti Pageant, Man Eating Chairs, Camp K, Fun

It has been such a crazy couple of weeks.  Here is an attempt at a catch up of my family--mostly through pictures.

A few Fridays ago we were supposed to go to a swim party, but I unfortunately waited too late to get tickets so they ran out.  Instead of not doing anything we decided last minute to drive the 2 1/2 hours out to see the Manti Pageant.  We hadn't been for a few years so I don't know how much the kids remembered from the last time.  It was fun family time despite it being a last minute trip.  We got there about 10 minutes before the pageant started so we had great timing.  We even were lucky enough to find good seats to sit in for the performance.

On the walk from the parking lot to the temple it looked so pretty as the moon was rising:

 The performance lasted until 11:30pm, but Noah was the only one who didn't last until the end.  I didn't mind when he crawled up in my lap to get lubs only to fall asleep a few minutes later.

 The drive home was long, but we made it.  I don't do super late nights really well anymore.  We got to bed about 3 am and my kids who don't know how to sleep in were back up at 8 am the next morning--ugh!  Oh well we survived.

To celebrate Father's Day my brother, Bryan, and his family had a family dinner at their house.  It was really nice to see all the cousins and to catch up.  Matthew was in heaven because Bryan had just adopted a really sweet dog named Parker who let Matthew snuggle him the whole night.

 The big water slide got set up so everyone had fun playing on it.  Here's Daniel taking his turn:

 All the cousins had fun jumping on the trampoline, too:

 The next morning was Father's Day.  Luckily all of Aaron's meetings got cancelled in celebration of Father's Day so he was able to stay home.  I got all kinds of help in cooking an early morning breakfast for him.  Then we had a breakfast party on our bed after all the kids woke Aaron up.

 Aaron got a cool Engineering shirt that he ended up wearing a few times that week.  As you can see he was wearing it the next day as we dropped Matthew off for a week at Camp Kostopulos.  Matthew has been so excited to go this summer.  He has been telling everyone and anyone all about it.  When we got there he asked someone to take his picture with us instead of his camp counselors.  What a funny kid!

 After checking in he was excited to see where his bed was and to unpack.

 After he was done with that he just ran over to get started playing games without a backward glance.  I am glad he loves going there so much and that a camp for special needs kids exists for such kids.

I was a bit worried when I got a call from Camp K the next morning, though.  Matthew had lost his glasses and was having a bit of a melt down.  They just wanted to call and let me know about his missing glasses.  Come to find out someone in his cabin took them and broke them into small pieces.  DOH!!  When the leaders found the pieces they didn't let Matthew know because he was already stressing out they were missing.  I can only imagine what he would have done had he found out that someone had broken them.  Anyway we have ordered some more glasses and are just waiting for them to come in.  Crazy times.

While Matthew was having fun we decided to have some fun while the rest of us were still at home.  Aaron took a day and a half off of work to join us.  We spent a day down in Salt Lake at the Clark Planetarium.  We were a bit disappointed because they had torn out most of the exhibits to remodel the whole place.  Besides the star shows there wasn't too much to see while we were there.  Oh well we still had fun just getting out.

 We saw a star show.  It was nice because they weren't very busy so we got pretty good seats.

 Wouldn't you know it Daniel was dorking around and found the only man eating chair in the whole theater.  It ended up taking a chunk out of his pinky finger--poor guy.  We are still hearing about it two weeks later, too.

 They did have an interesting hot and cold exhibit.  They had an infrared camera that showed what areas were hot and what areas were cold on your body.  It was pretty cool.

 They still did have the Mars landscape you could climb on.

 They had a two story ball maze called Newton's Daydream that the kids had fun watching.  Josh and Noah were downstairs while Daniel and Sarah were upstairs watching it.

 Since the place was not busy when we went to see the IMAX movie we were the only ones in the theater for most of the movie.

 Monday evening Daniel had a baseball game.  It was extremely hot for Family Home Evening so for our treat we went and got a shaved ice from a Hokulia stand.  Yummy!

 We got Daniel's baseball pictures back.

 Aaron was glad he was able to stand by Daniel in the picture, too.

 Tuesday I got to try and finish up some projects for girls camp from home.  While I was doing that it was a party at my house.  My friend Erin went to be induced to have her baby at the hospital and I was able to watch all 4 of her girls while she had her baby.  We had a party at our house with 8 kids running around.  Luckily, they all have a friend their same ages and kept each other busy so I could work on getting girls camp stuff done.  I was so excited to see a picture of this cute boy later that day:

What was even better was I got to snuggle him a few days later.  I love babies!!  I was excited that after four girls she finally got a boy :).  We love baby Drew!!

The next day Aaron and I were able to do an early morning session at the temple which was nice.  It is always nicer to go together than separate.  Afterward we decided to spend a big chunk of the day at Lagoon as a family.  I love that Daniel still likes to hold our hands.  As we were walking in from the parking lot he ran over and just grabbed Aaron's hand to hold.   I LOVE it!

 It was a really hot day so we stopped by to play in the fountains for a few minutes to cool off.  Sarah was trying to talk Daniel in to getting really wet.

 Unfortunately, we had Noah wear his platform shoes so he could ride Cannibal.  That ended up being a HUGE mistake.  After Noah got wet in the fountains his shoes rubbed his heel raw to the point he couldn't walk anymore.  We ended up needing to pick up some flip flops at Lagoon so he could actually walk again.

 It ended up scabbing over, but it won't heal.  Here it is two weeks later and still a big scab.  I feel bad his shoes caused such a bad blister!

That is why he has been wearing flip flops to church the past couple weeks.  He can't handle any shoes rubbing on his heels--poor guy!

While we were at Lagoon we got to see a bunch of peacocks with their babies.

 We even got to see a male fan out his feathers.  That's the first time I had ever seen that in real life.  It was pretty neat.

 We had fun riding all the different rides.

Thursday morning me and the kids had dentist appointments.  Everyone came out great except for one small cavity for Josh--DOH!!   Unfortunately, we did get informed (although we had already somewhat known) that Sarah's mouth is way too small.  She has quite a few permanent teeth that can't come in because she doesn't have any room for them.  The dentist did recommend we go and see the orthodontist soon to try and remedy that.  DOH!!  I think we will wait until the beginning of next year when our Flex spending account resets so we can take care of Sarah's mouth.  Also, hopefully, Josh will be out of braces by then so we could start Sarah then if she needs that in addition to the mouth/palate expanders.  Kids are expensive!!

Friday it was time to pick Matthew back up from Camp K.  When I got there they were all doing a group activity. Matthew saw me, but he was to busy doing his activity to stop.

 At the very end they handed out awards to all the campers.  Matthew got most energetic camper which was not a surprise.

 Here's Matthew's favorite counselor.  He will be excited to come back to see her the end of July for his second week.

 The next morning was the Syracuse city parade.  We love going to this parade every year.  We were a bit sad though since they weren't doing the snowcone machine this year.  We still had fun, though.

 One of the favorite parade entries was a garbage cleaning service.  They sprayed the spectators with their clean hoses to cool everyone off.  The kids loved it.

 Saturday we finally were able to get Sophie groomed.  She was getting pretty shaggy and hairy.  I love seeing her when she is done.  She looks so cute.  She even kept her bow in her hair for almost week this time, too.  Wahoo!

 Matthew LOVES Sophie.  He loves walking her, feeding her and especially cuddling her whether Sophie wants to or not.  She's a pretty good natured dog most of the time so it works out.