Breakfast Picnic, Garden Goodies, Parades, Bowling, Hiking, 4th of July, Race

We have been enjoying our summer.  The other morning we went on a breakfast picnic at the park.  It was a great time to go because it wasn't as hot early in the morning.  Here the kids are enjoying their breakfast burritos picnic style:

We had picked up Josh straight from his pancake run and headed over to the park.  If I had it to do over again I would have made time for Josh to shower before doing that....As you can see we made him sit a bit further away from us as he was a bit smelly from doing an 8 mile run that morning---ewwww!!  Luckily, when we did make it home he showered and all was well again.

Back for Father's Day Aaron got a stuffed hamburger patty maker.  He has been waiting patiently for a chance to use it.  Lucky for him there was a sale on ground meat this last week so he stocked up.  He made 6 1/2 pounds worth of patties and stuffed them with different things like bacon, grilled onions, bleu cheese crumbles, etc.  They didn't disappoint!  Each patty ended up being around 1/2 pound of meat.  Aaron and I couldn't even eat one whole one, but the rest of the kids had no problem taking them down.  Josh ended up eating 4 hamburgers/patties just by himself!!  

They were really delicious! 

Our garden is starting to produce and Noah is loving it.  His favorite is the cherry tomato plant.  He checks it almost every day because he is a tomato lover through and through!!  Here's the very first cherry tomatoes of the season and Noah is pretty excited about them:

We have also started getting zucchinis and Anaheim peppers.  Yum!

Josh has been going on a pancake run every few days.  It's where a few cross country runners take turns running and then hosting a pancake breakfast at their house.  I wonder what really goes on with these pancake runs when I see pictures like this afterward--haha!

Last Saturday was the Syracuse City parade.  The student body officers had asked Matthew to be an honorary member as the Human GPS SBO.  They asked him to ride along with them on their float in this parade which he was pretty excited about.  We didn't hear about the details until the day before the parade and Matthew was pretty agitated about not knowing what the details were--like where they were meeting, what to wear, etc.  He kept begging me to call the school and ask them about the parade, but they didn't know.  I didn't have the SBO advisor's phone number so I couldn't do anything to find out the details of the parade.  Since I wasn't able to help him he then decided to go over to his friend's house that was an SBO to ask her, but she wasn't home.  When she wasn't home he panicked a bit then decided it would be a good idea to knock on all her neighbor's doors to see where she was. I bet they loved that--DOH!!  Since he didn't get any answers there he then flagged down a Clinton City policeman in his car to ask him about the parade.  This kid was relentless.  I was never so happy to finally speak with the SBO advisor just to calm Matthew down.  The advisor had left Matthew's information at school and finally went back to get it Friday morning to call us.  The parade was on Saturday so it was a bit last minute.  As you can tell Matthew gets a little obsessive with things to put it lightly...Anyway, I was glad we finally heard from them so Matthew was able to be in the parade with them.  They even got him a matching shirt just like theirs, too.  He was so excited to see them when Aaron dropped him off before they parade started.  We then went and found some seats to watch the parade.  Here we are waiting for the parade to start:

The kids even got to see Ariel up close:

Here's the student body officer float:

Matthew had a friend that marched alongside Matthew.  He was pretty excited to see us:

He stayed with us a bit long so they had to run to catch up with their float:

After the parade we took the kids over to the batting cages and let them practice hitting just for fun.  Everyone got a turn Aaron and myself included.  Josh and Sarah had to switch things up a bit since they are lefties.

Monday morning I had to return something at Sam's Club.  When we got there we were met with a long line at customer service--DOH!  After a few minutes the kids got bored of waiting in line with e and decided to try out the only display camp chair they had out.  Since there was only one chair they all fought over who got to sit in it.  I guess they finally compromised and did this which as you can tell Josh wasn't happy about being squished on the bottom:

I tried to pretend they weren't with me, but they kept yelling, "MMMMOOOOMMMM!!!" over and over again getting louder each time until I looked over.  Then they yelled, "YOU NEED TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS!!"  There was no hiding who they belonged to after that--haha!  Oh well, I was glad to finally be done at customer service after waiting 20 minutes!! Also if you are wondering whatever chair that was it was pretty sturdy because it got quite the workout from the four kids as you can see!  Shopping with kids is always an adventure....

Monday afternoon I took the kids bowling.

We made our own in-between turn entertainment:

Tuesday morning I took the kids hiking to Waterfall Canyon.  I had not hiked this hike in over 10 years, but I remembered that it was a pretty cool hike.  It was a bit strenuous, but we made it.  It is between a 2.5-3 mile hike with an elevation gain of about 1200 ft.  It was fun to pass over a few bridges throughout the hike:

The whole thing was uphill with rocks so we definitely got a workout!

It was really pretty at the end and worth the hike.

The views of the Ogden Valley were beautiful, however, we didn't stay long because there were a few lightning strikes that were too close for comfort.

These three (four if you count Sophie) beat Sarah and me up the hike, but not by too much.

There were even some pretty purple wild flowers along the way Daniel took some pictures of:

The next day was July 4th.  The 4th of July started bright and early for us!!  Josh wanted to run the West Point City 5k (3.1 miles) and begged and pleaded for one of us to run it with him.  Aaron was the nice guy and decided to take one for the team and signed up to run with Josh.  The race started bright and early at 6:30 am.  This was the only time they were together because once the race started Josh was long gone.  Aaron was slow and steady, but did pretty well since he does not usually run cross country.

Josh had made a bet with his friend about who was going to beat who for the 5k.  Josh beat his friend only by 20 seconds.  His friend got him a kingsize candy bar which Josh promptly ate.  This kid eats so much food!!  Anyway, right after the race I had to pick Josh up and bring him home so he could shower.  In the mean time I had to get Matthew ready and Sarah as well since they were both going to be in the parade.  Josh got dressed and had to be dropped back off to be in the marching band for the parade as well.  There is a community marching band (the high school does not have a marching band program) that Josh signed up to participate in over the summer.  He has gone to practices every week so he could be ready for the parade.  He also did let us know the day before the parade that he needed a patriotic hat to wear while he was marching in the parade....DOH nothing like waiting until the last minute.  We scrambled and went to a few stores to try and find a patriotic hat and were glad to find the last one at Walmart.  It was a bit dorky, but Josh loved it so that's all the counts, right?!  Here's Josh with his patriotic hat waiting for the parade to start:

After all the running kids around that morning Aaron finally made it home from the race and we went to sit in our spots to watch the parade.  We were glad that G&G T were able to join us, too.  Here we are waiting for the parade to start:

It was so weird to only have two kids (Daniel and Noah) with us watching the parade since the other three were in the parade.

It was cool to see the F-16s  fly over the parade route:

Here come the Marching Muskrats (the marching band):

Here's Josh marching along with them right in the center of the picture:

Sarah was dancing with her dance team a little bit further down the parade line.

Here is Sarah in her yellow shirt in the middle of the picture:

Here's the Syracuse high school student body officer float.

Matthew was so excited to be in another parade with them.  Here he is saying 'Hi' to everyone as he walked along with them:

After the parade we headed over to the party in the park.  I let Matthew and Josh play the adult BINGO game and then got Sarah and Noah set up to play the kid BINGO game. I then headed over to the baseball fields to watch Daniel play in his championship baseball game.  His team was undefeated going into this game so it was going to be a fun game to watch.  Aaron loved that he was able to help coach Daniel's team this season.  The main coach was a really nice guy and great to work with.  Here's my two cute baseball guys before the game started:

Here is Daniel getting ready to bat while Aaron was heading over to be the 3rd base coach:

It was a good game and Daniel got to make some awesome plays, but their team lost.  They still did get a trophy at the end, though.  Here's the mayor handing out the trophies at the end of the game:

The team picture:

Showing off the trophy:

The kids had fun playing in the park with the BINGO games and the different other activities the city had set up.  We love the small town celebrations!  When the baseball game finished we were ready for some air-conditioning!!  We headed back home to chill out.  That afternoon we dined on some smoked ribs Aaron made for us.  Then we made s'mores at the fire pit:

When it finally got dark enough we headed over to watch the firework show.  While we were waiting for the main show to start there were all kinds of other fireworks going off.  Noah kept putting up his arms and pretending like he was a wizard and making the fireworks go off if that makes any sense.  It was so dark we didn't get a very good picture, but you can kind of see what he was doing here:

Waiting for the firework show to start the kids got a bit antsy especially Matthew.  I think he was overtired, agitated and overstimulated.  Anyway, he threw quite a big tantrum before it started.  I felt bad for the people that were sitting by us because it wasn't pretty.  Luckily, he calmed down enough where we could watch the firework show, but he still stayed agitated.  Daniel took my phone and took tons of firework pictures!  Here's one of the better ones.  

I am surprised my phone storage isn't full because he took so many pictures--haha!

I realized that I never too a picture of Sarah's cute patriotic clothes so here's the end of the day picture.  As you can tell she had a fun packed day.

The kids all came home after watching the fireworks and were ready for bed that night.  Matthew was still agitated, but we turned off all the lights and pretended we were going to bed so he would go to bed, too.  Thankfully that worked and we didn't have another meltdown at least until the next day, but that's another story....

This summer is flying by, but we are trying to enjoy ourselves!!