Summer Fun

Besides the monthly kid updates, I didn't do a very good job of blogging this summer.  In an effort to document some of our adventures, here's a catch-up post full of pictures (and a few stories, too)!

We went to the petting zoo near our house several times.  Eliza even got brave and touched the animals this year.

We went swimming for Mike's work party.  Eliza loves to swim!  There was a fast twisty slide that went into the in-ground pool.  At first Mike would just set her on the end of the slide and catch her as she'd fall into the water.  When that wasn't thrilling enough, she wanted to go down the whole slide.   Once she even jumped off the side of the pool when no one was there to catch her (Mike was planning to catch her, but just hadn't gotten into position yet).  She was fearless, which made me fearful!

Definitely not one of the highlights, was the impromptu work on the exterior of our house.  It started with a musty smell in the bedroom which led us to find a wet spot of carpet.  Apparently, a piece of the sill, the board between the concrete slab of our foundation and foot of our wall, was missing.  The landscaping around the house was holding in moisture which caused the sill to rot out and moisture to come in.  In order to find out what was wrong, Mike had to take the siding off.  Since rain was in the forecast, we had to fix things quickly.  I was a little nervous about Mike doing things himself (it required jacking up the house to replace the sill and some studs, but he was pretty confident that he could do it without hurting himself or the house.  While he was in there, he replaced the insulation, plywood, and house wrap.

We visited our local water park several times.  Eliza loves the water!  She even went down one of the big slides with Mike while Caleb and I floated along the lazy river where Caleb would usually fall asleep on my lap.

We've been to Nauvoo several times this summer to go to the temple.  We had fun visiting the pioneer sites with friends and family. We also got to see the pageant for the first time. 

For playgroup, we went to a local orchard and had fun exploring the fun things for kids to do there.  We have lived here 2 years and never been there before.

 At the beginning of September, Target had their summer stuff clearanced to 75% off.  We picked up this pool for $6!  It was a 70-degree, breezy Friday evening when we brought it home, but Eliza absolutely couldn't wait to use it.  We knew she wouldn't last long, so we obliged.  They kids LOVED it!  It will be really fun when it's actually hot outside!

We went camping with our law school friends like we did last year.  Last year I was nearly 9 months pregnant with Caleb, so I was a little more comfortable this year (though with Eliza's night time craziness, I definitely didn't sleep any better).  This year we had a hayride and farm tour.  Katie made a fun bug hunt for the kids.  The first two pictures were taken by Katie.  She had us pose in front of her ginormous tent since we had already taken ours down.

We have several hammocks that we've picked up in Guatemala and Mexico, but hadn't put any of them up until this year.  We have it hung between the two giant trees in our backyard.  Kids (ours and everyone else's) love it!  They love to all pile in and swing high!

 

We try to eat lunch outside so that the squirrels take care of the clean-up!