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Our favorite place on Earth

In june we headed up to the cabin to escape the heat of St. George and enjoy our favorite place in the whole world! We got to spend some time with Marianne and her kids while we were there.  The boys went on a nature drive one evening and saw lots of animals.  Here is one of the many does they came across.

One afternoon Rylynn was feeling frustrated so here is where I found her.  She and Garrett have such a special relationship and he has an amazing way of helping her to calm down and work things out rationally.  I somehow only add to the drama so it's a good thing he's around to calm her down:)

I love that sweet smile!!  

Dallas wanted to have a turn on the swing too and he always wants to be with his big sissy so he was loving this!

Rylynn took him down to the river to throw rocks and to watch Dad build a new dam for a fishing hole.  

Every summer Garrett has to rebuild the fishing pools along the back river because they get washed out during the run off.  He is so in his element when he is hauling logs, throwing rocks, and getting dirty.  

Before we went up to the cabin, we bought a deck of uno cards and the kids got really into playing so we had to bring them up to the cabin.  The boys spent a lot of time playing together.  We had lots of fun games and Garrett taught the kids that whenever you play uno, you need to have snacks to eat.  They were big fans of that idea!

We always do as many bonfires as we can squeeze in while we are at the cabin so this was the first of a few.

One of the nights was midsummer night's eve so the girls made fairies and Marianne made "Puck hands" for the boys.  They did some fairy games too.  The kids loved it!

One of the many uno games:)

Garrett snuck the boys some contraband on one of their nature drives.

And of course we had big breakfasts every morning.  That's one of our favorite things about the cool mornings at the cabin.  

We were so sad to have to leave and head back to the 100+ degree weather at home.  

We had a LEGO party!

Carter's favorite thing to do with his electronic time each day is to go to lego.com and look at all the lego sets available.  This has motivated him a lot to do extra jobs and save money for different sets he wants.  However, he usually gets burned out around the $15.00 mark and gives in and buys a smaller set that he can get without waiting for months.  The sets he really wants are a lot more money so we have told him that he needs to wait for his birthday or Christmas to get one of those.  That brought on the complaining about how it isn't fair that his birthday and Christmas are all in the same week so he really has to wait all year long to get any big presents he wants.  We decided that was a very valid point and since his birthday is new year's eve, we have talked about different options for celebrating his birthday for years now.  So I told him we could try a half birthday if he wanted to but that meant no presents on his real birthday.  He LOVED the idea!  So we threw a Lego swim party for his half birthday yesterday.  

Here is the goody bag table.

Carter requested cupcakes and that made my job really easy.  I found these cute printables online and attached them to toothpicks.

Thanks to pinterest, we had some really fun games and activities.  First we had a coloring table while all the kids got there.  I just printed coloring pages off of lego.com.  The kids really loved this activity.

This was a fun game too.  The closest guess won a fun dip.

This was a fun twist on a classic.  I had fun making this lego guy.  Rylynn and one of Carter's friends tied on this game.  They got it pretty much completely perfect.  

The coloring pages turned out really cute!

The next game was one I just made up and it turned out to be really fun.  It was a team building contest.   So I divided them into two teams and then had a jar with strips of paper in it with different words of things they had to build.  Some examples were a bridge, a house, a 1 ft tower.   

Then the teams had to build as quickly as possible and the team that finished first got a point. 

After games it was time to swim!!

I bought some squirt guns at the dollar store so that every kid could have one.  They had a lot of fun having a squirt gun fight in the pool.

While they swam we set the table outside so the clean up was really easy.  We had pizza, watermelon, cupcakes and ice cream cones.

These cupcakes were amazing!!  I found my new favorite cupcake recipe on joy of baking.com.  I used the chocolate cupcake and the vanilla frosting recipes.  Sooo yummy!

Then it was present time!  Garrett wanted to be super creative and wrapped his big present that was from us and my parents in legos.  So he spent a lot of time and creativity creating a lego encasement for the present.  The kids thought it was so cool!

Carter's friends spoiled him and he got 6 lego sets from them and a rocket launcher.

He was in heaven!

Then it was time to open the big present.  Normally I don't have my kids open family presents at their friend party but his friends all know how much Carter has been dying to get the Lord of the Rings cave troll set so I thought they would be really excited for him to open it.  Carter's best friend Matheson even pulled me aside at the beginning of the party and asked me if we had bought it for him:)  I love this picture because you can see how excited they all were for him.

All his friends thought it was soooo cool when he opened it and Carter couldn't wipe that grin off of his face.  He ran back to his room trailing 7 little boys to go and immediately start building.  We had to tell him that it would be more polite if he waited until they all left to begin building.  He was a good sport and luckily he only had to wait a few minutes.

You better believe that the second the last boy left he was in a building trance for the next 6 hours.  We seriously had to make him stop building to go to bed and he was so mad about it.  

It was such a fun party and it made me so happy to see the spotlight be completely on Carter for once.  I think this is going to be our new yearly tradition for him.  

School's Out for the Summer

 The little ones were so anxious at the beginning of May for their siblings to be home for the summer.  So we kept busy going to story time at the library,

 playing at the park,

 and just being goofy.  We also got to go to the wedding of one of my Mom's old yw who used to babysit our kids whenever we would come visit.  The kids love her so they were really excited to go to her reception.  My mom was so sad she had to miss it.  Rylynn wrote a special card just for Andrea.  It was really sweet.

 Then the last week of school madness began.

Carter had a kindergarten concert and I even went in and helped with his class party.

 I felt really guilty when Carter said, "please come help with our party mom!  All the other moms come in but you never do!"  I explained to him that that was because his mom was the only one who had had a baby the first month of school and two little boys to take care of at home.  But in the end, the guilt won out and I got a sitter for the littles.  

It was really fun to be in the classroom with him.  My poor older kids.  I know I am going to be a lot more involved in the classroom once I stop having babies!

 We had a deal with Rylynn and Carter that if they stayed on green in their classes every single day for the entire school year that we would buy them a $20.00 present or they could just take the money.  Carter was literally counting down the days so that he could get the shelob lego set for his prize.  They both earned it and we were so proud of both of them.  Carter had this set built within hours of school being out.

 To celebrate the first night of summer, we put up the tent in the backyard and the kids had a camp out. It was a big hit.  Then the next weekend the Albrechts came to visit for memorial day so the kids got to camp out with their friends.

This is the only picture I have of our weekend for some reason.  On memorial day we had a bbq and the adults played home run derby in the back yard.  Aric may or may not have tried to cheat.  Just kidding!

 June was hot but not terrible so we made our weekly trips to the library and then stopped by the splash park.  

 The summer charts came out in full force and the kids were very excited.  It always wears off by about the third week, but those first three are quite glorious.

 Rylynn has been a total book worm this summer!  She has already blown through over 20 chapter books along with tons of other short stories that she reads to Beckett.

 There is a little carousel next to the library too so we have gone over there for a few rides.  Beckett is a huge fan!

 Dallas got to take his first ride with sissy.  He loved it!

 He loved crawling through the little splash river too.  Yes we are the ghetto people who let our baby swim in just a swim diaper.  Who needs baby swimsuits really?

Cute Carter

 I started the canning season off with a couple batches of jam.  Summer berries are the best!

 Rylynn is back on her snaily campaign.  She loves collecting these little guys throughout the back yard.  Garrett has had to have a few talks with her about taking a creatures freedom away and how they would really prefer to not be trapped by her.  She is getting better about letting them be:)  However, this obsession dates back to when she was two so I don't think she'll be giving it up anytime soon.

 Dallas is crawling everywhere and started walking around holding on to furniture.  This is of course the stage when babies have a ton of bruises on their heads/face.  Poor guy!  He is very mobile and I fear he is going to be another early walker like Carter was.  He's so anxious to keep up with the rest of the kids.  I can't get enough of his big blue eyes!

 We have all been slightly obsessed with Mo Willem books this summer.  They are Carter's favorites to read on his own so we have pretty much checked out every single one the library has.  I love the clever humor too so it is fun to read them all together.  The best is reading them to Beckett because he gut laughs and piggie and Gerald.  

 On one of the cooler days in June (only 91 degrees;) I spoiled the kids and took them to In and Out for lunch.  It was so nice that we ate outside.  I love having my kids home for summer.

 This little guy loves having them all home too because they leave lots of little treasures on the floor for him to find and eat.

After work sometimes the kids help Daddy wash Papa's car.  They are very helpful:)  This is one of the jobs they have been doing to earn extra money.  Carter is especially into earning money this summer.  He is determined to buy every Lego Lord of the Rings set so I have had a lot of help from him!