Getting creative

So . . . having a few extra weeks of summer sounded great in the beginning. And it has been good in that I am totally not ready for school to start yet, but we are running out of things to do in this heat! Yes, there are some days that I wish we just had our own pool so we could just walk out the back door and jump in, but I know it would never be as simple as all of that and I don't think it would be worth the stress level I would have to keep an eye on the younger two constantly. However, despite the lack of pool, we have found a few things to keep us entertained, such as . . .

Aly and Lise turning the garage into a skating rink, swimming at a friends, meeting friends at McDonald's on a rainy day . . .

playing broom hockey at the church with a family in our ward (super fun!!), the girls making plaques for their rooms during their art lesson, meeting friends at the splash pad (and getting snowcones - yum!) . . .


and a 24th of July Pioneer Celebration at Lincoln Park. Besides eating and swimming, someone in our ward brought a jetski and let us have a turn. When it was Chris, Kate, and I on there it felt great to be out on the water. I could almost pretend that I was at Lake Powell for a moment, and then . . . I saw three dolphins about 10 feet away from us. It was so cool! We sat and watched them for a few minutes (until Kate got bored) - talk about neat-o skeet-o!

Other stuff we've been up to is as follows:

*Took Kate to Pensacola to figure out if she has Kidney Reflux. She has had bladder infection after bladder infection for the past 4 months, so we're trying to figure out what's going on. The results came back negative, which is good and she hasn't had one since, so hopefully it won't come back. Kate was a super trooper during the procedure, so we went to a Wendy's that they had in the hospital for lunch afterwards. This brought about Aly's quote of the week, "Ooh, Wendy's has my favorite kind of hamburgers. You know the one's that are brown, not burnt, that have been sitting around for awhile and heated back up." Yum-may.

*Aly got braces back on. She is now in (the final) Phase II of her braces. Man, she was only without braces for 7 months! Poor kid. They said this phase should only last a year though, so then she'll be done forever! Also, Aly has decided to grow out her bangs. Please notice the beautiful shwooping of the hair in the pictures.

* I've been doing back to school prep by rotating the girls clothes and looking at the school supplies list. Can you believe Aly and I now wear the same size shoe? (Have I already mentioned this?)

* Lise had me turn empty milk jugs into mega phones for the girls to play with. Cheap fun that lasted for days . . .

* Kate made an "ant swimming pool" out of the sand bucket in the backyard. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was really drowning the ants (or maybe it's just because I don't really care if the ants drown or not - I'm sick of them on my back porch!)

Here's Kylie demonstrating her awesome sipping a sippy skills (try to say that five times fast!) Now that she's walking around everywhere she is in that phase of having a constant bruise on her forehead (you can't really see it in this picture, but it's usually in the top right). She's still a cutie anyway though.

And here's a great picture of Kylie reading with her dad on the bed. Kylie always wants to be a part (in the middle) of whatever's going on. Such a social little bug.

And finally, here's a picture of me on my birthday with three of my favorite people. (Love how Kate knows how to wink.) I turned 33 this year, which is probably a good thing because with Aly so tall, people think she's 11 or 12 already- instead of 9, so I don't want to look too young, ya know. ;) One thing that made me chuckle on this birthday is how many people remembered my birthday since they have facebook to remind them. Hee, hee. Anyhoo, it was a great birthday and I got exactly what I wanted - a date with my hubby that night - yummy mexican and Captain America. And there you have it.