Sunday evening we went to Delmar Gardens for their fourth of July celebration.  My Mom, Dad and Courtney came up to go with us.  It was such a beautiful evening, we talked about how almost every year we have gone the weather has been so different.  We couldn't have picked a better night to be outside enjoying it.  We enjoyed the free hot dogs, nachos, pretzels, ice cream and snow cones.  We walked around and did some fun carnival games, jumped in the bounce houses, looked inside the firetruck and listened to the band.  The band was a lot of fun this year.  They played a good variety of music and they were really enjoyable to listen to.  My Dad loves to listen to the band, we found a seat for a while by the band so we could listen to them while we waited for the fireworks.  The fireworks are always good and go off to the music.  We love going to the celebration, it really gets us excited to celebrate the fourth of July.  We had a fun evening and we are glad my family could join us.  

 

 

Rock Climbing Party

Garrett was so excited to have a party with his friends this year.  He really wanted to do a rock climbing party.  I called around and got some pricing and found a place not to far from us for a great price.  It was in a youth activity center, we have never been there and not very many people know about it and all it has to offer.  We sent out invitation and were so happy we were able to have a good size group during the summer.   

Here is the group of boys, they were great!  Such a sweet group of boys who were all so well behaved.  Garrett invited friends from school, church and his cousin Tyler.  They all had fun together and made friends with each other quickly.  I actually never thought about it but a few boys were scared of heights.  My kids are so adventurous so that's probably why I didn't think of it.  I felt bad for one boy who was terrified and wanted nothing to do with climbing.  He almost didn't come but his mom assured him there would be other things to do.  We are glad he came and there were other things for him to participate in.  

 

Garrett went first and was so excited.  He enjoyed rock climbing so much when we were in Utah and we haven't been since.  The kids have actually never climbed on a rock wall.  Garrett needed a little help from JJ to tell him where to put his feet as he climbed.  He made it all the way to the top and rang the bell. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We let Lucy invite a friend so she had someone to play with.  She invited her friend Caroline and they had a fun time together.  Lucy and Caroline did a great job climbing and they both made it to the top several times to ring the bell.

 

 

 

 

 I was so glad there were things to keep the other boys occupied while we took turns climbing.  That was something the youth activity center had to offer.  There was foosball, air hockey and some hockey game that they all liked.  They also liked running around and playing hide, they were pretty high energy but we were able to keep them under control pretty good. At one point we took them outside to run around and play tag.  They discovered the skate park and some boys let them ride their scooters.  This gave me some anxiety big time!  I couldn't keep track of them all and now some were riding scooters in a skate park.  We didn't let that last long before doing some more running around and heading back inside.  

We kept the whole party pretty simple and laid back.  It was so nice to not have a lot of work on our end.  We picked out a cookie cake at Walmart and brought some ice cream cups, snack crackers and Gatorade for the boys.  They worked up an appetite and were ready to have some food.  Garrett was so happy during his party, such a big smile on his face!  He has grown up so much and we love his sweet disposition.  My favorite thing is his smile, it lights up his whole face!

 

 Nolan seriously thought he was just one of the boys during the party.  He had so much fun running around with them and being a big boy.  They were so great to put up with the little brother running around.  

We are so glad we were able to have a nice party for him.  It was the perfect party for Garrett and we are glad he had a nice time.  Since Tyler lives kind of far away we offered to have him spend the night so Christy didn't have to come back up and get him.  Garrett was so excited to have Tyler spend the night.  They had a blast playing together the next morning and opening up all his new toys.  We don't do sleep overs so to have a cousin come spend the night was so exciting.   

Butterfly House

 I needed to run an errand down by the butterfly house so we decided to make a stop.  It has been awhile since we have been because they no longer allow strollers in there.  It was so hard to keep track of Nolan when he was younger.  This trip was nice, I feel like he is finally old enough to not cause me to have so much stress when we go places. We enjoyed walking around and looking at all the butterflies.  There were a lot in there and they were really active.  One of the workers said it was unusual since it was overcast.  They get their energy from the sun so normally on overcast days its hard to see so many.  Nolan loved looking at all the ones and was very curious about it.  The big kids walked through pretty fast.  I will have to come back with Nolan again when school starts and spend more time there.  I'm glad we made the stop, it was good to have a little outing during the week.  We seem to get in a little rut of going to the gym, going swimming, playing outside and repeat again the next day.  

 

First day of Summer

We have had a great summer as far as weather goes.  The humidity has been low and we have only had a few really hot days.  I saw my sister post she made solar oven s'mores with her kids and we decided to copy them.  We picked a nice hot day which also happened to be the first day of summer.  We got everything ready to go early in the morning and put them out to bake.   

 While they baked we went swimming!  The water is finally starting to warm up and Nolan loved that I actually got in to swim with him.  I took him out in the deep water with the big kids and he loved it.  The kids had lots of friends from school they saw there and had so much fun swimming with all of them.  I love that the most about the neighborhood pool.  We always seem to run into friends to play and swim with.  It is like a play date that I didn't have to host or arrange.   

 About mid afternoon the sun started moving and the s'mores were in the shade.  We decided they were done baking and brought them in to eat. 

 They were messy but yummy!  Not as good as over the fire but a fun activity with the kids.

 I made them write everything up, a lot of their predictions were correct.

 

Happy Fathers Day!

We loved celebrating JJ on fathers day.  We made him a special breakfast, French toast topped with some of our fresh picked raspberries.  We got him some nice cards and had a relaxing morning before heading to church together.  The kids sang in church and Nolan made him something special in nursery. 

We went straight to my parents house from church for dinner and celebrating there.  We had a yummy dinner and Kelsey made a fruit pizza for dessert.  We brought some raspberries to put on top, it was such a pretty dessert.  My Dad opened some nice gifts from everyone.  We got him a disc golf set.  We helped him get it all put together and played a little with it.  Jordan is growing some tree's in the back of the property.  Some baby deer are eating them and so Jordan has started to shoot them with his paintball gun to scare them away.  The deer came and started to eat the trees while we were over and he had to run back there with his paint ball gun to scare them off.  We thought it was so funny and then all the kids wanted to shoot the paintball gun.  we all took turns shooting at the trees down in the woods.  It brought some good entertainment to the evening.  We had a nice visit and like always are glad we were able to get together.  We are so thankful for JJ and what a good Dad he is.  he works so hard to do so many things for our family. I know the kids adore him and feel lucky to have him.  I am so thankful for my Dad and I am glad we were able to be with him as well.  He is such an example to many and I admire him a lot.       

Kayak

Around mothers day JJ asked me what I would like to have.  I thought about it for a while and then mentioned to him I would like to have a kayak.  He laughed and then loved the idea.  I told him I wanted to have something fun to do as a family that is also relaxing and low key.  I thought it would be so nice to head over to the park and take the kayak out in the evenings.  He agreed and we shopped around and looked at a few different ones.  Just last week we bought a nice bright green kayak, we are so excited to have lots of fun with it.  We took it out Saturday night for the first time.  We need to get a roof rack on our van but we still strapped it down just fine for the short drive to the park.  

JJ says it's my kayak but it is actually something we are going to share.  We decided to make it a joint mothers day and fathers day gift for each other.  It was so fun to be out on the water, very peaceful and relaxing.  We were the only ones there other then a few people fishing. 

 

 

 Lucy and Garrett enjoyed it too, they did a good job figuring out how to paddle. 

 

 

We also got a fishing pole, we thought it would be fun to fish while you are waiting to ride in the kayak.  We didn't have any luck catching anything but they had fun.   

 

 We had a blast out at the park together.  I hope we can go often and make some good memories.  Maybe we will eventually get another kayak.  We stayed until the park ranger came through to make sure we were leaving.  The kids had fun catching fireflies while we loaded up the kayak.