Raspberry Picking

Saturday morning I took the kids to pick raspberries.  We missed strawberries this year, it was so busy and we were sad we couldn't make it over.  JJ loves raspberries and we thought he would love some fresh picked berries for fathers day.  Nolan was so cute picking the raspberries, he ate so many!  The kids did a great job picking and I thought to myself how pleasant it was to take the kids.  They were all pretty independent on our outing and it was enjoyable.  We decided to pick a small amount of the black raspberries, they were good too.    

 

Six Flags

Lucy and Garrett earned tickets to Six Flags from a reading program at school.  This year we needed to buy a ticket for Nolan to get in.  It is crazy how expensive it gets to take your family to Six Flags for a day.  We were pricing tickets and parking out and it would cost us almost $200.  I always say they need to let the parents earn a ticket by doing some reading.  We didn't feel like a day at Six Flags was worth spending that much money on.  I was talking to my mom about it and a friend at the gym.  My friend told me that it was bring a friend for free days coming up for season pass holders.  Jordan and Jenny both have season passes so we talked to them about maybe taking us with them.  They were more then happy to take us and also let us use one of their passes to park for free.  That way we would only need to buy one tickets.  This made the day way more doable.  We meet up with them Friday afternoon, Jenny gets off early and JJ was off as well.  We got to the park about 3 PM and ended being able to use a 1/2 off ticket coupon so everything only cost us $25.  Crazy that we went and only spent so little.  We were so appreciative for them taking us!   

 

 

 

We were able to ride a few rides with Jordan and Jenny, which the kids loved.  They were so excited to spend time with them.  After riding a few rides a small storm moved through with some thunder.  It closed all the rides down until the storm moved through.  Jordan and Jenny needed to head home for the evening and we took the opportunity to go eat something at the car.  We packed dinner with us and it worked good to go eat and not miss anything.  While we were eating the rides started up again.  When we got back inside the park it wasn't busy at all, the wait times to get on rides were either really short or had no line at all. 

 We all rode the American Thunder ride a couple of times, there wasn't any line and its one of our favorites.  It will be so nice when Nolan is tall enough and old enough to ride all the rides.  We usually just swap places and take turns riding which works fine.

 

 

 We love the log flume too.  Nolan and I rode it together while they others were riding a big ride.  We got soaked because someone used one of the squirt guns and it totally got us!  We also rode Thunder River.  Nolan was tall enough and it was fun to ride together as a family.  We got pretty wet on that ride too.

 JJ took Lucy and Garrett to ride some big kid rides.  Lucy was finally tall enough to ride the Batman ride.  Garrett thought he would be tall enough but was just a 1/2 inch to short.  He was okay about it, I could tell he wasn't so sure about riding it.  They also rode the superman ride, the boss and the ninja several times.  I took Nolan to the little kids area and we had a lot of fun.  I don't mind missing out on the big rides.  I enjoy being with Nolan and watching him have so much fun on the rides.  He seriously was so cute to watch!  He would wave and have the biggest smile on his face as he would pass me.  He liked the airplane ride since he could make it go up high by pulling back on the lever.    

 Lucy and Garrett rode one of the little kids rides with Nolan, they were so cute.   

We had such a fun afternoon and evening riding as many rides as we could.  The weather was beautiful and the humidity was very low.  It made such a difference to be there and not be dripping sweat.  We were also so lucky the lines were so short.  Since we weren't there very long it made it possible to ride a bunch of rides quickly.  I'm glad it worked out to be able to go and we were so thankful we didn't have to spend a ton of money.

Garrett 8 Years Old

 

Garrett has certainly gotten taller this past year but is still very much the same.  He has many of the same interest's and enjoys doing the same things.  Since he got his tablet at Christmas he enjoys playing games and reading books on there.  He enjoys "cool math games" and "ninjago".  He just started playing the ninjago game and he really likes it.  He loves to do push ups and pull ups and loves to talk about how strong he is.  He enjoys playing the piano and his sport his likes to play is soccer.  He is still sweet and sensitive but doesn't seem to be as emotional about things.   

 

Favorite food: ice cream cake and spaghetti and meatballs   

Favorite thing to do as a family: play outside 

What are you looking forward to: vacation to Holiday World

What is your favorite outfit: the blue outfit

What is your favorite thing to play: wii star wars

Favorite TV show/movie: ninjago and Diary of the wimpy kids

Favorite game to play: blockus

Favorite animal: great white shark

Favorite song: gangam style

Favorite book: Diary of the Wimpy kids

Favorite thing to play outside: America ninja warrior, where he tried to get one from side of the swingset to the other without touching the ground 

Favorite breakfast food: pancakes

Favorite Holiday: Christmas

Favorite thing to sleep with: His dog Stanley, he loves his new queen size bed

 

Garrett age 8:

height 52 1/4 inches (75%)

weight: 65lbs 2 oz. (75%)

 

Daddy/Daughter Activity

For activity day's they had a daddy/daughter activity.  Lucy was so excited to go with JJ and he was excited to go with her.  They had fun games planned to do together.  They had a trivia game, they wrote each other notes about what they liked about each other and they played a relay game which included JJ painting her fingernails.  The leaders did a great job putting together a great activity.  

Swimming Lessons

We signed all three kids up for swimming lessons this summer.  It was so nice to know that they would all be able to participate.  We did the evening session again so JJ would be able to come be there too. 

 This is Nolan's first time taking swimming lessons.  We talked about it during the day and he was so excited.  I explained to him that he would sit on the side of the pool during lessons until it was his turn to work with the teacher.  He seemed to understand when we talked about it but during lessons this was challenging for him.  He really wanted to swim all the time and kept going over to the steps and trying to get in.  He was a little resistant to putting his head back in the water and putting his face in.  Hopefully with time and some practice at our pool he will make good progress this summer.

 I put Garrett in the intermediate class again.  He does well swimming and after watching him swim at our pool I decided he needed to move up.  He is a better swimmer then he thinks he is.  I talked with the director and she agreed we needed to move him up.  I could see on his face he was unsure about the move.  He struggled at first keeping up with what everyone else was doing.  It was really frustrating for him.  Just like everyone it is hard to learn something new and hard to be uncomfortable.  At one point he went over to the side and got out crying.  JJ went over and gave him a little pep talk along with his teacher.  He needed to know that we were keeping him in this class.  The point of swimming was to learn new skills and he wouldn't be able to do that in the other class.  We told him it was okay to take breaks as they swam the length of the pool and he didn't have to do everything perfect, just try his hardest.  He improved and did better even by the end of class.  He is in the same class as Lucy.  This is her second year in this class and most likely her last year of swimming lessons.  She is a strong swimmer and her teachers asked us if we had considered putting her in swim team.  We laughed because we have talked about it.  It is a big time commitment and we aren't sure we are ready for that.  Maybe next year we will give it some more thought.  We are looking forward to watching the kids learn some great things this summer.    

Indian Camp Creek

Monday we meet our friends the Quinney's at Indian Camp Creek.  I had been thinking about going and she invited us to join them, it was perfect.  We had so much fun playing in the water and keeping cool.  Lucy and Garrett were so excited that they were able to catch so many crawfish.  Usually they need JJ to help them and they did awesome on their own.  Nolan continues to think he is a big kid and wanted to keep up with them and catch things too.  I love coming to play in the creek, it lets them explore and be kids.  Our kids have so much fun with the Quinney's, they are such sweet kids.  We stayed until about lunch time and then headed home.  After I got Nolan down for a nap we traded kids and Garrett went to their house to play and Ella came to ours.  It was a fun day for the kids.   

 

 

 

Bike Ride

Lucy and Garrett both outgrew their bikes this year.  We looked for a long time to find some nice quality used biked to buy for them.  We feel like we lucked out with each bike.  They are both so excited to have new bikes and can fit much better on these.  We love to ride bikes but the kids especially do.  They ride their bikes everyday out in the street.  Sunday evening we went on a family bike ride down on our neighborhood trail.  We attached the little tandem bike behind JJ for Nolan to ride.  He is still a little small but he really enjoyed it.  He did a good job trying to pedal and he held on the whole time.  I think we are past the bike trailer stage for him.  He enjoys participating to much to just ride along.  We had a fun time riding together on the trail, we were glad to see they re-opened the back half of it.     

Zoo

This past week the weather has been perfect.  Mid 80's and very low humidity.  If only the whole summer could be like this, it would be heaven.  We cleared our schedules Friday so we could go do something fun together as a family.  We decided to go to the zoo, we have a membership that we should use more often.  We asked each kid what they wanted to see and tried to make it happen.  Nolan really wanted to see the tiger but it wasn't out.  We did see a lot of the other cats.

Train rides are a must, we love them and love seeing lots of animals as we ride along. 

 

We saw the polar bear relaxing in the water.  He was half in the water and half resting on the rocks. 

I stopped with Nolan to see the pelicans, he recognized them from Nemo.  The birds all came over to him and got really close.  It was funny and he hurried to back away from the fence. 

Lucy and I went ahead to get seat for the sea lion show and JJ took he boys to the reptile house quickly to see some snakes. 

I was sitting with Lucy at the sea lion show waiting for it to start and looked over at her and noticed how grown up she looks!  She looked so cute with her hair pulled back and a cute non-athletic shirt on.  She loves this little bag, she wears it just incase she wants to take her sunglasses off and put them in her bag.  She also wears it a lot when she rides her bike so she can put her ipod in it.

The sea lion show was cute, it was a new one.  Nolan of course tried to leave half way through the show.  He did like seeing the sea lions up close.  We all like when they jump off the big rocks or go down the waterslide.

 

After the show its fun to get a better look at the sea lion in the water.  The kids had some good questions for the trainer. 

 

 

 Lucy and Garrett really wanted to do the sting ray and shark exhibit.  It cost extra and isn't included in our membership.  We let them do it and they were so excited.  JJ took the kids in.  I don't care to touch them and didn't want to pay to just be in there.  I found a nice place to sit in the shade.  They were able to touch lots of sting rays and little sharks and had a great time.  It was hard for Nolan to reach all the way down to touch them.  I'm glad they did it, Lucy and Garrett both say it was the best part of the whole day.  

We had a fun time together and were able to see and do a lot while we were at the zoo.  Every time I go I always think I need to go more often.