June 2016

We've had a busy month of June.  Besides St. George and a dance recital, we've been staying busy with lots of summer activities.

We started summer off with a Lemonade stand.  The girls have been begging me to do one since we saw our neighbors doing it in April.  So I finally decided to let them have one.  They helped make the cookies and we got it all set up.  Aria was dead serious when she said 'It would be really sad if no one showed up because then we would have to eat all the cookies.'  Luckily we had lots of people show up.  They were pretty shy at first and I had to do it all but after a while they warmed up.  We had some good neighbors that were nice enough to stop by.  And even Jennifer and Kali drove over from their house for some.  We even gave some to the mailman free of charge.  All in all we made about $15.  They were so excited that I let them use some money to go buy some toys from the dollar store the next day.




One of the other things they've been asking to do is to go fishing.  So we decided to go give it a try on free fishing day in Utah.  We got some kid poles and went out to a pond in Herriman where they had some grass and a good shore to sit on.  The kids had fun for about 20 minutes throwing their line out, reeling it back in and then repeating that (maybe we should try fly fishing with them) After that they got bored and Shane and I ended up holding all the poles while they ate snacks.  Good thing we only stayed for about an hour.  And no we didn't catch anything.





We had Father's Day and/or maybe a birthday...




Lilly came over a couple times while her parents took an amazing trip to Italy, Turkey and Greece.



We started a chore chart...which has only happened twice so far...but both times the kids get so excited to clean.  They won't pick up their toys very fast but when I say let's clean, they act like I've just told them it's their birthday.  So I really should do it more, but it just takes a lot of energy to run around and help 3 kids learn to clean.  I know...it will pay off one day.



The kids have been talking about seeing Finding Dory all month.  They knew from commercials it came out on June 17th.  Well when Siena realized it was June 18th one day, she was so upset to think we had missed it.  Luckily I told her that we could still go see it next week.



We've had fun in our backyard and having 'pool' days...haha, they don't even fit in that pool anymore.  Jaron is obsessed with these sunglasses I bought him.




We made a trip up to Silver Lake and ate a picnic dinner and then walked around.  We even saw a Moose again.



And finally we took a hike one Saturday morning up to the new Draper suspension bridge.  It was so fun and the bridge moved and swayed a lot more then I thought it would.

The Codfish Ball

The girls had their 2nd year of dance and ended the year with another great recital.  This year was 'The Little Mermaid'  They got to dance to 'The Codfish Ball' and had the cutest little recital costumes.  They got to dance on stage with these huge stuffed sea animals of all different kinds.  It was a really cute dance.



The girls did a lot better then last year in that they remembered all of the dance and were so cute doing all the moves.

For the recital we drop the girls off an hour before the performance and they keep them back stage until the very end where you get in a huge line to pick them up.  While I was walking them to drop them off Siena kept saying her tummy hurt.  She was really nervous about the recital anyways, so I figured it was nerves.  So I dropped her off.  I was happy to see her on stage for the dance and when they came out for the finale she had a huge smile on her face.  Well when I got to the front of the line to pick them up I saw Aria but no Siena.  They brought Aria to me and told me as they left the finale that Siena threw up!  I felt so bad for her and for the teachers.  Siena of course was crying when she saw me.  The whole way home she kept acting like she was going to throw up but never did.  She slept all night and woke up totally fine the next morning.  Crazy night but still it was a fun night with great dancing.

Aunt Margene made them the cutest jellyfish that she gave them after the recital.  All 3 (yes she knew that Jaron would want one too) of them love their jellyfish and play with it constantly.

St. George 2016 with The Paces

As soon as school let out, Brigitte and I took the kids and went to St. George for the week.  Tyler's family has a house down there that the family all share and Brigitte thought it was a great idea to leave the husbands home to work and we take all the kids ourselves.  I wasn't sure how it was going to go and although it was a little tiring we had such a great trip.

We drove down on the Monday of Memorial Day.  So while everyone was driving into town we were just leaving.  We went at the perfect time too.  The beginning of the week was in the 90's and by the time we left it was 105.

We did A LOT of swimming.  And the best part was that the pool where the house is part of is an indoor pool.  Which means I didn't have to worry about putting on sunblock every time we went swimming.  The kids loved it and although everyone started of a little hesitant in the water, they all got braver and braver as the week went on.  Brigitte brought her 12 year old niece Maggie with her and it was so nice cuz she was so good to play and swim with all the kids.  My kids are still asking when we can invite Maggie over to come play at our house.

Each morning we tried to do a different activity. Then we would come back and give naps to those that needed it and go swimming. After dinner we watched movies, played on the back porch with chalk and water squirters, gave baths and tried to wrestle 6 kids to bed.  My girls, true to vacation form, decided to wake up early every morning.  Luckily they were pretty good to lay in my bed and watch videos on my tablet.  The first night I had them sleep in a different room together in a pull out bed.  They usually sleep fine in the same bed but this night I woke up at 4:30am to Siena screaming at Aria that she keeps touching her.  haha...although it wasn't really that funny at the time with a house full of people.  So after that they slept on the floor in my room and it worked out much better.  This picture is of Jaron so excited I let him sleep in the bed Aria and Siena were in after the first night.  He is pretending to be asleep.

One morning we went on a little hike/exploring.  We had so much fun and if it hadn't been so hot, we would've stayed there all day.  The kids all played hide and seek and had so much fun trying to find the best rock and 'cave' to hide in.

2 different mornings we went to the splash pad.  I was surprised both Jaron and Siena went to the 'big kids' part of the splash pad and were having fun one of the days.

Another morning we went to the park.  Although I kind of block this one out because Jaron rubbed sunscreen in his eye and ended up crying the entire hour we were there.  He's still traumatized and blames me for putting sunscreen in his eye.  We also went and saw the movie Zootopia.  The kids ate a ton of popcorn and I'm pretty sure my kids didn't understand the plot of the movie at all, but they liked the cute characters.

We also had dinner in the park one night followed by a carousel ride.

I also took my kids to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Goold's graves.  They loved hearing about my grandma that had red hair.

Saturday morning we packed and cleaned up and drove home.  Although my drives were pretty peaceful, poor Brigitte had cute Quinnten who does NOT like car rides and screamed almost the whole time.  Also, I apparently need to find someone a little taller to take a picture of Brigitte and I...or I need to lean down so I don't get my head cut off!

We hope to make this a yearly tradition.  Thanks Brigitte and Pace family for a great trip.  We had a blast.