Summer Happenings

Can I just say that I love summer?!  I know some people dread summer and their kids being home every day instead of at school, but I look forward to it all year and dread them going back.  I love love summer and making our own schedule and planning loads of fun things to do and vacations to go on and playing in the sun and the water.  I love getting up every day and rewarding the kids finished chores with the fun activity of their choosing.  I love the long days and that the sun stays out and the kids get to stay up late and sleep in for them (till like 7:30am).  I love all the neighborhood kids running back and forth all day long every day and filling our little street with bikes.  Ok enough of the Ode to Summer.  Here’s how we have spent our summer days…

We’ve spent a lot of days at a splash pad sometimes bringing neighbor friends with.

I took the kids to the summerfest carnival all by my lonesome this year.  Liv insisted on riding some big kid rides which gave my little heart a panic watching her spin high in the air.  Despite the grin on this girls’ face at me giving in I think it scared her a bit too.  

I got forced into some big kid spinning rides which I wasn’t prepared for  because the boys could only go on them with an adult.  I spent the rest of the carnival soooo nauseous and sick.  I couldn’t bear to watch them go on all the kiddie rides which inevitably only seem to go in circles.  Once the tickets were finally gone we went home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed trying to get the world to stop spinning and my stomach to settle down.  Every time we passed the park where the carnival was it brought back that nauseating feeling for weeks after.

The kids participated in the free 1K at the end of the Utah Valley Marathon.  Camden cried the majority of the run because right when they blew the horn to start he announced that he had to go potty, and I told him he would just have to wait till the end of the race.  So he ran next to me holding my hand crying, “I have to go potty!  I have to go potty!”  Liv ran ahead of me and the boys which we had told her was fine and that Dad would find her at the finish; however, when the boys and I crossed the finish line, we found Derek and he asked us where Liv was.  I guess he had missed her.  It gave us a small panic trying to locate her in the mobs of people.  She didn’t even realize she was lost and just followed everyone to where she was supposed pick up her medal and cow bell and creamies.  We found her shortly after we had grabbed all those things for the boys and she happily displayed all her free race loot.  They were all thrilled to get their medals and the free creamies. 

They also had bounce houses blown up at the city center that they had a lot of fun on after the race.

Babi and Papou stopped by when they drove their second car out from Chicago to their new house in St. George.  They watched the kids for me a couple days when I had to work.  We fired up the fire pit one night with them and made s’mores.  We’ve actually done the fire pit thing a few times this summer.

This picture was actually taken at the family gathering for Keara’s birthday.  I just thought Camden looked so cute all wrapped up in this blanket and laying on their couch decorative pillow.

 

We met the Gillespie’s, whom we hadn’t seen in years, with a bunch of Derek’s old high school buddies at an Owls game one night.  It just so happened that Keara had planned to spend the night with us that night, so she got to come along too.  I was a little nervous about how the kids would do, but they had a fun play ground and a bucking bull ride the kids all took a turn on and our seats were in the grass field behind the field and the kids spent the majority of the game dancing and rolling down the hill.  After the game they happened to have fireworks the night we went.  The let us all onto the field to watch as they shot fireworks off from behind the field.  

Derek and I were slightly appalled that we had to pay $15 for parking near the field, but then when we found out that the rest of the group that took the train to save on parking had to wait till well past midnight when we were already home and in bed to get on the train, we decided that was $15 well spent. 

The kids have been playing so hard, that is not uncommon for them to crash in the afternoon.

 

Despite me feeling like the kids have something constantly going this summer, occasionally Liv will complain to me that she's bored!  (Usually when she can't find any neighborhood friends home to play with).  So one day I suggested to pull out the sewing activity Grandma Nadine had given her at Christmas.  She dedicatedly sewed this stuffed cat for the next 2 days.

I really enjoyed seeing my clematis vine I planted next to our mailbox take off this year.  I got loads of comments from the neighborhood about how pretty it was.

 

We have been enjoying the bounty of our garden.  Peas:

 

And I just picked my first tomato and sliced it up for lunch last week.

One day the kids hijacked my phone to use for “family pictures” with all their stuffed animals.  True to family picture tradition they took loads of pictures.  These are the only ones I hadn’t yet erased when I decided I should really keep some to document how funny it was that they had a family photo shoot for all their stuffed animals.

The kids finished Tball season.  This was shot at their last game of the year. 

Liv actually seemed to quite like tball this year and got to be pretty attentive to catching and throwing the ball in the outfield where it was supposed to go.  Camden seemed to like tball pretty well too and Carter was definitely the one that struggled.  I would spend the majority of their teams’ time in the outfield trying to get him to get his glove on and get out of the dug out.  And then when he got there the majority of that time was spent playing in the dirt.  Better luck next year?

And lastly, this summer our poor little Londy loo earned herself surgery for a complete tear of her doggie cruciate ligament (the equivalent to our ACL).  Not even sure how she did it.  It started out with a limp that would come and go after runs or hikes, then a persistent limp that didn’t seem to bother too much, and then it got to the point where she wouldn’t even step down on her left back leg and hopped around on 3 legs, at which point I finally gave in and decided to pay for surgery for our favorite dog to get her doggie ACL repaired.  This picture was taken on her last night before the big surgery--her last free night in the backyard for a long time. 

The surgery was performed at a veterinary hospital in Cottonwood Heights by a vet who specialized in orthopedics (I didn’t even know there was such a thing).  It required me to drive her up in morning traffic and pick her up in evening traffic and then for a couple days I literally had to pick her up around the middle and balance her on her 3 good legs so she could hobble out to the bathroom.  I had to ice her multiple times a day and give her an antibiotic disguised in turkey 3 times per day and spread Neosporin over her wound.  And if that wasn’t enough, for the next 2 months she is only allowed outside on a short leash (no exceptions).  Inside the house she had no restrictions, although when we are not watching her close, she has to wear a cone so she doesn’t lick her wound site open.  She’s doing much better now about a week out from surgery and beginning to step down on her back leg.  We actually changed the route of our drive out to Reno and decided to go via St. George and leave London with Mom and George to recover for a while.