Swim Lessons

Starting in May a girl in our ward started teaching swim lessons in her parents pool in their back yard.  Since soccer season was ending, and I wanted them to improve their swimming skills, I signed them up.  Olivia was already taking lessons at an indoor pool, so she had to wait until June to take lessons from Jenna.  It has been fabulous.  The kids love taking lessons with their friends, and I love that they can ride their bikes to their lessons.  It's probably about 1/2 a mile, and they do have to cross a somewhat busy street to get there, but I really like that there is something they can do independently like that and take some extra responsibility.  I think that there use to be a lot more of that 50 years ago, and it's so good for kids to have.  Any way, I'll step off that soap box now, and leave you with some pictures:

Jenna has been the best teacher my kids have ever had, and they've all improved so much.  Harrison and Noah just started the July session of lessons, and then we'll take a break, as Jenna will be having a baby the beginning of August.  I'm so glad we had the chance to take some lessons from her this summer!

Millions of Peaches

This was my first attempt at canning, so it was a learning process - I had no idea how much you really need to "stuff" the jars.  So, as you can see, some jars are holding less than their capacity...

So, there weren't quite a million, but it seemed like that many.  On labor day Sam noticed that a local farm still had you-pick peaches.  At $.60/pound, we thought it might be good to finally put some canning supplies we had laying around to good use.  I told Sam to pick about 3 apple boxes worth, thinking that would be enough to can a few batches, and have plenty for fresh eating. Well, he came home with 80 lbs worth of peaches!  Just in case you are wondering, 80 lbs of a peaches equals:

24 Quarts and 11 pints of canned peaches
15 pints of jam
6 half pints of freezer jam
2 quart bags of frozen peaches
1 batch of fruit leather (which failed...)
2 batches of baby food
1 peach crisp
and as many fresh peaches as you and your family of 6 can eat in 4 days, with more to spare!


Next time I think we'll pick a few less peaches...  Sam was a wonderful help in the kitchen with all the canning, and the kids are already enjoying them for after school snacks.

Last day of Freedom

School started on a Tuesday, so we spent Monday making some last minute preparations.  Sam was able to take some time off, and we took the kids bowling in the morning.

None of them are able to truly bowl, but they each developed their own strategy of getting the ball down the lane, and they all had a great time.

 The local bowling alley has a "Kids bowl free" program every summer, so maybe this will become a new family tradition.

Monday night, at Family Home Evening, Sam gave each of the children a Father's blessing for the coming school year.  I loved how excited they each were for their turn, and I'm confident they will each have a great year!  I am looking forward to the new schedules, some time at home with just Levi, new projects, cooler weather, and crunching leaves.  I love the fall.  The kids are excited and nervous at the same time, and it's so fun to watch them grow through these experiences.

Summer's End

Tomorrow is the first day of school.  I really can't believe how fast this summer has flown!  I think we've had a pretty great summer.  I could hardly remember what we spent our time doing last summer (besides the 2 weddings, trip to Bear Lake, and Lagoon), and wanted to make sure we had some "lazy summer day" memories this year.  I found some great ideas on Pinterest, and stocked up with a bunch of supplies at the beginning of summer, which allowed for a lot of spontaneous fun. The end of summer finale was tie-dying. We made a family bucket list at the beginning of the summer, and doing tie-dye was on it.  I thought it would be more fun to do with some friends, so we invited a few other families over and made it into a party.

I may have gotten a little carried away with the whole tie-dye theme.  The kids and I spent our days the week before the party making tie-dye cupcakes:

tie-dye ice-cream:

colored ice, for tie-dye drinks:

I was really pleased with the shirts the kids made too.

We had a bunch of left over dye, so Saturday the fun continued with a family tie-dye party.  Sam was able to get some photos of the dying process, which didn't happen during the party.  Helping 20 kids dye shirts keeps you pretty busy for quite a while, and photos were pretty much impossible.

Noah was so excited to tie-dye some underwear.  He wore the proudly yesterday.

I dyed Olivia's shirt at the party, but on Saturday, she wanted to do it all herself.

I looked through the list we made a the beginning of the summer, and was happy with how many things we did.  I wasn't good about getting photos of much, but I think that's because I was too busy being involved.  Sometimes I get so caught up documenting what's going on, I don't actually live in the moment. This summer I lived in the moment a lot more, but have hardly any photos from the fun. But here's a list of a few of the things we did:

had a water balloon fight
mixed up homemade (lavender scented!) playdough, and did lots of sculpting
ran through the sprinklers
finger painted
read (Harrison's got a huge list of AR tests to take when he gets back to school.)
went to several splash pads/playgrounds and had picnic lunches
had several backyard bbq's with strawberry and Brazilian lemonade
made muddy buddies
went to "Chimpanzee" and "How to Train Your Dragon" at the free summer movies
did the diet coke and mentos explosion
checked out books & movies, did crafts, and watched a movie at the library
ate at the farmer's market
made sculptures with toothpicks and marshmallows
played in the sandbox
squished home-made flubber
painted the sidewalk with water
made taffy
dressed-up
collected and painted pet rocks
drank smoothies (every morning!)
strung fruity cherrio necklaces
picked fresh cherries, peaches and nectarines
turned shoe boxes into dioramas
catapulted marshmallows
created mini bows and arrows with q-tips and popsicle sticks
caught bugs
cooked up colored/flavored rock candy
played with tin-can telephones
TIE-DYED!  (We've decided that the last Friday every summer is going to be a tie-dye party!)

Now that school is starting, I have mixed feelings.  I'm ready to have some more time to myself (to do things like update this blog!), and I do love having a schedule to rely on, but I will miss these kids.  Noah will start 1st grade, which means most of his waking hours will be spent at school.  Noah and Olivia have been playing house together for hours each day, which often means messes created all over, but I'm going to be missing those messes in a couple weeks.

Bear Lake

We had another amazing family reunion weekend at Bear Lake.  We spent the days boating, splashing and digging.  This is becoming a great family tradition, and such a fun way to spend time with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma and grandpa!

Levi was a champion napper - he took great naps in the tent my dad set up, and hardly fussed at all while we were at the beach.  

2012 Backyard Garden

A few weeks before Levi was born, I was looking out the back window of the house at the garden boxes Sam had put in the fall before, and I worried that with a newborn on the way, they would remain bare this growing season. I had a bag of seeds, and all kinds of little starter planters I had hoped to do, but hadn't had the time or energy.  But I decided I should at least try - so I skipped the starter kits, and just took my bag of seeds right to the boxes.  I planted peas, carrots, beets, kale, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and radishes, and tried to keep it wet for a few weeks, even though the irrigation water and sprinklers weren't on yet.  Part of me thought it wasn't really going to grow at all.  I had been spending all my time and energy on growing Levi, and it seemed like the seeds were taking forever to germinate. Box by box, little tiny green plants began to emerge.  It's been a few years since we had a garden, and I had forgotten how much I love watching the little plants emerge and grow.

 By the time Levi was born, the radishes were ready for harvesting. And the peas were starting to need a trellis to grow on.  A few weeks later, the spinach and kale were big enough for harvesting baby greens for my smoothies.  And the past few weeks we've been enjoying more peas than we can possibly eat.

Our peas got even taller than this  - I think they were close to 6 feet tall.  

 Spending summer evenings out in the backyard eating straight out of the garden is one of my favorite family activities.  I love watching the kids pick and eat as they play.

The other night Noah again complained of being starving right before bed, but proclaimed kale would quell his hunger.  So, out to the garden he went, where he picked and ate several kale leaves, and said he was satisfied.  I welcome a kale snack at bedtime any day!  The pea plants, spinach, and broccoli all got pulled today (it's getting too hot for them) and we've since added onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and we're trying to get watermelon to grow (our plants keep dying for some reason?) When we went to the farmers market last week, I didn't feel the need to buy any of their produce, because we were either growing it ourselves, or we could go pick it ourselves for much cheaper.

Cherry Picking

We headed out to Ray French Orchard again this year - this time to pick Benton Cherries, which apparently ripen earlier than the Rainier.  The trees were bursting with ripe cherries on this, the first day of picking.

The kids had a blast picking the cherries - Olivia ate most of what she picked, and ended up making a huge mess out of herself, as she was using her fingers to pick the pit out before she ate them.

Noah really LOVED this, and it was hard to get him to stop picking.

He's usually the one that asks me over and over why we are doing an outing, and when it's going to be over, and if we can go home every other minute.  But for cherry picking, he kept exclaiming how much fun he was having, and how he didn't ever want to leave.

Harrison was running around trying to make sure everyone was picking the best, most ripe cherries.  Here's him explaining what you should (left side) and should not (right side) pick.

Levi spent the whole outing asleep in the bjorn.

 Some of my fondest childhood memories involved picking fruits and vegetables with my family, so I'm glad we are able to enjoy that with our family too.