June 2012

Here's a photo journal of the month of June, in no particular order:

We took a trip to the zoo on a (very) rainy day. Here we are seeking shelter to eat lunch in the chimpanzee house. We really got drenched.

I found this pool at BigLots for $20! Best 20 I've ever spent! Nothing beats swimming and watermelon.

Elaine finally started drawing real things instead of just scribbling. I knew she had it in her, but she did not like the prospect of receiving criticism from her older sister.

We built the fort of all forts. It was awesome. My favorite feature (from my own childhood forts) is the mini trampoline "window," where you can see out but noone can see in. The girls thought it was for sure magic!

Sally is my biggest goofball. I told her to hop up on the couch for a picture; she decided to put her feet on the girls' heads just to be goofy.

We ate lots of kale chips.

We shared our back porch with a huge toad. Huge.

We swam some more.

And played in the sprinklers.

We celebrated Father's Day, and this, sadly, is our only picture of it. The girls gave Mike some new pens for school. They love their dad, and so do I.

Sal watched some golf with Dad.

Mariah did a lot of drawing. She seriously produces over 10 drawings a day for sure. In this one, a dinosaur is chasing the princesses (and the prince on his giraffe) as their parents, the king and queen look on from their distant castle. And a fairy flies nearby. I love the scared faces and the way she makes her animals run.

M and E made canopy beds "like Fancy Nancy." Mariah showed me how she was going to climb into bed, behind the blanket and under the stool. I didn't want to break it to her that her canopy was not going to hold up, so I asked her if she wanted me to help her build a bigger canopy to cover more of her bed. I'm bummed we didn't get pictures of the canopies I helped them build, using curtain rods, baseball bats, blankets, and ribbons. They slept under them for a few days.

We had (and continue to have) a spider infestation. Oklahoma has a lot of bugs, and it seems all of the black widows like our house. (This guy's obviously not a black widow. He's the size of a small mouse. His eye is big enough to reflect the camera flash. But we have killed over 20 black widows around our house.) Does anyone who knows spiders know if the one in the picture is a brown recluse (fiddle back)? I want to know how worried I should be that he might still be lurking in our garage?

We sent letters to Uncle Chad in Afghanistan (or "Africanistan" as Elaine calls it).

And letters to Uncle Victor, on a mission in Argentina.

And we learned the 6th Article of Faith for primary. Elaine was assigned to give it one Sunday. She learned the whole thing and did it in front of the primary by herself.

Motherhood Sometimes

A few days ago, the girls were chasing each other through the house, and then Elaine slammed the playroom door right on Sally's face, almost catching her little arm. I hate it when they chase each other; someone almost always ends up hurt. We just don't have the space for indoor tag. I hate it even more when they slam doors. Scares me to death that someone's going to lose a finger.

Well, I had appartently reached my patience threshold, and the slammed door threw me over the edge. I lost it and screamed (seriously. my throat hurt afterwards.) at Elaine, "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SLAM DOORS!!!!" Of course, I immediately regretted my behavior and apologized to Elaine, who was crying.

At dinner that night, I said the blessing on the food and decided to use my awful behavior as a teaching moment. I let the girls hear me ask Heavenly Father to forgive me for yelling at them. After the prayer, Mariah said when I was screaming, she didn't want to cry, so she held it in. Apparently, she was really affected, because a couple days later, she produced this and gave it to Elaine. Don't I look attractive? Message received. Thank you, Mariah.

4th of July 2012

We had a great 4th of July this year. The day was packed with fun stuff, but it somehow felt very relaxed as well. We didn't plan anything really until last minute, which in days past would have stressed me out, but just going with the flow really made for a fun, relaxed day.

A few days before the 4th, Mariah started decorating. My kids know if they want anything holiday-ish, they probably need to do it themselves.

We decided to venture out to the city Libery Festival. We were a little hesitant with our girls to head into unknown levels of noise, crowds, chaos, and excitement. We were so glad we did it! The activities were very kid oriented, and the girls loved it! I was sad this was our last opportunity to celebrate the 4th in Oklahoma.

We watched a couple minutes of the kids' parade, but then realized we were in perfect position to jump in line for the horse rides that were just starting. Perfect timing. The line formed quickly behind us, but we only had to wait for 2 groups (about 3 minutes each). Elaine and Mariah, who have both ridden full-sized horses, were pros. Sally was pretty nervous at first; I asked her if she wanted to be done. She said no, she just needed to hold onto my arm.

When the girls were done riding, they got to pet some rabbits and a chicken. Again with only a 5 minute wait in line.

Mike stood in line for face painting while the girls made necklaces at a neighboring table. They finished the necklaces just as it was their turn for face painting.

We watched some of the United Freestyle Stunt Team Show--a couple of guys doing tricks and stunts on bikes. Pretty fun.

As we were watching the bike show, we saw this little train go by. It was empty, so we decided to follow it and see if they were giving rides. We were the second ones there, and the driver said to wait 5 minutes. We really were blessed with perfect timing all day.

Both Mike and I (and the other parents) were expecting the train to just go in circles in this little parking lot. We were all shocked when the driver just kept on going and disappeared around the corner. We had no idea the planned route or how long the ride was supposed to last. Mike and I laughed, hoped our kids were not screaming their heads off, and walked around for about 10 minutes. A nice break. And the kids were returned safe and happy.

Next stop was this shady pavilion for lunch of melons, cherries, banana bread, cucumbers, tomatoes, hummus, triscuits, and cheez sauce.

We had the girls take late naps in case we decided to watch fireworks that night. After naps, while I fixed dinner of beanburgers and corn on the cob, Mike played in the pool with the girls. Quite possibly the highlight of the day!

Fireworks of any kind are illegal in our city, so we headed over to our friends' house in a neighboring city to use their street. They were out of town and said go for it. Their street dead-ends to the city park, and we couldn't have asked (or paid) for a better location.

We were a little embarrassed when we realized the fireworks I bought at Sams' Club were not even fireworks, but confetti candles. We discovered this only after Mike tried to light a couple, and the "fuses" just burned out. They were the kind you just hold and pull the string, and a bunch of confetti flies out with a loud pop. Ha ha.

Eating ice-cream sandwiches and waiting for the show.

Good thing we hadn't yet filled our bucket with water to douse all our fireworks!

Before we realized how dangerous confetti candles can be, we let Mariah do a few. She ended up getting a pretty good burn on her finger (which would not have happened at all with real fireworks because she would not have gone anywhere near them!) Thank goodness we had ice for our ice-cream sandwiches.

Throwing snap-pops.

At 9:00, we heard a bunch of fireworks go off near the park. We decided to venture over and see what we could see. I have no idea why we were the only ones in the entire west end of the park, but we had a completely awesome, unobstructed view of the show, which (apparently) was everyone else in the city somehow knowing to meet at the east side of the park at 9:00 to set off every kind of firework imagineable. We stayed for almost an hour, eating popcorn and enjoying our private show. No idea how long it went, but it was still going strong when we left. Never seen anything like it.

Here are a couple videos Mike took of the show.