School's Out!

Finally!  We finished our school year at long last and it is time for some fun in the sun!  We've been enjoying a little bit of the pool, a little bit of the park, and a little bit of everything else that we didn't have time to do during the school year.  In other words, it feels like we have been just as busy as when we have our regular school days.  What?  Ugh!  Here is a glimpse of a few things that have been going on around here:

This little guy has been learning about how to use the computer and mouse to play some Sesame Street games.  He feels like one of the big kids now!  "Mom, can I have my time?"  Meaning his computer time, of course...each of the kiddos is allowed a half hour a day and he doesn't want to be left out!

Courtney and Trey painting pictures of gardens!

This girl LOVES art!

And this kid loves to paint!  Which is great, as long as he doesn't mistake that green smoothie for green paint.  Oops!

Just cute!

Dressed up for church on Sunday!

The littles posing by my favorite plant. :)

Here's Daddy showing off his lobster glow after a day of golfing in the sun.  I totally think he looks like Glenn Beck in this picture (but much more handsome).  Who's with me?

Summer is time for lots of new and yummy salads for dinner!  This one looked so pretty in my pretty new bowl that I had to take a picture: black bean, tomato, cucumber, avocado, red onion, cilantro salad seasoned with lime juice and salt and pepper.  YUM!

I'm SO pleased that I finally found a green smoothie recipe that she actually likes!  Green Flaxy, people.  It's delicious!

Avery was away at scout camp one day, so Chase had to find another friend for target practice:

And here he is!  This guy is no easy target, either.  He's fierce with the nerf gun!

"I'm gonna get you!"

But, oops...looks like Chase won the battle after all!

It looks like Trey started pretty early in the morning messing with my phone.  He managed to disable it AND figured out how to take a screen shot.  Yup.  Sounds about right!

Sometimes we have too many things scheduled in one day.  This lovely girl was such a good sport about wearing rollers in her hair on a day we had to go to two different dentist appointments for Chase.  She was having her picture taken later in the evening so we wanted to put some curl into those locks.  She never even complained and looked adorable all day!

Oh, this poor guy!  Scarred, bruised, and broken way too many times this summer!  On the day I took this picture, he was recovering from having two teeth pulled as part of his orthodontic procedure.  He was also still healing from a banged up nose (more on that in a later blog post), and just as we got home from the dentist we managed to slam his thumb in the car door.  BOO!  Rough times for this boy!

This is how her hair turned out after wearing those rollers all day.  We don't get curls around here very much and this looked so pretty on her!

Ready to get baptism pictures taken!  She was just lovely.  I will post the pictures from that photo shoot later!

This picture was taken on a Sunday after church.  This was the first time I had EVER worn flip flops to church...and I didn't even have a decent pedicure!  But, if you look closely at my pinky toe, you will see the reason.  OUCH!  The day before I had completely crushed my toe by accidentally dropping a big cutting board on it.  Holy moly that was painful!  There was no way I could wear regular church shoes on that day!  Or for about two weeks after!

Sorry for another super grody picture of my toe.  This was taken a couple of days later.  The swelling had gone down, but you can see the bruising extended way down onto my foot.  No wonder I couldn't wear shoes for so long.  Thank goodness it is summer!

More summer fun!  Chase was able to attend his very first Youth Conference with our Stake this summer!  He had a really great time.  In this photo, he had just come home from helping with a clean-up service project at a local elementary school.  He was filthy...and happy!  That's always a good sign of a good day. :)

Another first!  This little sweetheart was able to attend her FIRST Activity Days activity on the day before her 8th birthday!  They let her sneak in before she was "official" as they went on a hike and played at a park.  She also came home filthy...and happy!  Definitely a great day of firsts!

While Chase was off at Youth Conference, I was lucky to be able to take a run with my handsome Avery.  It was a pretty morning and we did 3.5 miles together.  Avery is my math whiz, who was constantly calculating our distance and pace, and even the proper angle for leaning into wind resistance.  Ha!  Plus, we saw a giant thistle and stopped to take a picture.  Fun morning for me!

Finally, a pool day!  These handsome guys had a great time in the kiddie pool together.  Dad is always up for that wild adventure!

Coco is a pro at swimming now...she didn't really need the floaties but I suppose it helped her confidence starting out.  She LOVES the pool!

Chase!

Avery!

And finally, I got to get in the big kid pool and hang out with Trey.  Actually, it wasn't really hanging out.  It was more like having Trey as an appendage because he had such a tight grip on me.  Ha!  I love summer!