A reprieve from the heat

Yippee!! The high today was only 87!! Seriously awesome. All the lovely rain cooled us down. Not without a touch of humidity however... as we were out and about today I could literally feel my hair frizzing up. :/ This morning we decided to go to our favorite Anthem Outlets, as I had a beloved Ann Taylor gift card to use from my lovely in-law's for my birthday. After shopping, we headed over to the "big park" as we call it and let the kids run free. This was seriously such a novelty to get to play at a park in the middle of the day in the summer - it's usually much much too hot to even consider. We had fun...




One of Jake's "things" is to sit down and hang out for a bit. He loves couches and chairs that he can just sit on and be cute for a fleeting moment. This was one of those times apparently... he decided this platform was perfect for a quick little sit.


Jake didn't like the slides today... that's an angry/sad face, if you can't tell



The kids LOVE to sit, jump, and wrestle on daddy... and ANY time he's in the lying down position, it's apparently fair game in their eyes - Becca is mid-sit in this pic ;)

This picture is courtesy of Becca's smooth photog skills

Swimming, Friends, and Some Weather

Just this week I've started to feel that summer is quickly coming to a close. It went by incredibly too fast! Drat. But I am excited about the coming school year... Emma is starting Kindergarten and Becca will be starting her first year of preschool! And I look forward to more one on one time with my Jake. :) Our end of summer activities have included one more round of swim lessons and more playdates with friends. Earlier in the week we had 3 cute friends over to play... for a busy house of 6 little ones... and honestly it didn't feel much crazier than when I just have my 3, except for when it came time for lunch and I had to completely empty my cupboard of IKEA dishes. :)



I love to see the kinds of games and activities the girls play when they have friends over... the tend to get extra creative. They decided to go on a exploration in the backyard...with binoculars...



Later in the week, we had Emma's preschool friend, TJ, and his little sister over to play. Emma loves to play with TJ... when she was in preschool this past year, she would love to come home and tell me all about her favorite friends in her class, TJ included. It makes me excited to see the new friends she'll make this next school year too. :)



We tried out another nearby splash pad this week... I can't say enough how much I love these places. There's nothing better than free activities, and I love that the kids can have a blast playing in the water and get a break from the heat... and that I don't have to worry about drowning children or even getting in the water myself at all - perfect.









Jake carried around his bag of grapes the ENTIRE time we were there... Becca kept complaining that Jake wasn't sharing. This is him telling me "These are MY grapes mom"... in Jake language of course.

Taking a little break to run through the grass



Jake makes eating grapes look super cool :)

The best part about squirt parks is when a fountain splashes up unexpectedly on a little child victim... mwahahaha... you know it must have really taken him by surprise by the fact that he actually dropped his bag of grapes



The little princess sunbathing on her princess towel

The girls finished up swim lessons this week... they both did even better than last time around... especially Becca - she was much less timid about getting her face in the water and very cooperative and playful during class. I was so pleased.





A crazy monsoon rain came through the valley on the last day of swim class (more on that in a bit), so sadly their last day was cancelled. The girls were mostly bummed because I had promised that we would go get ice cream after swim lessons on the last day. So, to keep my promise, we went out to Sonic the next day after swinging by the pool to pick up their report cards - the kids were very happy :)



Jake got ice cream too, just because he's cute... and he would have screamed relentlessly if I didn't share with him.



Between the hot summer temps intermixed with rainy days, we're starting to run out of indoor activity ideas... but surprisingly the girls keep coming up with funny things to do - for example, one day I came in their bedroom to check on them (because they had been suspiciously quiet for quite some time) and I found them like this...
they said they were pretending to be lifeguards. :)

Later they said they really wanted to paint. My usual motto is 'just say NO to kids painting'. BUT I decided to be nice this time around and let them. We had just been looking at some project ideas online for making pet rocks and such... so the girl went in the backyard and collected a bunch of rocks - we don't have any big rocks though... just the little decorative ground cover rocks for the most part... but the kids still loved to get to paint. Too bad I only had 3 colors of paint for them to use. :)









We let the rocks dry overnight and the next day the girls were in awe of their pretty rocks...

We ended up using them for treasure hunts! We took turns lining up the rocks in paths throughout the house and had them lead to "treasures" that the girls would hide at the end.

So, there has been a lot of cloud cover the past few weeks and occasional rain sprinkles, but FINALLY a good monsoon rain storm came through on Thursday. The kids enjoyed playing in it - Jake was especially fond of getting wet... I like how in the second video he gets completely soaked but decides it's still a good time to drink from his sippy cup.

Three cheers for Pioneers!

Something I really miss about living in Utah is all the Pioneer Day celebrations... and even though Pioneer Day isn't a holiday in Arizona, it still is in my heart and with my pioneer heritage. :) We had our good friends, Lindsie and Jake and their cute kids, over for dinner and dessert last night. In honor of the holiday, we also played some pioneer games with the kids - sack races and stick pulls! It resulted in lots of giggling...

Exploring our roots...

This week Ben has been doing Neurology "night float", so he goes to work all night and then is home during the day. It's been strange, because a lot of the nights Ben has gotten a lot of sleep while at the hospital (if they don't have patients that need to be seen). So, then he comes home and doesn't necessarily have to sleep during the day... this obviously poses a problem if he's then up all night busy with patients the next night, but thankfully he'll be all done with these backwards shifts by tomorrow morning. Today was great because last night he got a full night's sleep even though he was on the clock at the hospital... and a well-rested daddy is a fun daddy... so we played! I stopped by the library and got a culture pass to the Heard Museum - we were really impressed by this museum! It had a surprising amount of activities that the kids could do, and we enjoyed all the Native American exhibits. My family is part Chinook Indian so it was fun to see the section they had devoted to Pacific Northwest Native American tribes.

Some activities we did included...

Beading and weaving

Puzzles

Coloring

Pipe cleaner art

Canoeing

and Felt animal gathering



I love how Jake put the museum sticker on his forehead and then refused to remove it through most of our museum visit



My fancy new bag that Emma and Ben made for me. Aren't you jealous? I know you want one.



Ooo! See?! Chinook art!!



Ben decided that this kachina doll reminded him of Jake... maybe because of the wide head and overall hairiness

And this one reminds him of Becca... because of the pig tails :)



Jake thought that these made great boats



Emma demonstrated their proper use :)

Isn't Ben such a great daddy?! He did ALL the activities with the kids



The girls are really into "thumbs up!" lately

Ben led the girls in a leaf race down the water feature. Becca won.

While the kids and I were in Utah, Ben went with his family over the Fourth of July weekend to this really fun ice cream/soda shop in downtown Phoenix. He was all excited to take us there after we were finished up at the Heard Museum.



Can you tell the girls enjoyed their ice cream?! :)