My favorite sister!

Yay! My wonderful sister came to visit!! I really love when Sarah is here. She is fun to hang out with, the kids love her, and she's the BEST help. Truth be told, I'm kind of a mess right now - since having Claire, I've never been so behind on cleaning tasks, or laundry, or errands, etc - and it was a huge relief to have such a great helper around the house. She cleaned, she did dishes, she put away tons of laundry, she entertained the kids, and was an all around stellar sister. Thank you Sarah!!

In addition to working around the house, we tried to do plenty of fun stuff too... We watched LOTS of movies... mostly just old movies we have in our dvd library (like Sandlot!), and we played some games too (quirkle!). I enjoyed the downtime hanging out with my sis. We even got to have a great girls night without all the kids. Ben was working overnight on Friday at the hospital, but Grandma Dangerfield wanted to keep the kids at her house for a sleepover. So we dropped off the kiddos and went out to dinner at Joe's Grill and then explored some girly stores (Charming Charlie is so fun!). The next morning we went out to breakfast at Paradise - I think we definitely took advantage of our time away from the kids.

This past week the temps reached to 117!! AHHHH!! But I didn't want to be cooped up in the house even though it was deathly hot outside... here's some more of what we did to stay busy and cool in this crazy heat...

Reading books at the library-



Phoenix Children's Museum-

Jake up in the HUGE climber - I wish I would have gotten a picture of the whole structure from outside of it - it's really amazing. It's 3 stories tall... the girls were both quite scared to go up very high. A lot of the climber has grate-like floors, so you can see through to the levels below your feet - Emma ended up going to the top with me, as long as I held her hand through it. :)





Becca and Jake getting artsy










MacAlpines Soda and Ice Cream Shop-

Don't interrupt Emma eating sweets... haha

Becca ordered "Bears at the Beach" and she spent the first 10 minutes playing with the gummy bears and placing them carefully under the umbrella. :)

Splash Park-

We stopped for slurpies before heading to the park - Jake loves slurpies!



It was so hot outside that Sarah and I both jumped in to get wet several times - we would get mostly soaked and afterwards we'd be dry within minutes... then we would go out and get wet again. No swimsuits needed! :)

After Emma got home from school on Monday, we made thaumatropes, or "magic turners". You draw part of a scene on one side and the other part on the other side of the circle... then when you spin it, both images come together. Very simple and very fun!







Side A

Side B

Sarah did a lot of cooking while she was here - here the girls are anxiously awaiting Sarah's delicious chocolate chip cookies...


On the way to the airport for Sarah to go back home to Utah, we stopped at Yogurtology for a last minute treat (it seems we ate a lot of goodies while she was here!)...


Thanks for visiting Aunt Sarah. You are already missed!