Day 6 - Roast Marshmallows

We got together after Afton's baptism to roast marshmallows in our backyard.  The weather was just perfect.  We had some brickettes lit in terracotta pots and lots of ingredients for s'mores.  We had a few alterations from the standard graham>choco>mallow combination.  Oreo white chocolate and Andes mints were a couple of the more popular ones.  We also had some add-ons, strawberries, bananas, nutmeg and cinnamon, as well as strawberry and coconut marshmallows. It seamed to be a big hit. 

Note to self: Those pots will get hot enough to melt the table underneath the plates and hot-pad, so you might need to replace the nice unsuspecting neighbors table when this is all over.

Baptism Day

 

 

 

Afton was baptized on June 16th.  What a very special day it was for all of us.  We had so many of our friends and family there to witness this milestone in her life.  What a beautiful young girl she is.  

Day 5 - Despicable Me

We had our movie night and watched Despicable me on the wall in our basement. This is actually one of my favorite movies.

 "It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!!!" - Agnes

"Does this count as annoying?" - Agnes

"When we got adopted by a bald guy I thought this was gonna be more like Annie." - Edith

AGNES
Why are you wearing your pajamas?
VECTOR
They're not pajamas! It's my warm-up suit.
AGNES
Why do you need warming up for?
VECTOR
For doing stuff.
MARGO
What kind of stuff?
VECTOR
Super-cool stuff you wouldn't understand.
AGNES
Like sleeping?
VECTOR
They are not pajamas!!!

Young Gru: Mom, someday, I'm going to go to the moon.
Gru's Mom: I'm afraid you're too late, son. NASA isn't sending the monkeys anymore.

Gru: [reading the book he wrote] One big unicorn, strong and free, thought he was happy as he could be. Then three little kittens came around and turned his whole life upside down. They made him laugh, they made him cry. He never should have said goodbye. And now he knows he can never part from those three little kittens that changed his heart.

Vector: I'm applying for a villain loan. I go by Vector. It's a mathematical term, represented by an arrow with both direction and magnitude. Vector! That's me, because I commit crimes with both direction and magnituide. Oh yeah!



   Hopefully next Friday it will be good weather and we can do something outside.

Day 4 Feed the Ducks

 

This was Isaac's big catch of the day.

The girls enjoyed feeding the ducks.  There were a lot of ducklings as well.  So cute!

Day 3 - Visit the Splash Pad

They had fun catching real grasshoppers too.  It was a nice day, not too busy at all.  A little hidden park, just how I like it.

 

 

 

Day 2 - Visit an Archiology Site

 
We visited an archaeology site. Who knew it was so close.  What a great way to spend a couple hours.  The students who are working at the site were so good to give us a tour, and tell us all about what they have been doing this year.  I love this kind of stuff.

 
This was one of the artifacts that they found outside the entrance of one of the dwellings.  These little figures were amazing. The one looked like a bunny to me.

This is what the site looks like.  I especially like the hand vacuum! So many tools and things that they use.  The record everything!

We saw someone using these screens and it looked like a terribly dirty job to me.  They were finding lots of things though and they had some of the best on display for us to look at.  Lots of arrow heads and needle looking tools, rings probably for weighing things, jewelry and pieces of clay pots.  Some of the items they found came from trading with different groups.

This was a piece of adobe that I would have taken for a regular piece of clay so prevalent in this area.

104 Days of Summer Vacation

There's 104 days of summer vacation, then school comes around just to end it. So the annual problem of our generation is finding a good way to spend it. . . Like maybe . . . . This has been going through my mind as we enter summer full force this week. We have a list of activities that we are going to do this summer and each day we'll try to check at least one off the list. So here we go . . . Day 1 Hey kids, I know what we're going to do today. . . Horse Riding. My brother and sister-in-law have been living quite close to us this year and it's been a lot of fun getting together with them. Her family has a farm with a few horses, mostly that they use for herding cows seasonally. On Monday they took us out to their horses and let us ride. It was so much fun. I think at the end all the children rode on their own at some point, well except Bonnie, but she was in the saddle alone at one point, she loved them and hated it when it was time to leave, which was triggered by the mosquito swarms. We are so grateful for them this opportunity. What a special treat it was for all of us. My girls have been asking for weeks if we can get a pony to live in the backyard. I don't think we've heard the end of it. Going out riding sure brought back a lot of memories for me. My best friend growing up had lots of horses and in the summer we went out and rode in the hills were we lived.