Simple Summer

Our dear friends moved to Arizona almost a year ago.  They didn't want to move everything across the country so they gave us their enclosed trampoline.  To say that the kids love playing on it each morning is an understatement.  Most mornings we have to tell them to wait to play outside until at least 7:45 because it's frowned upon to be loud outside any earlier.

I took all of these pictures through the kitchen window one morning.

While we have been working through our summer bucket list, we have had so many indoor picnics I've lost count.

We had a great rainstorm that the kids loved playing in until we heard thunder.

(Sorry all the pictures are slightly blurry.  My camera lens kept fogging up.)

Ella and the horsey swing -- I could say a million things about it but I'll sum it up by saying that she loves this horse so much that she goes out to swing on the porch by herself and a half hour later when I tell her to come inside she puts up a good fight.  Yesterday afternoon I heard her crying as she was riding it.  I walked out to the porch to find out what was wrong.  She told me she got hurt.  Lo and behold she has blisters all over the bottom of her feet from riding it.  So there she was going back and forth, crying from the pain, and refusing to get off.  That is love.

P.S. I love how she sometimes holds the ropes under the handles like reins.

One of my favorite things: Ella says "Weeeeeee-haw" instead of "Yeehaw."

Simple summers are a beautiful thing, especially when you have a bajillion birthdays to celebrate in the meantime.  Some things that I have loved about this summer:

• Lily and Skyler doing morning chores and even learning how to unload the dishwasher.  This. Is. Huge.
• Going to the pool
• $1 kid movies at our local theater
• Free weekly zumba classes at our stake center
• NO HOMEWORK!!!  No weekly folders!  No reading logs!  No spelling test practices!  No fundraisers!

Birthday Treetop Adventure

I'm going to be honest.  Ben and I both had terrible birthdays this year.  But fortunately we had a treetop adventure planned.  We weighed the idea of doing a canopy tour in Charlotte a year ago for our anniversary but we thought it was too long of a drive for a 2-3 hour experience.  So when we recently found out that a similar place was just built and opened a few months ago in Raleigh, we knew we wanted to try it out.  We went to Go Ape! just 10 minutes from my parents' house.  We dropped the kiddos off with Nanni and Papa and went on our way.

When you begin they fit harnesses to you with your carabiners and pulley.  They were great at giving instruction and even had a small practice course so that they could make sure you were attaching everything correctly to the cables so you wouldn't fall to your death 30 feet up in the air.  :)  Just kidding.  Except, actually, I guess that is how it would be.

There were certain pathways that let you choose easy or extreme.  At the beginning, Ben and I were thinking, "Go extreme or go home," until, naturally, we came to a course where it was basically loose ropes with metal rings that you had to somehow get your feet into without doing splits.  Ben went for it and it took him about 5 minutes to get across a 10 foot obstacle.  After that he was exhausted.  I felt justified going the easy way afterward because I actually enjoyed the rest of the course and didn't get tired.  Poor Hubs.

Below this twisted course you can see the 4th zipline landing zone.

This tarzan swing was our favorite part of the course.  They let you free fall for about 10 feet before the harness catches you and swings you to the net.  Ben and I debated going backwards on the course and doing it again... but we were pretty sure it was against the rules to go backwards....

There were 5 sections of the course.  Each one starts with you climbing a rope ladder up a tree and ends with you descending via zipline.  This was one of them.

We are so glad we chose to do something a little different this year for our birthdays.  It was so fun.  We went early enough in the morning that we missed the worst heat and we worked in a small group of only 6 people.  We had a blast together! When we went back to my parents' I took a much needed nap and they threw us a little luau.  When my mom saw the pictures of how much fun we had she asked, "This didn't make you want to go skydiving like you used to, did it?"  And I have to admit that I've been researching prices online....  maybe next year?

When Daddy's Gone...

Out of the last 3 weeks, Ben's been gone for 2.  When he was at Scout Camp, the week went surprisingly well.  Evidence:

Ice cream cones at Nanni and Papa's!

But then this week happened, and it was, well, the opposite.  Ben was on another business trip in NYC.  In the meantime, we dealt with hand foot and mouth, and then croup -- just to rub it in.

The day after we had a million errands to run, we were driving down the street and I quickly discovered this:

I was beyond grateful that it happened on our street and that I wasn't abandoned who knows where with 4 kids.  Like old times, my dad drove over to help me out.  Somehow, this is the first time I've ever dealt with a flat tire and I seriously couldn't remember a thing he showed me about changing a tire when I had my first car.  :)  I felt like a teenager again as he showed me what to do and I did it at half his speed.  Ha!  He ran and got my tire fixed for me while I stayed home with my sleeping kids.  Ah, the perks of living close to parents.  This I have learned: parents never stop being parents. I am so grateful for that!

In the meantime, Thad became obsessed with pushing chairs and stools up to the kitchen sink so he could bang dishes together and get the sprayer and soak the wood floors.  During one dinner I sat in front of the sink to block him for 20 minutes as he hit me over and over and over again.  Then at one point, I saw him dive in head first into a sink full of dirty dishes soaking in water.  His legs were up in the air and I had to go save him.  

I have a constant prayer in my heart for this child who seems so naturally inclined to kill himself.

So the chairs had to go on the deck until I come up with something else that will keep him out of the sink.  

Then yesterday I was heading out to my parents house when I realized my wheel still wasn't 100% normal.  We turned around and slowly drove home.  Almost at the point of tears after a long week, my mom called to let me know she was coming over to play instead.  It was the best.  It saved me.

Then my dad went to the airport to pick up Ben and when the kids came down from their naps Ben got the great welcome back of, "Papa's here!!!!"

(Sorry, Hubs)

The kids spent the rest of the day with some of my favorite childhood toys.

I am happy and relieved to say that Ben won't be going out of town for another few months!  Yay for hubbies being home!

Ella the Starfish

I am fully aware that I don't look great in this picture, but you don't get to choose when your child falls asleep on you.  Ella is terrified of thunderstorms and when one hit after she was in bed she made her way downstairs with her "ee-lee" (blankie) and climbed into my lap shaking.  The storm didn't finish until around 10 PM (3 hours past her bedtime) and she was out like a light.  The maneuvering I had to do to get out of a reclined position while keeping her asleep was hysterical.

Ella doesn't like to be called by her name often.  For a while she's been going through phases where she likes to be called something else that she wants to be.  At first we could only call her "Ballerina."  Then after becoming addicted to Jake and the Neverland Pirates she would only let us call her "Pirate Ella."  Then she went through a phase where she would lie down in the shallowest part of the pool and stretch out her arms and legs and would make us call her "Starfish."  Now she's back to being a ballerina.  Although every now and then she will let me call her Gabriella and she doesn't say "Ugly Ella" anymore!  She says, "Gabbwy-ella!"  Now if I could only get her to stop calling me "Header"....

Storms

My favorite weather is hard rain, more specifically, a good thunderstorm.  It's probably because I was born and raised here.  On the day after Independence Day we were having dinner at a friend's when we decided it was time to go home.  As we were driving, this cloud sat right above us.  It was incredible to see such a view of a cloud in NC.  It started pouring like crazy the minute we got to our street.  I got drenched making the 5 foot trek from the car door to the garage.  The Holly Springs fireworks apparently had to be delayed an hour for the "natural fireworks."

We are one of the lowest houses in our neighborhood and so we have the joy of having a drainage creek in our backyard.  Every now and then we see a really good storm that overflows the walls of the creek and we may even see water all the way to our back fence (the stream is just behind the tree line).

Then one day we were hit by 4 decent thunderstorms within a 24 hour period.  The soil was so saturated and the creek already full, that when we got hit by the last storm this happened.  We have never seen anything even remotely close to this before.  We snapped this picture from Ella and Lily's window.

The water came within 10 feet of our deck.  There was so much force from the rushing water in the creek that muddy water was being shot up through our french drains.  It was a crazy storm!

On the plus side, we didn't have to water our lawn for a week!

Scout Camp and Hong Kong Treats

Last Monday at 1:45 AM, Ben left for scout camp in the mountains and was gone until Saturday.  I had been dreading this week for months.  I prayed hard to be able to handle everything at home on my own.  As it turns out, the week was fabulous.  The kids were [mostly] good and we went on our own adventures to the pool and movies.  It was the 2nd time I've ever tried taking all 4 kids to the movies by myself and I finally figured out the trick to keeping Thad still the whole time: lots and lots and lots of popcorn and candy.  

The sad part of the week was that Ben was at scout camp for his birthday.  So we didn't get to celebrate it.  No worries, we have plans for a future adventure -- just the two of us.  It is just being delayed for a while until our family gets over Hand Foot and Mouth.

All of us were excited to have Ben home.  The only downside was that I actually had to start feeling guilty about wearing sweats everyday.  :)

We received a care package all the way from Hong Kong!  Grandmum and Pop Pop sent the kids some "Dragon Beard Candy."  It was like a coconut cotton candy wrapped around peanut pop rocks and covered in sesame seeds[I may have gotten some component of that wrong] .  It was really cool!  I made the mistake of telling the kids that it was candy when I should have just told them it was food from Hong Kong.  Their expectations would have been very different.  Skyler actually ended up loving it.  Here's a video of them tasting it for the first time:

I'm really looking forward to tasting these kinds of treats in person.  The clock is ticking and we are so excited to head out there as soon as the rainy season is done.  Although I want a cultural experience, I refuse to suck a fish head and eat a 1,000 year old egg.  But if Ben so chooses, I will make a video of it for everyone's viewing pleasure.  :)

Our Interest Twist on Birthdays this Year

Heather and I joke quote often about how we have a month of birthdays and sadly it is a lie.  Our anniversary starts it on the 21st of June followed by Lily's, Mine, Heather's, Ella's, and ending with Skyler's on the 30th of July.  I would lie if I said it wasn't fun, but at the same time it can be over whelming for Heather and me.  Our primary focus is to make the kids birthdays as special as possible which sometimes means that our birthdays are kind of forgotten because we need the break.


This year was definitely not that way.  For my birthday, I was a scout camp.  We had a great time helping our scouts, but it wasn't exactly how I would choose to spend my birthday.  Thankfully I was able to call and talk to Heather and the kids for about 40 minutes.


Heather's birthday started out great.  She had a great breakfast and then thing started to go crazy!  Ella hasn't been feeling well so Heather took her into the doctor to find out that she had virus.  As the day progressed thing just kept on getting crazier and crazier.  By dinner time Heather and I decided that we definitely needed to celebrate our birthday together on another day.


So Heather and I have decided to celebrate our birthday's by going to a 3 hour long ropes coarse.  We still need to decide on the day, but we both think it will be good for us to get out and have some fun.  Hopefully we will be able to fit in lunch and make our birthdays this year as special as our kids.