10/9/15

The Rest of July

While I was on the river retreat, the kids were spoiled rotten by their aunts, uncles and grandparents.  My mom kept my kids so I could go on the retreat.  My kids love staying at grandma's more than Christmas, so they didn't mind that I was gone.
April hosts a cousins camp every summer, and since we miss them all, she was kind enough to wait until we were in town.  The kids loved it.  It was an art theme this year, so they got to paint their own canvas art, have a chalk fight and all sorts of other fun artsy things. 



We showed up randomly at April's house one day to make her do something on her computer for us and just happened to bring some water balloons.  I'm sure she was really happy with the drop-in visitors. 
This water balloon invention is LIFE CHANGING!!!!  I'm telling you, it's amazing. Fills AND TIES 100 hundred water balloons in less than a minute.  I was skeptical at first, but it worked great.  Never again, will I fill water balloons by hand.


What a summer vacation!  Ava wouldn't leave 'Wilson', my moms cat, alone.  She's forcing it to lay by her and Madi while they pet it.
They got to spend the night at grandma and grandpa's cabin with cousins.
Which means 4-wheeler rides,
story time with grandpa,
kayaking at the reservoir,

fishing,



whittling (they gave Grant a knife and supposedly that's all he wanted to do was whittle),
exploring,
playing with fire,
getting dirty,




rummaging through other people's cool junk drawers,

 
and just having the time of their lives with family!!!  Obviously, they loved every second of it. 
My kids immediately turn into leaches when an adult gets in the water.



Spazzy-carrot eating-cat loving-princess Ava.
 
Unfortunately, it all had to come to an end sometime.  Noah had my phone on the flight home and snapped all sorts of random pictures (he changes the settings and gets some unusual pictures).
Came home to a garden full of vegetables.


While we were gone (Adam game home when I left for my river retreat), Luke came out and dug the basement for our cabin.  We all wanted to see it, so we headed to the lot to check out the progress.
Footings and big hole!  I'm going to put all our pictures of the cabin on a separate blog.  I'm going to make it private, so if you want to see our progress on the cabin, leave me your email and I'll send you an invite. 
The lake is very low due to the drought, but still plenty big to play on.

Love driving under bridges in the boat. 
 
Nala does surprisingly well in the boat.  
 Ava was in charge of the camera.  She did pretty well.  I'll spare you the 50 pictures of Nala (mainly of her bum) she took.

 We tried some bigger double skies for Noah this trip.  He was able to get up, but only for a second or two.  We need to invest in some smaller ones for him.
Noah loves to just stay in the middle of the wake and sit down, jump all sort of crazy stuff, but he hated crossing the wake.  He finally realized it wasn't so bad and then kept going back and forth the whole time. Silly boy.
 
Once Ava got up, she didn't realize I wasn't behind her anymore.  She kept looking back and seeing me get further and further away.  She was shocked she was skiing. :)

 We got Ava and Grant up on the skies.  They've gotten up before, but only for a few seconds.  This time they were able to get up and stay up for a long time.  Grant was NOT excited about trying it.  After he got up he loved it!! 
 Granty skier




 
Noah is quite the little tuber too.  I think he actually held on thru this drenching.
 We went to the Hirz Mountain overlook.   The rode is only a few miles, but it takes about 45 minutes to get there because the road is so narrow and terrible.   This tree was growing in the rocks, no dirt. Hm....
That little house on the top of the mountain was our destination.  We had to hike about 1/2 mile at the end to get to the top (Adam took the babies back to the car because they were already whining 10 steps in, and we didn't know how far it was going to be).  My adventurous Noah went with me to the top. 
 Now that I'm a mom, I'm scared to death of cliffs.  Not me, but whenever my kids are even close to them, my heart jumps out of my chest.  Noah, of course, loves to see what's over the edge so we had to keep walking to keep him away from the edge. Anyway, we made it to the top, and oh my goodness, what an incredible sight.  360 degree view of the mountain ranges and lake. 

 Even Noah kept saying, "wow, this is amazing".  He told me that when he's a dad, he wants to bring his kids up here to see this.  I love being alone with each of my kids.  They are so different and tell me things they would never say if their siblings are around.  
 These overlooks are little 'houses' that were used for people to stay and look for fires in the mountains.  I watched a documentary on it once, but can't find it now.  It was interesting.  It's usually just one person that stays there, and all day they look at the mountain ranges and report any fires.  Because the forests are so dense and inhabitable, these people could report a small fire before it got out of hand.  I know there are still quite a few functioning fire towers in use, but his one is now used as a place to stay.  You can rent out the tower to sleep in.  I bet the stars from here are unreal. 

Ava lost another tooth.

Charlotte made this awesome dragon book for Noah.  It's pretty amazing and he loves it.  We love getting snail mail.  Sorry, we're bad at sending any ourselves.  We're working on it. :/
We continued our summer weekly routine once we got back, but I didn't document everything as well.  This was one of our adventure days.  We went and played under the old Foresthill bridge.  It was a great spot. 
Shade for me under the bridge,
some tiny rapids above for the kids to 'ride' down, a deeper swimming hole for them to jump off the pylons, frogs and a few other kids to play with.  
Super busy and super fun July!!!!






4 comments:

Mary said...

I want an invitation to the cabin blog. Have a fun trip to Hawaii...looking forward to pictures of it in about three months;)

Ty * April said...

loved the pictures! Madi loved the dragon book. Your kids lead such an adventurous life. We would love an invite to the cabin blog.

mammasweet said...

It looks like you guys do nothing but vacation and ski. I wish I had your life! We miss you, but plan to see you that second week in December for a wedding. Have a great time in Hawaii.

Adam said...

Come on over, mom. You can join in our fun. Actually, Summer doesn't seem to get the camera out much for the regular stuff - working, cleaning house, whiny kids, etc. I have to look at this blog to remember all the fun we have mixed in with the normal crap.