Swim Lesson and STEM

June has been a blast! I got to go to Girls Camp (!!!) this year. It was so much fun! I was a 4th-year cabin mom with a friend of mine, Marr-Rhyzle. The theme this year was Anchored in Christ and all things sea and nautical. They did an amazing Faith Walk on Monday night with meeting with Peter and then a beautiful section with a life-size picture of Christ where the girls could ponder on their thoughts about Christ. I got to be in charge of Skit Night (woot-woot) and I was SO nervous about it. Skit Night is always famous for being the best and most fun night- which is so hard to have those expectations for! We actually ended about an hour early and decided to teach the girls a dance from EFY to fill in the time. It was a blast and the girls all loved it. By the end of the week, I was really excited to see Kyle and the kids. The kept down the fort at home and just hung out.

The 19th the kids started Swim Lessons. I am happy to report- we have two swimmers!!! It has been a long journey to get these girls this far, but they are doing SO well in swim lessons. Macy is a really good doggie paddler, but I'm okay with that. If she fell into the pool she would survive. London is a pro at swimming underwater and can hold her breath for a really really long time. She still has trouble coming up for air, but with a little strength she'll get that down pretty good. Bentley has a new teacher this year and is responding really well to him. Hopefully, he's our next swimmer. This year I didn't get the kids all in the same time slot so we let Macy and London play in the baby pool while Bentley does his lesson and vice versa. We have a little water baby with Ella and I'm really hoping she stays that way. This year started taking her first steps a few days ago (YAY Ella!!) and just climbs into the baby pool and starts trying to walk around!

Macy was invited to do a STEM Garden Club this year during the summer time. They had 8 meetings in June and learned all about Gardening and what a Garden needs. She had a blast and I was glad she got to do something a little extra this summer. The last day was a meet and greet where the parents were invited to see what the kids had learned. They showed us all about the parts of plants, the different minerals plants need to go, how composting works, all about worms, how to transplant plants, and how to dehydrate fruit. At the end, we came home with lots of yummy snacks and a new flower pot. 

Last night the kids and I tagged along with Kyle and the YM and YW to the Reidheads Pond to have a little cookout and swim in the water. The pond is a little water reservoir that they use to irrigate with and it surrounded by tons of fields. It's so pretty out there and the kids had a great time. There was a little dock that London was super brave and jumped off of a few times. I'm so glad they are getting less and less scared of the water!

It's Summer Time!

This summer has already been so much fun. It is by far my favorite time of the year. Our big first adventure was chaperoning a Youth Temple Trip to the Valley. We woke up bright and early, loaded up at the church, and we arrived at the Phoenix Temple around 11:00 am to do baptisms for the dead. Afterward, we ate lunch in the parking lot and then headed over to the Gilbert Temple to do some more baptisms. We spent some time around the Temple grounds and then went over to Bass ProShop to look around. A family that used to live in Holbrook has a house in Lehi and offered up their house to crash at. They made us an amazing BBQ for dinner and it had probably the best hamburgers I've ever had, brauts, corn, and all the fixins and then we went scorpion hunting. The kids found like 1t scorpions around his place- they were so gross! The next day we hit the Mesa Temple at around 7:00 am. 

We've enjoyed so much all the perks of a small town so far this summer. The school district started the free breakfast and lunch program so the kids have enjoyed a picnic in the park almost every day, which has been so nice to not have to cook lunch! Every Wednesday the kids get a stamp to get into the pool free and on Thursdays, they get a free summer movie stamp. The Library has had a pretty good lineup of summer activities. They had a summer kick-off party that the kids really enjoyed. I'm so grateful for things to keep us busy!

A new tradition we started this year is Smore's Thursday! We've invited friends over and build a fire and roast some marshmallows. The first Thursday was Steven and Meghan and our neighbors the Jensens, then the next Thursday was just the Jensens. The kids had loved having friends over and it's nice to watch all the kids play and have fun.

Since we bought our house, I've had a "Sewing" room. It really wasn't make sense anymore since I don't really craft or sew and the room really started turning into a junk room. I decided we had the space and we needed to start using it more productively. I took a day and went through everything in the room, donated a TON of stuff, and boxed up the stuff that has just been sitting in there that we couldn't get rid of. Then we shortened the legs off of the table that was in there and made a kids room. Right now it has all the kids legos, all their art stuff, a kid table and chairs, and some bean bags for the kids to sit on to read. They love their room and use it a lot more than I thought they actually would.  

Fresh Start!

Let's be real. 4 kids is hard. Hard if you want to get everything done that you used to do when you only had 3. I have *finally* gotten Ella to take naps in her crib (it was a LONG 7 months of holding her every time she slept) and I'm getting the hang of 4 kids. Ella is almost a year so I'm taking that as a win, it's the little things right? One of the things that has gotten push to the back burner since Little Ella has joined our family is obviously our blog. Which makes me so sad, because our blog is really what as turned into our Family History and journaling for me. With Kyle off for the summer and Bentley going into Kindergarten- (I KNOW, CRAZY!!) I'm going to do a fresh start and try to get back into blogging on a regular basis. I'm going to do one long post to catch up on the highlights of the past 5 months and then join right into what's going on in our lives right now.

February was filled with quiet family time, Bentley killin' it at Legos, the Jr. High musical "Peter Pan", taking the big kids to Matilda, Ice Skating, and just livin' life. It was a good one.

In March we had our Choir Tour. The kiddos went to Buckeye to hang out with my parents and Kyle and I took 70 people to Universal Studios (Harry Potter World!!), Disneyland, California Adventure, and Finding Neverland the Musical. Disneyland was packed, the food was fabulous, and the kids did great for my mom. I also got called to be our Ward Primary President.

May was nice and jammed pack with a dance recital (Bentley and London is so good! Macy decided she wanted to do dance again next year. She took this year off and started piano lessons.), choir concerts, Kindergarten transition day (I'm still in denial), London promoting to 1st grade, Father and Sons camping trip (Bentley's highlight of the year), the last day of school and the start of one fun-filled summer!