Last bits of summer

Lots of movie theaters do summer deals where they play a kids movie and charge like $2 to get in. This particular theater has cheap concessions too! So I took the kids to two movies and Sean took them to one. Rowan Baker joined us for one of them. 

Our garden grew and grew!

Lizzie and Brett made a Hershey water park for their stuffed animals. 

Lizzie let me try a bubble braid. We both love the way it looks, but she doesn't like that its not easy to take out. 

While cleaning the basement, I noticed something was in my hanging star above my sewing machine. 

Naturally there were legos in there, not sure how long they have been there. 

Alana and Lizzie signed up to do horse camp again this summer. They love it so much and adore getting to spend time on a farm with horses. 

We set up the kiddie pool and the kids had fun, but they are more skeptical of it this year. They are getting older and its not as fun as it used to be. They did eventually figure out that if they put it under the swings and filled it up with water they could swing and kinda swim at the same time. 

Lizzie has been requesting to go to the aquarium for a long time. We finally bit the bullet and bought tickets. We invited Mimi who was watching Xander and Lucy that day to come. It was a fun outing, although Xander and Lucy were pretty tired. 

Lizzie helped Sean and I clean the church one day. 

I have wanted to do this gallery wall going down to my basement for years. I finally found all the pictures I wanted and then I convinced myself to spend the money when I got a few small checks for sewing this summer. 

I am so happy with how it turned out and I LOVE seeing so much love every time I walk past. 

Sean is sharing his office with a new doctor at the clinic and had to rearrange things a bit. He is happy to share since her really only eats lunch in there and the rent is super high on the office. Its nice to split it with someone else! 

Brian got Sean this cool musical note dragon and it looks awesome!

We bought a hair cutting kit to cut Oreo's hair and it works pretty great! It cost about as much as one trip to the groomer so it will be a relief to not spend 100+ every two months. 

Oreo loves his toys and it never stops being cute when he snuggles to them while he naps. 

Another angle of our picture wall coming up from the basement. 

Alana let me do a bubble pony tail on her and I loved it! She didn't like the way it looked though so we took it out =( 

I took the kids to arctic circle one day for some ice cream and was planning to let them play on the indoor playground. They were all way too big for it and I felt a bit sheepish that I missed the boat on buying them ice cream and letting them play. We still enjoyed our ice cream and the kids had fun without a playground. 

Alana and Lizzie had orthodontic consultations and he recommended Alana get braces right away. We decided to go ahead and do it before school started. When Brett got his last December they had to take a mold of his mouth with plaster. But for Alana they had a new machine that they just run across her teeth and it takes like 1000 pictures a second and creates a digital mold of her mouth. It was really cool!

My friend Trish invited me to go see The Sound of Music at Sundance's outdoor theater. We went up and had a nice dinner and then it started to pour on us. We were soaked and decided to come home. 

Brett has been teaching himself to play the flute this summer and is amazing at it! I am so impressed with his desire and willingness to jump in a learn. 

Tricia also invited us to do the Temple to Temple 5K. Our kids were great sports about it, but it was a little long for them. I really enjoyed the symbolism of walking from one temple to another on the 24th of July. I think the Pioneers would be amazed and so happy to see how many Temples there are in the Salt Lake area. Their sacrifices are so appreciated! 

Oreo likes enclosed spaces. One of his favorites is the toilet closet in our bathroom. He snuggles there daily. 

I love that one of the kids chores in the summer is to read for 20 min. They don't always love it, but its good for them! 

Sean's MA Zoe got a new puppy and was sending me pictures, so I had to take one of Oreo to send back. 

I laminated so many things!

Kiwi is a great beardie!

We got Brett an iphone with him starting middle school. He wasn't convinced he needed it at first, but I really felt like it was a good thing. He has enjoyed it a lot. And I have felt better about giving him more independence. 

One item on the kids bucket list was a lemonade stand. We did it one morning and only had 1 family of customers. It was too hot and in the middle of the day. I need to remember to do evenings. 

We went to the butterfly biosphere with Kaden and Lexi. 

This was a summer of s'mores! We made them so much at our house and at Grandma and Grandpa's

My name went up on the school website! 

Alana felt a lot of anxiety about getting her braces on. She was so so worried about the pain and about how they would change the way she looked. We ended up postponing about a week so we could be in a room with happy gas. She felt more in control knowing she had the happy gas to calm her nerves. It was such a quick process. They got the expander right in and then put the brackets on so fast. It was night and day different from Brett's. I was so glad for her! And she looks so cute! 

Im writing this in September and its amazing how much her mouth has already changed. The second day she was in a lot of pain and hated having the key turned on the expander. She said she wanted the braces out of her mouth. I told her it was only going to get better and luckily that has been the case. The other major hiccup we had was that her medicine kept getting stuck in her expander. Then she would get the taste stuck in her mouth. After many distressing situations and tears, I felt inspired to have her stick bread to the roof of her mouth so the medicine wouldn't get stuck. I am so grateful to have a Heavenly Father care so much about the little intricacies of our lives.  

We had more storms this summer than we have in a long time. There is a spot in our neighbors yard that doesn't drain so one night in the storm he was out there trying to poke the water bubble. 

Here's my classroom. I started to meet up with Shulamith (my teaching room mate) and we started making progress on our room. She is the absolute best and I know that Heavenly Father put us together to teach. 

I brought the kids with me a few times and don't let this picture fool you. They argued and fought until I took them home. 

Brett was pretending to be a sassy teenage girl one night =) 

We went on one last hike before my contract days started and it was so beautiful! Bear accidentally came with us so he had to stay in the car while we went on our hike.