savoring the last drops of summertime!

By the time we get to the end of August every year, my mood changes every hour between these two extremes: 1-Oh no! Summer is almost over, we have so much we have to do before school starts.  I never want summer to end!  I'm going to miss you kids all so much when you go back to school, and 2-That's it!  I can't take another minute!  Can school please start right NOW!  I need some peace and quiet, I need my house to stay clean for more than 30 seconds, and I'm tired of doing fun things.  This August was no exception.  Multiple times a day I switched from one extreme mood to the other.  Luckily, (or unluckily) I have little to no say when summer ends and school starts, so we just try to make the most of each day (or not!)

 The end of August we were excited to experience the solar eclipse.  I  so wish we would have lived closer to an area that got to experience totality, but seeing a little bit of the eclipse was still pretty cool!

 I'm still not sure I understand how the eclipse changed the shape of the holes in the shadow of my colander, but it was fun to keep looking at it and watching how it changed.

 We made our annual trip to the botanical gardens to try to explore and get some cute pictures of the kids.  They weren't excited about all the pictures I was trying to take of them, but they had fun running around.

This is a throwback to last August at the same botanical garden.  It is possibly my favorite picture of these two together, and I couldn't help but thinking of it while I was looking at the pictures from this year, so I decided to include it for fun.

 There has been lots of bike riding this summer, and recently Krew and Everly discovered a great new way to ride the tricycle.  It's perfect because Everly can't reach the pedals, so this way she can go pretty fast, and Krew gets to ride too.  I can't tell you how many times they rode around like this!

 We like to go watch the Packers practice in the summer, and this year we were excited to go cheer on some BYU Cougars that were at training camp.

 The boys wore their BYU shirts and made signs and everything!  They were pretty excited when the players saw their signs and said hi!  Sadly, a couple of those players were not kept on the team, but it was fun cheering for them while it lasted!

 We tried foot golf (also known as soccer golf) for the first time this summer too.  It was way harder than I thought it would be, but we all had a good time.  Maybe not a good idea to take a 2 year old though, just saying!

summertime county fair

 In August, we made our annual trip to the county fair to spend a few hours with some farm animals.  We won't mention that during the time we were there, most of the animal barns were closed for some reason, even though this was the designated time for all the kids in the area who won passes to come to the fair.  So, we did get to see horses and bunnies, but no cows, pigs, goats or sheep.  Not that we're bitter or anything.  Oh well!

 Our favorite part of the fair (maybe because we couldn't see most of the animals), was the alligator show.  It reminded us of our years in Florida and it was pretty exciting to watch.

 These guys did some crazy things with these huge gators!  Crazy!

 We even got to hold some gators!  We never pay extra for these types of things, but we couldn't pass up the chance to pretend we were in Florida again, wrangling up some little gators!

 And seriously, how cute is Everly holding this baby gator?  Krew wanted to hold it, but after about 1 second he got scared, almost dropped it, and decided there was no way he was going to hold a live alligator long enough to take a picture.  Tiny little Everly, stepped right up and held the cute little reptile no problem!

What a fun day we had making memories as a family!

annual mommy-son summertime dates!

I was so looking forward to this summertime tradition of going on dates with each of my boys one at a time!  I let each of them pick a restaurant and one fun activity to do together.  Other than that guidance, I pretty much let then plan our date.  With four kids, and never having had an only child, these rare times I get to spend with each of them just the two of us, is so precious.  

Ky decided on this new, yummy, pizza place.  They have some super unique pizzas and we each got a small one and shared.  I asked Ky some thought provoking questions and I loved to hear how he answered each one.  This kid is genuine, smart, considerate and hilarious!

 After dinner, Ky took me to the new trampoline park in town.  It was a great way burn off those pizza calories!  I loved watching Ky try the ninja course, over and over.  His determination to get past each obstacle was inspiring!

 I laughed when about 30 minutes into our hour-long jumping session, Ky asked me, "Why do you have to keep getting a drink?"  I told him it's because I'm old!  Jumping for an hour straight is exhausting when you don't have the energy that he always seems to have!

 It was a super fun date, and I think we should do it more often!

 Krew's date was next.  He thought so long and hard about where he wanted to go out to eat.  He FINALLY decided on McDonald's.  Not exactly a fancy date, but it was cheap and he was thrilled.  Win-Win!

 Next, he decided to take me miniature golfing.  It wasn't a very nice mini golf course, but we had fun anyway.  I loved listening to all the  stories he had to tell me while we were on our date.  And let me just tell you, this little boy is a completely different kid when he doesn't have to compete with his siblings for attention.  He was sweet, funny, inquisitive (SO inquisitive) and happy.

Since it was close, free, and we still had some time left for our date, we headed over to the wildlife sanctuary to check out the birds.  This little bird fanatic loved every minute of it.  We have been there dozens of times, but it had been a while, and luckily this time there were only a few of the big, scary geese that Krew hates so much.

 We found some cool owls, and he loved these two bald eagles, but his favorite part of the day was seeing the peregrine falcon!  He had been talking for weeks prior to going about how much he liked peregrine falcons, how fast they could fly, and some other cool facts he had learned.  So seeing one in person was so exciting for him, and I loved watching him smile!

 Kade's date was last. He picked Buffalo Wild Wings, just like last year.  We had the same drink as last year, Blueberry Mint Lemonade.  He had all sorts of conversation topics picked out, and I loved every minute of talking with him and getting to know him better.  Being a twin, he has had very limited one-on-one time with me, and I could tell he liked it as much as I did.

 For his activity, he decided to take me to see the new Spiderman movie.  He was such a gentleman, and even bought me popcorn and candy.  I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would, and I loved talking about it with him afterward.

I'm so blessed to have these three awesome boys in my life! Being able to give them my undivided attention was priceless!
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