June

The kids play with friends in the neighborhood every single day. The last day of school, there was a party on the corner by where we live, and all the kids in the neighborhood close by were there, playing outside all. day. long. One little girl has this little car, and she took Camille and Jack for rides in it one day. Jack was in HEAVEN.

Brooke and Harvey play together every day. And they've been especially loving selling snow cones out on our driveway. We have a little ice shaver, and we bought snow cones supplies and syrups, and they have gone out to sell snow cones at least 3 times already this summer. One day, they took the big lawn mower box and set up shop like it was a little food truck. They made quite a bit of money on that day. I just sat in a lawn chair on the driveway and hung out with neighbors and watched their little business endeavor. It was such a fun day.

At the beginning of the summer, we had a family meeting and put together our Summer Live List. It's a pretty good list. And we've done a couple of things: we went to see Aladdin one night -- Brooke liked it, Camille was a little distracted for much of it and didn't have the patience to watch the whole thing; we did an overnight campout in the mountains -- Jack really struggled sleeping that night + it was freezing, so it was quite a rough night, but we had fun; we had a fried cheese hunt (think Easter egg hunt inside the house with fried cheese instead of colored eggs. *shrug* It was Camille's idea, so I did the best I could to interpret that).

We also had a pizza and movie night one Friday and watched 'Ralph Breaks the Internet'. Jack didn't stay for the whole movie; he went to bed about halfway through. But they all loved eating pizza in the living room, and the girls loved watching the movie. We had fun! It was also a fun night because Daniel came home before 5 pm that day; so we got pizza, had dinner and watched a movie, and put the kids to bed, all before 7:30pm! What a different life we're living now!!

Sammy and Brian invited us to spend a Saturday with them going to the Orem Summerfest (Orem's version of summer celebrations, like a fair). They had food and booths, fair rides and entertainment. We liked the reptile exhibit and Jack loved looking at the fire truck and police cars. Sammy, Brian and I walked around and looked at the booths and the things people were selling, and Camille and Brooke loved going on a handful of the fair rides. We had a fun time with them!

We've been having so much fun this summer, it has Camille all wiped out. Also, we've been having some serious bedtime struggles. When we moved here, we decided that we needed to start putting the girls to bed at the same time. It wasn't working well, staggering their bedtime anymore. Camille kept taking longer and longer to fall asleep, so Brooke wasn't getting to bed until 9:30, 10, 10:30 at night. And my sanity was suffering as well. I NEED a few hours a day without kids needing something from me all the time (meaning, I need them to be in bed so that I can feel like a real person). So we started putting them to bed together at 7:30pm -- it was a good bedtime, enough time to have dinner, scripture study and prayer, do some after dinner chores, and get ready for bed. BUT, they never did learn how to go to sleep together, and they made messes and destroyed things and took stuff of the walls, etc. Now, we have someone sleeping in the extra room in the basement every night. I sure hope they learn how to sleep someday. Or else, we're in trouble FOREVER.

The girls planned and (mostly by themselves) set up a tea party one day. They invited their friends to come over and have "tea" (root beer) and snacks. It was so fun to have all these kids here, and they stayed literally all afternoon. I loved it! I love having kids in my house and that kids feel comfortable staying and playing in my house. Later that afternoon, we got out our perler bead craft and they all did crafts together.

One day, I took the girls to see "How to Train Your Dragon". It was one of the movies for the summer movie club, where you get to see an old movie in the theater for a dollar. We left Jack with a babysitter, and went on a just girls date. Brooke liked the movie, and Camille had a hard time sitting through the whole thing ... like I expected. But it was still fun.

Daniel and I went on a date last weekend to see the Rodeo. Every city in Utah County has their own week of summer celebrations, and the Lehi Roundup was last week. They had a rodeo as part of Roundup week, and we got tickets for the Saturday night rodeo. It was so fun! We had a great time.