Thursday, September 3, 2015

Random Summertime: part 2

Well, here we go again. Here are some more of our random summer moments. 
We went up to Kaysville to hang out with my friend Traci and her two kids. 
The girls had so much fun with them and loved being able to swim in their backyard pool. 
They are great kids and I'm so glad they got along so well. 


After swimming we went to lunch and had a little picnic by the park before letting them play on the toys for a while. The kids had their own table. It was really cute. 


When we were swimming at their house, Abi was loving every second of it. She loves swimming more than most other things. Maddy, however, is really afraid of the water. She has yet to get all the way through swimming lessons because she just won't do what they want her to do. She is too scared. But she did get into their pool. It took her awhile to get off the ladder into the water and many times of us telling her that she could reach the bottom.


But eventually she got off the ladder and had a great time!


Doug's work party was also at a pool this summer. 


Some time was spent at a nearby castle playground. 


Abi took swimming lessons all summer. She already knew how to swim but she wanted to learn the strokes. She did great and loved it. The company we went through.. well I wasn't a fan. 
They are super intense with the kids and I saw way too many kids being pushed and held under the water for my liking. I allowed Abi to continue because she almost always had the same teacher, a young girl that was serious but patient. Plus she was only learning the strokes at this point so I didn't have to worry about it too much. 
The last part of the summer they weren't able to use the pool they had been using so they moved to a community pool where they could only use one lane. That was interesting. 
One thing I learned about myself. I already knew I was anxious. But it is really stressful to be the only parent watching that is reacting to all the kids puking up all the water they swallowed from being shoved under the water. I found myself looking around at all the other parents all summer wondering, "Really???? Am I really the only one reacting to this???"


My cutie pie niece Claire was playing with my phone at a family party and took some selfies. 


Here are some pictures of Abi swimming...


One day we woke up to a balloon festival happening right outside our neighborhood. It was really fun to be able to watch them from our patio. 
This one kept landing where it wasn't supposed to...



Swimming again... yeah our summer felt like it was taken over by swimming. 


Our summer was also taken over by Harry Potter fever. We read the entire series out loud and played lots of Harry Potter scent it when we were done!


While I read the girls usually played with Legos, 


relaxed under blankets, 


or built My Little Pony worlds.


They don't have Harry Potter Legos at the store anymore and they are way too expensive online. So Abi tried to create her own HP characters.


Abi went with my mom and I to see the new Jurassic Park World movie and had to get a picture in this chair. 


A lot of Pokemon was played. 



One night I was reading and looked over at Abi and felt like I was seeing her morph into a teenager before my eyes. 


Abi's big project has been to go through all of her legos and put them in bags according to color and then put all of the sets back together. 


Playing Harry Potter Clue...


They don't always get along... but when they do it is adorable. 





We made chocolate frogs to eat with Harry Potter one day. 


There were quite a few trips to Swig to get sno-cones (in a bowl) and cookies. 


And just lots and lots of fun. 


4 comments:

Donna said...

That is really disturbing about the swim lessons and the kids getting shoved under the water! I think I would have been alarmed by that too.
We had a hot air balloon land in our neighborhood in June, it was so cool!
Your girls remind me so much of my boys. They're about the same ages and they don't always get along, but when they do, it's awesome!

Seth and Julie said...

I remember you mentioning that crazy swimming place earlier this summer and being absolutely horrified. I would have been one of the parents in your camp. Abi is looking very much like a tween these days. I had one actually become a teen this summer and I am still baffled about how that happened. I love the homemade Potter legos!Such a good idea to make your own chocolate frogs as well. We see them all the time since Jelly Belly makes them, but they are $5 a piece. Did I tell you that Jelly Belly is moving to Tennessee? My kids are so sad!

Cheryl said...

Donna- yeah. It freaked me out. The worse days were the days when they had babies there. They were only a few months old and they would be floating them on their backs and the babies would be crying the whole time and then after a while they would start flipping them over into the water with their face under. Then they would flip them back over and have to put them on their shoulders to pat the water out that they had swallowed. I couldn't handle it.
My parents met us there one day to watch Abi swim and they were freaking out even worse than me because of a baby that was there that day. I thought, well, at least I'm not the only one.
The place gets results but I definitely wouldn't recommend them.

Julie- yeah she is and she is acting more and more like a tween too. I called her a tweenager the other day. She wasn't that happy about that.
The frogs are super easy to make too. I bought the chocolate frog mold on Amazon years ago for about $4 I think. Then I buy the milk chocolate meltable drop things from Hobby Lobby with a coupon so they are real cheap. And it makes around 10-12 of them. So it's great.
I heard about Jelly Belly! That is crazy. That place was such a staple for us. We went there so much while living there. The kids never got sick of it and we loved the fact that it was free. So sad they are moving!

The Kings said...

Such cute memories!