Summer Solstice Edition

I haven't done a regular blog update in 2 weeks, so double the fun today! We've been keeping busy this summer with park days (A group of women from our ward meets once a week and we also do once a week with my good friend Andrya & her kids) So far this summer we've been to 4 or 5 different parks. We spent a day at Liberty Park playing in the fountains and water playground, I took some pictures but haven't developed them, so I'll have to post them later. We're also averaging twice a week at the library, and I am enjoying having the library close enough (and kids old enough) that they can walk over there on their own.
Brynn was invited to her first friend birthday party yesterday, and she was thrilled! It was a backyard play in the water party for not one, but TWO of her preschool friends.
Father's Day was a nice, relaxing day for Darrin. Callie made him a nice plaque:

And I made him some shrimp egg rolls and fried rice for dinner.
Darrin & I went out to see the space shuttle & international space station when they flew overhead a few nights ago. It was the day after the shuttle "un-docked" so they were 2 separate points moving across the sky in the same orbit. How amazing to think that there were people out there! It's truly amazing what the space programs have done.
Our ward party (the one rescheduled from a couple weeks ago) was a fun thing, too. Kyra and the other YW did face painting, and all three of my girls got it done. Unfortunately, I somehow missed getting a picture of Callie! She looked really cute with her face painted like a little kitten. Here are Kyra & Brynn:


I did get a picture of Callie with her BFF (That's Best Friend Forever) Andrian, who moved away last fall but came back for this party!

We've also tried a new thing for us: geocaching! If you're not familiar with it, geocaching is an activity where someone hides a "cache" or small box of some sort in a public place, and then posts the GPS coordinates on the internet (www.geocaching.com is the biggest site that does this). Then people like us use our GPS devices to try and find them. Each cache has a logbook that you sign and some will have trinkets you can trade. Darrin & I went out Friday evening and looked for 3 - found 2. Saturday we took the girls out and let Kyra & Callie find the 2 we found, plus we tried (and failed) to find a third. It was really fun and we will probably do it again. It was a nice way to actually USE the GPS thingie Darrin bought 3 years ago and never had any use for.
Tonight Marti called and said that there was a robin's nest outside her window and the babies had just hatched. So we piled in the van and drove over. We had a really nice view of three baby robins opening their mouths wide to the sky as their mom & dad fed them worms. We watched, captivated, for over an hour! I tried to take pictures with the digital camera, but they didn't come out very well and I accidentally left the camera there (with our geocaching pictures on it, too!) so no pictures either way.
Finally, I am really wondering if anyone actually reads this blog. I hope I'm not just speaking to an empty room. So if you're reading this, let me know so I can decide if it is worth continuing this whole thing.

Midweek photopalooza!

So Darrin plays in a softball league once a week in the summer. I had some fun taking pictures at a recent game:



The girls enjoyed playing on the playground next to the softball field:


Until Brynn tripped and fell while running, and did a major faceplant. This was about an hour later - it kept oozing and the next day was a big giant scab.

And just because Brynn has been overrepresented in this blog entry, and it's a cute picture, here are the older girls at the Pirates movie party (Darrin's coworker took this picture and just e-mailed it to me):

And no, I do NOT approve of the adoring way my teenager is looking at a drunken, filthy criminal. But he's only cardboard.

Fifteen years ago today....

Tim had a birthday!

I married an awesome man:

And the fun began!

School's OUT!

This week has been crazy. Every single night there has been multiple places everyone needed to be. Quick overview:
Monday: Darrin had a softball game, I had a dinner at the Midwives College. I never made it to the dinner, because when I was a few blocks away I got called to a birth and was up all night.
Tuesday: I tried to spend most of the day sleeping, with little success. Easy evening - I was teaching a class, everyone else stayed home.
Wednesday: Last day of school - Callie came home and sobbed for a good half hour - she had a great year and really LOVED her teacher, Mrs. Miyake. I had another Midwives College event that evening, Darrin was working at the Family History library, Kyra had YW, and the whole family had a ward party. Luckily the ward party (an outdoor bike parade and picnic to celebrate the last day of school) ended up postponed due to bad weather.
Thursday: First full day of summer vacation. Got all the way to 9:42 am before I got the first "I'm bored! What can I do?" Darrin had a dinner for the Family History library, and I had to teach at the hospital again. And after I taught, I had to attend a mandatory hospital training from 9:30 - 10:30 pm.
Friday: We went to the library and let the kids get tons of books & videos to hopefully stave off boredom. FINALLY everyone home on the same night. Except Callie who had a sleepover with a friend.
Saturday Darrin ran an early morning 5K in our neighborhood, I had a prental visit with a client later on in the morning, we got yard work done, grocery shopping, baths, housecleaning, and Darrin & I went looking for new couches again and bought a new piece of furniture for our landing. There are cubby-holes for backpacks and baskets for scarves, gloves, etc. Darrin & I will share, each girl has their own basket and spot for a backpack. It will come in handy now that it is summer and there's no school. Here's a picture.

The blog goes multimedia!

(Sorry the blog is a day late - figuring out multimedia stuff took all evening.)
This week has been crazy as the school year winds up and I've had extra teaching to do. I taught my usual Tuesday night class, and taught a Friday night and all day Saturday weekend intensive class as well.
Monday morning Darrin & I ventured to IKEA. When we got there, it wasn't all that crowded and we enjoyed looking around. After we'd been there 20 minutes or so, we heard an announcement "Attention shoppers: IKEA is now open." Well, duh, that's why it wasn't so crowded! Odd that there were others in there, too, and we were welcomed by an IKEA employee who said nothing about the store not being open yet. Very soon after that, the store became so PACKED that we couldn't wait to get out of there.
We went home & got the kids, then took them out to IHOP for lunch. Brynn was very excited to get the happy face pancake (a large chocolate chip pancake with a whipped cream face) and she ate the whole thing!
Then we went to a park and played for an hour or so, then had a BBQ at the Lythgoes in the evening. It was a fun Memorial Day.
Kyra had finals this week, she thinks she did well. (Maybe her scores are posted already - I'll go check now.) Only 2 scores posted, and those are both As, but the hard classes (Geometry & Spanish) haven't posted yet.
Callie's class has been working hard at presenting their "Cowboy Program" - a 45 minute program of songs (like "Home on the Range" "Deep in the Heart of Texas" etc.) speaking parts, and even a mini-melodrama in the middle (Callie was the narrator for that). The teacher really worked with them to get them to use an exaggerated cowboy twang, showed them clips of John Wayne movies to get the actors in the melodrama to walk right, etc. Darrin used the video option on our camera to take short video clips. Only one of the clips he took was short enough for a free upload so I could post it here. No, without further ado, here is the very first multimedia presentation on this blog (you may have to click twice to get it playing):

Brynn & I attended the dress rehearsal and then Darrin & I went to the final performance as well.
Here's a close-up of Callie in her costume to round out this week's edition: