Our Summer

minus the San Diego trip!  I'm so glad I did those posts right after.
So here we go.
Facebook post about our summer reading and exercise challenges:
Summer Challenges! Shout out to my amazing cousin @jlady247 (Jessica Creer) for the idea to do a summer reading challenge with my kids. I even copied some of her previous year’s categories, and tried to convince my kids to read some of the same books as her kids who are all a year older than mine. 🤓😆Last year’s was a huge success and we are doing it again! For each book they finish they get a candy bar😂 And if they complete all 12 books we take a trip to the bookstore and I buy them a new book, like a nice hardback one. 
And new this year, we are also doing a summer exercise challenge! They have to complete an hour of each type of exercise, and at the end I will buy them a new exercise/ sport outfit or equipment of some kind. Fun stuff!#keepthosekidsbusy
#oweniswinningbothchallenges #hisbooksareshorter

And just for fun let's skip right to the end of the summer and show that they did it!  

Katelyn: barely squeaked by on the exercise challenge, and ended up trading that prize for another book instead haha.  Favorite book she read: The Secret Garden, surprise, the oldest book she read! Favorite part of the exercise challenge/new exercise she enjoyed: boogie boarding! I was surprised because I thought she would say none of them haha.

Whitney: Finished the exercise challenge first and did many extra hours of soccer!  Had fun with the reading challenge too. Favorite book she read: Flunked         Favorite part of the exercise challenge/new exercise she enjoyed: boogie boarding as well!  It was awesome.

Owen: Finished the reading challenge first, although of course Whitney claimed it was cheating that his books were so much shorter. I was just amazed he read so many chapter books the summer after kindergarten!!  It was a bit of a challenge though to find books for him that were appropriately challenging but not too hard. He did awesome at the exercise challenge and finished just after Whitney.  Favorite book he read: I survived the sinking of the Titanic (**side note: after he read this book he became obsessed with the Ttianic for like 2 months!  Checked out a ton of books about it from the library, watched documentaries about it, we even recorded and the kids watched a VERY edited version of the Leonardo DiCaprio movie haha) Favorite part of the exercise challenge/new exercise he enjoyed: Golf!

Maris: It was a challenge for me to find picture books in all the genres.  It was so good for me to read to her though!  and fun.  And she ROCKED the exercise challenge.  She worked SO much harder than the other kids to finish it, because she is so much younger!  It took her like 8 sessions  6 or 8 or 10 minutes at a time to finish each hour of exercise!  I should have had her do half the time, but I was afraid of certain people complaining it wasn't fair....and she was having fun anyway so it was alright.  She is an awesome little athlete!  I saved the papers, I'll have to post pictures of them completed so we can remember what people did and read. Favorite book she read: The Snowflake Fairy LOL Favorite part of the exercise challenge/new exercise she enjoyed: soccer, yay!

Mom:  I totally bombed both challenges LOL!  I did several of the different exercises but didn't quite finish a couple!  In my defense A) I ran for many many hours this summer, I wasn't just being lazy! and B) Having 5 kids all day every day in the summer....is nuts.  I love it but it takes all my energy and I had zero spare time!  So I only read 4 books out of the 12 haha.  

Anyway here are the kids with their prizes!  After an hour at Big 5 all three of them just ended up picking new soccer balls LOL.  

And they got way fun books from Barnes and Noble!

This represents all the hours of running, mostly in the early morning, which=my fave! Look how long my shadow is!

Swimming lessons!  Maris had a great time in the Pre-Level 1 class. She will be ready to skip level 1 next year and go straight to 2 like Owen did!

Katelyn repeated Level 6 just to get to swim every day.  She did great.  But now she says she's done; treading water for 15 minutes is just too hard!

Owen (back left) became a totally independent swimmer this year in Level 3.  I don't worry about him at all in pools now!

Whitney repeated level 5 because she didn't want to have to move up to the 15 minute treading haha. She did great. And apparently this is the only picture I took of her??

Owen played T-Ball and had fun. Here he is on 1st base:

wearing his hat the cool way?

Owen had cute fans:

Maris was stylin'

Summer Mom classes: 

were few and far between this year!  But we did get a few in. Art: making picture frames with seashells we collected in San Diego.

Hair-doing class: french braids (did not go well lol)

A funny story from this summer about hair:

This morning Maris came crying to me saying “Owen thinks that my hair’s not pretty!” Upon investigation I discovered he hadn’t said anything mean, he just didn’t SAY that her hair looked pretty! She also said “ I even put makeup on my mouth and eyes and he didn’t even notice”😲🤔😂 
What an opportunity to talk about many important things, like what beauty really is, who we need to impress, and how you can’t get mad at someone you love for not noticing when you made a special effort with your hair and makeup LOL.
I also did some future gentleman training with Owen about what to say if a girl tells him she did such-and-such with her hair or if she asks “Do you like my new (fill-in-the-blank)”. He’s like “but what if I don’t really like it?” You don’t have to tell her that, just find something nice to say about it!
It just cracked me up that my 6-year-old and almost 4-year-old we’re having such classic problems!!😂💄💅

sewing class:

Here's Whitney with the bag she made. Apparently I didn't take a picture of the other 3 with their much bigger bags that have handles.

Science class: 

This was the class we did the most consistently, because I bought a book of kids' science experiments (from Usbourne) and it was excellent.  I let the kids each choose something to do, so we at least got to do 4 because they made sure they all got their turn!

This one we did while Katelyn was at Girls Camp.  Layers of liquid, Density. It was fun.

Frr this class we made recycled paper!  It was pretty fun.  This was soaking the paper scraps in water and glue.

Drying the paper pulp.

We did sneak in one more art class at the end of the summer: Painting dandelions with shower poufs. On little canvases.  It was fun.

For years I had to beg Whitney to even let me TRIM her hair, and she finally decided to cut it!

So cute!!  But I do miss her long hair a little bit, I was very pretty and she took good care of it.

I ran a half marathon in Heber and missed my PR by 45 seconds!  A little disappointing, but the first half was the steepest thing I have ever run down and it killed my legs!  So I can honestly say I did my best.

4th of July hot air balloons!

grumpy Maris lol

random inclusion: this picture from Whitney's birthday party:

History class: I totally bombed this one too!  The only thing we did for History was go to Colonial Fest.

One weekend Jenae was here and we went for a hike up Santaquin Canyon.  Jonathan too.

It was fun and I'm so glad we went, because now there's a huge fire up there and a lot of the beautiful trees are gone. :(

We also got to see the Cravens once!

So many beautiful sunrises this summer!  I am in awe of the beauty of the sky.

Facebook post below about Emma finishing nursing!  She did great.  The hardest part was giving up the naptime nursing!  She used to pat my chest to say she was hungry, it was kind of cute.  But she moved onto food really well.  And I was happy to nurse her for 15 months, the longest of any of my kids!

 Times are a-changin! This week I nursed my last baby for the last time, and my oldest baby left for Girls Camp for 5 days! It’s crazy but good. 😊 This is a picture of me and my 5 babies on my nursing couch. It is the most comfortable, ugliest couch ever; swipe to see what color it actually is 😂. I am a little sad to see it go! But I did a cartwheel today for the first time in years, so my body is pretty happy about the stage of life I’m entering. My heart is just aching a little, and my soul is feeling immense gratitude that I was able to carry and breastfeed 5 babies. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Katelyn went to Girls Camp!!! She had fun even though it rained a ton, and we missed her a lot!  She really grew up that week.  I was so grateful that her leaders had taken the time the month before to really include her and make her feel comfortable, so she wasn't nervous about going!

Whitney and Owen took tennis lessons this summer, it was cute!

And the little girls and I had fun on the park during the lessons.

More sky pics; I can't help myself!

this was a rainbow that looked like fire coming out of the mountain!  Ironic that now that mountain really is on fire. :(

sunrise and rainbows while I was running!

For my birthday ( and to fulfill an exercise challenge requirement) we tried frisbee golf.

It was actually a big hit!  The kids loved it and didn't fight!  Win!!

The girls are growing into a lot of the matching clothes I had for Katelyn and Whitney. It is so cute to see them in the same outfits!!

One day we went to the American Fork Reservoir with the MacKays, it was great.

Another grave of our Lee ancestors, this time in American Fork.  These were the actual Lees who the father drove the mail coach for the Queen of England before they joined the church and came to Zion.  Very cool.

My sunflower fence turned out pretty good!  I loved this one with the stormy sky behind it.

We got to spend some time with our Murray cousins at the end of the summer.  Owen and Cleo can be pretty cute together, they are the same age and you can tell.

We played pictionary and it turned out fun.

Cleo loved it the most I think!  Also notice Maris and Jayda's matching shirts, so cute.

We went boating, twice actually while Elizabeth was here!  It was so fun as always.

cousin sand fun while the big kids had a turn on the boat.

And THIS.  Was so awesome.  Epic night of Dalmuti. I totally got Kurtis hooked, so now we can play at more family gatherings!  Here's my facebook post about it:

 Best night of Dalmuti I’ve had in 15 years!! We got to play for 2 hours, I got seriously the best hand of my life (should have taken a picture!) which propelled me to the Great Dalmuti spot, where I stayed for 6 rounds! Until my lesser dalmuti (ahem Kurtis) tried to take me down by calling no taxation and ended up making us both peons😂 Kjarom supplied some excellent German words to enhance the experience, and I beat Eric several times which was rare and fun 😆. And Whitney was in heaven playing for so long, especially with her little partner Cleo. Great times! Thinking of you, original Dalmuti crew from college. 😊#mansion18 #virginia5 #permapass

We did some fireworks with Grandma, Cleo, and Uncle Kurtis on the 24th of July, and I got this picture of the excitement haha.

Emma is so hilarious!!  This is her doing a "big smile" with all her teeth.

I caught Maris "reading" to Emma, adorable.

We had a fun hang out day with Hansen cousins one day in August, and they liked my idea of the frisbee golf course.

the 4-7 year old gang and Aunt Jenae.

Lydia swinging my little girls on the park.

Grammy got everyone snowcones, it was so fun!

It's funny because sometimes this summer I wished we were going camping more or doing stuff with family more....but looking back we sure did a lot!  I love summer.