Our Vacation, Thy Creations, and Our Relations- Part 5

Me: Stop distracting me with birds when we're trying to get ready for a trip.

Husband: Stop being distracted by Instagram while we're trying to get ready for a trip.

Ha. Ha. I was posting about that first interaction outside with the birds.

 

Road Trip!

Usually when we visit my parents, they plan a trip for us to Shore Acres. This year was no exception. We stopped briefly  to tie the van's shoes, then rode horses down to the beach. Jet had a lot of fun splashing around in the ocean, and even more throwing sand everywhere.

 

O.K. Now that I have access to my blog again- we did not, in fact, tie the van's shoes, nor did we ride horses anywhere. Jet did, however, have fun splashing in the ocean. He got to a lot more than last year and yes, he did have fun throwing sand everywhere.

O.K. What we stopped briefly to do was to see some birds and seals and sea lions at Cape Arago viewpoint.

Then we ate lunch and tried to get some family pictures in the garden before heading down to the beach.

The sand was so hot and the water was so cold. Lucky once again refused to take his shoes and socks off and luckily didn't get his feet wet this year. Jr. and Jr. Jr. got their feet wet. They took their shoes and socks off first.

Nichole enjoyed sitting on the sand sketching. I love that she does that.

Jeremy took pictures of birds and us and nature. It was so good to have him there this year. As I mentioned before, it had been 8 years since he visited Oregon.

 

I loved our time together there.

 

  

 

We made it back to our final destination of my parents' house that evening after having a great day out.

I'll share more of our wonderful vacation later.

Summer Reading!

I was going to write about all our Summer Reading adventures in one post but changed my mind. Here's the second post.

We continued to do service and received service. Made cookies for neighbors. They made us fried squash which we had with our dinner one night.

Later when someone was going through a hard time, we gave them chimichangas so they wouldn't have to worry about dinner.

We made so many chimichangas. Some to eat, some to freeze, some to give away. This picture is of the chimichangas in our stock pot. You know our stock pot- the one we used to use to make a seven times batch of taco soup? Yeah, that stock pot.

Took all of the kids to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. It was Jet's first time there. And... dinosaurs. He loved it, especially when it was time to dig for fossils.

He even got into calling out, "Oh no, it's going to eat me," for a picture in front of the megalodon. Tradition.

Nichole got some good sketching in, of course. She's been wanting to go to that museum for a while, too.

One of the reading activities was to have someone read a book you recommend. I recommended Spindle by W.R. Gingell to Nichole. It's the first book in a series and Nichole is already farther along than I am in the series now. Lucky recommended Wizard for Hire to me. I loved it. I just finished the second book in the series and will definitely read the third. After I read the first one, that meant everyone (except Jet) had read that book so Lucky put together a trivia game for us to play based on it. It was fun. Jr. Jr. and I were on a team and Nichole and Jr. were on a team. We had team names and even team handshakes. Later, Lucky was able to give the trivia questions to Jeremy so he was able to be involved. Book trivia was another Summer Reading activity.

I'm sure I can't remember all the activities we did but it was another great Summer Reading Summer.

We went to the Orem Summer Reading Finale. They had Polynesian dances including a fire dancer. I was telling one of my children about torches and fire because of my experience juggling fire. Yes, I have juggled fire. Jeremy used to juggle fire in a lot of his birthday party shows.

Jr. and Nichole both won prizes from Orem. Nichole put a lot of tickets into the one she won. Jr. put one ticket into the one he won. He has that luck when it comes to drawings.

Some January Fun... That Hasn't Already Been Mentioned

Sometimes you just have to dance to the music. In this case it was music from Singin' in the Rain. In fact, I think it was the song, "Singin' in the Rain."  

January 15 was National Bagel Day. Breakfast sandwiches for dinner? Yes, please.

 

Live long and prosper.

 

January 16 was Appreciate a Dragon Day. Nichole wore her new dragon-themed shirt and her new dragon earrings and as is tradition, she sketched a dragon.

She and the boys also played "toss" with the dragon that she made in elementary school. 

January 17 was Popeye Day. We had food with spinach for dinner including Popeye brand spinach.

 

One way to get exercise in during the Winter. Roll the ball down the hall and chase it.

January 18 was Winnie-the-Pooh Day. We had honey roasted carrots with our dinner. I also made granola that day but used maple syrup instead of honey because I wasn't thinking and we had syrup we needed to use up.

 

Sometimes in life, you just have to stop and play with monster trucks. Did you know that because they're "monster" trucks, they roar?

 

And this...

Museum Comes to Life Day 2022

While Jeremy and Nichole were at a Father-Daughter campout, 

the boys and I celebrated Museum Comes to Life Day on June 24 by watching the third Night at the Museum movie with popcorn.

Since it was International Fairy Day, Jeremy did read from Nichole's book she is writing. It has fairies in it.

Nichole also did some fairy sketches before they left for the campout.