This post is a mish-mash of mini events that happened during the first week of summer:
- Father's Day
- Ambike (again)
- Shopping with Rose
- First swim meet
- Jay and Ian, the dynamic duo
1. FATHER'S DAY
Summer break began with Father's Day. Jeff said he didn't want anything for the day, so that's what we did. I quietly suggested that Jay, Rose, and Amber each make Jeff a card or write him a letter for Father's Day, and they all did. Before church, Jeff did his annual kid-lift challenge where he attempts to lift and hold all three of his children at the same time. He did it again this year, although we aren't sure how many more years he will be able to manage it--our kids are growing so fast! After church, Jeff made crepes and everyone feasted on the family favorite. Jeff is a great dad and we love him so much. He spent the first week of summer recovering from the rigors of the school year, and it is a JOY to have my entire husband back--mind, body, and sense of humor. Mother Nature has seasons for a reason: some seasons are for working and growing; other seasons are for resting and preparing. Of course, nature does the working and growing while the teachers are resting and preparing and the teachers do the working and growing while nature is resting and preparing, but still. Seasons are healthy and natural and restorative.
A family game of Chutes and Ladders: when Jeff and I play that game, every chute and ladder goes UP. No going down. It still takes forever to play, but it's slightly more bearable because nobody gets mad about sliding backwards down chutes.
2. AMBIKE (again)
Jeff spent the first three days of our time during morning swim team/cross country helping Amber practice riding her bike without training wheels and of course she did it just fine for him (while I ran with the xc kids). Now Amber is officially officially a two-wheeler. I am doing my best not to feel too angsty about the injustice of Amber's stubbornness. I worked with her for weeks teaching her how to stop on her bike, then I removed her training wheels and taught her how to ride two-wheeled. She was really good at it very quickly, but as I have already lamented, she suddenly stonewalled me, gave up on it and I surrendered back to the training wheels. That was two or three weeks ago. Jeff decided he wanted to have a go with Amber. Maybe it was just the mental break between two-wheel-attempts, or maybe she really does like Jeff better than me, or maybe it's something else entirely. All I know is that Amber is fine at starting, stopping and pedaling her bike without training wheels now. She is still working on steering a little, but she's doing great.
Cruising
3. SHOPPING with Rose
Rose had been needing some new summer clothes for weeks, and we finally went to the tri cities together (a 45 minute drive) last week. I let Rose choose the music in the car (she picked Piano Guys). As we were pulling out of our driveway, I mentioned how exceptionally fluffy the clouds looked, and Rose spent the entire drive calling out different shapes she saw in the clouds. She was talking almost nonstop: "I see a girl with long hair. I see a horse. I see a..." She was very interested in finding as many things as possible in the clouds, and she found a LOT. I joined in briefly at the beginning, spotting a turtle. Rose's response was so typical of her competitive nature that it was almost a caricature: "I see the same turtle! And I see another turtle over there that's bigger than the turtle you saw!" After that I let Rose do the cloud-finding on her own. By the end of our drive, Rose had found ten turtles in the clouds.
Rose had been wearing Jay's old cargo shorts almost exclusively over the past month, and she was ready to get some slightly more feminine clothing. Even though she loves the comfort of her boy shorts, she also likes to feel pretty. So we headed to Target. This was the first time I had taken Rose to a store and helped her pick out several outfits of clothing. In the past I went almost exclusively to Goodwill and bought clothes slowly over time. But Goodwill has jacked up their prices, especially for the bigger kids' sizes, and the hunt through other people's old laundry has been slowly losing its savor for months now. Many carefully selected brand-new clothes are comparable in price to Goodwill. And the fact of the matter is, Rose is starting to care more about her clothes. We found everything Rose needed for presentable summer play clothes at Target. I made Rose try on everything in the fitting rooms, and we found clothes that FIT her. What a concept. It's crazy to be approaching the time where I can't just buy clothes for my daughter without her presence and consent, haha. I suppose I held out for rather a long time.
Target!
We also went to Costco, where we ate lunch and got groceries.
When I told her that she was too big to ride inside the cart, Rose climbed underneath the cart, using her rolled up jacket as a pillow. This girl is fun and funny.
Our last stop was the temple. It has been quite a while since we went on a temple walk together. Rose sang "I love to see the temple" twice in the car.
She lovingly admired each and every different flower in the temple grounds.
This was a different day than our clothes shopping trip, but last week we also made a family trip to Walmart to get Rose a new bike. Since she's a February birthday, a bike is not a great birthday present, and she dwarfed her old 20 inch kids bike. So we found her a budget-friendly periwinkle blue 24 inch bike. She and Jeff spent the afternoon putting the thorn proof tire tubes onto her new bike.
4. FIRST SWIM MEET
Thursday, June 20th was Jay's first swim meet of the season. Although Rose swam her first full 50 meter length of the pool freestyle without stopping on the morning of the meet, she wasn't quite ready for a full blown meet, so Jay went without her. I ended up staying home with both girls on the night of Jay's swim meet because the girls were getting rabid with fatigue and they needed an early bedtime. So after the boys left, the girls and I ate dinner, watched one episode of our favorite horse cartoon (Spirit--riding free) and then they went to bed. I had a long quiet evening all to myself and it was bliss. I had spent many hours on Tuesday prepping and attending a Relief Society activity, and that blissful alone time was medicinal. Jeff and Jay returned home at 9pm from the meet. Jay had his best swim meet ever! He got second place in one of his races! He swam the backstroke, freestyle, and breast stroke. It was a blustery windy CHILLY night, and when they got home, Jeff made a thick batch of hot chocolate. Usually the swim meet prize is ice cream, but it was definitely a hot chocolate type of night.
Swim team picture. Jay is in the front center with his feet in the water, and Rose is on the far left in the same row (she's hidden behind a kid, but her white legs are visible in the water 3 from the left).
5. THE DYNAMIC DUO
Jay and his buddy Ian have been spending every possible minute together. I love seeing what they dream up to amuse themselves. They play outside in "The Swamp" (the irrigation ditch out back), they swim at Ian's house, they play battleship, they play all kinds of games with legos, blocks, and costumes in our playroom, and of course they go running and biking together and play plenty of Minecraft on the computer. Ian is basically part of our family and we all love it when he comes over!
Two days in a row, Jay, Ian, Rose, and Amber dressed up in silly costumes and paraded through the house chanting "screen time! screen time!" over and over. Jay was waving a Barbie as a torch. Ian was wearing the clown wig with a tiara and drumming on a plastic train tunnel on his arm. Jeff and I laughed our heads off and then let them have screen time 20 minutes early because really after such an excellent parade, how could we not?
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