Super Daddy!

We went completely untraditional on Father’s Day this year. No paper cards at all! Unheard of for a card-devotee like me. Jay and Rose adore their Daddy. It’s so sweet. I like him lots too. We’re so thankful for him.

Muah!

For Jeff’s Father’s Day “card,” I helped Jay and Rose make him a cape. It didn’t turn out like my vision at all. But oh well, he knows we love him.

Here’s the vision:

I found this clever idea online and thought we’d make one of these nap n play shirts for Jeff. Problem: in spite of our healthy t-shirt collection, I still couldn’t find a single shirt with a blank back that we would want to scribble permanent marker all over. I blame the current tech-shirt craze. Road races rarely provide good old fashioned cotton t-shirts these days. It’s all modern moisture-wicking. Tech shirts are more expensive, and they always get the lowest quality style to save $$. Also, the meshy shirts aren’t even breathable or cute because they steam these giant plastic logos on all over them. I will never be too evolved for a 100% cotton t-shirt.

Back to the issue at hand: Nap n play t-shirt. Not happening. Brainstorm: the cape.

Yikes, it looks even worse in the picture! [wrinkly old sheet] We didn’t even get a picture of Jeff wearing the thing. Ok, so the idea is to make a few roads so the dad can lay on his stomach and rest while the kids drive cars all over his back. Massage, nap, and playtime all rolled into one. Since it was a cape and not a t-shirt, we had to do something cape-ish on it. So we wrote “Super Dad” on top and then made the duct tape roads in the shape of a super D with a border. Then I drew in a few key locations on the town while the kids colored them in. We had to explain it all to Jeff when we presented it to him. Ha, luckily it’s the thought that counts, especially on Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s Day!

For my Dad’s card this year, I wanted to print of all the pictures of just me and my Dad, arrange them cleverly in a card with a cute saying on top, and mail it to him. But that’s a lot of ink, so then I thought I’d email him all the pictures. But there were too many to send in an email. SO I decided to go rogue this year and just do a Bloggard—blog card. I did fill the page out with some irresistible family pictures—a man with five kids doesn’t have many one-on-one shots with individual children (from my whole life, I have 15 pictures of only Dad and me). It feels like I’m revealing my whole life in these pictures (well, I guess I am, more or less). Hopefully it’s not too personal for this semi-public place.

FATHER, without further ado, here’s a bloggard for YOU!

 

Dad, I love you. I always have and I always will!

Swim Swim Swim

The pool is exhausting! We play shark attack, jumping games, alligator rides, floating games, and go down the slide over and over and over. It makes us crave Cheezits and apples like nobody’s business. CHOMP. We get to watch Spencer 4 days/30hrs each week this summer (when we’re not traveling), so hurrah for a built-in-buddy! Rose calls him Bender. At the pool, sometimes I get in the water and play with the kids; other days I sit on the edge with my feet in and do what I can from there. It’s nice to have more than half of the kid pool that is knee-deep or less on my lengthy legs, so I don’t have to get too wet if I don’t want to.

My Summer Plan: exhaust children with playing, swimming, and other activities till Rose’s naptime. Put Rose to bed and let the boys watch a show or play a game on the Kindle. Say bye to Spencer. Then figure out whether to make eggs or grilled cheese or burritos for dinner (I do my best to avoid using the oven when cooking in the summertime).

The only hard part about taking 3 kids who can’t swim to the pool at once is I can’t take anyone down the big red slide because I can’t abandon the other two for that long. Ah well, it’s also a good thing for me when I’m feeling lounge-y, like today. No Shaina-slide-shuttle duty. A nice thing about this pool is we almost always see someone that we know from church when we go. Poolside chatting entertainment for the mamas.

“Say Cheezits!”

Pile-up

Today while Jay and Rose frolicked in the shallow water, Spencer floated placidly in the deeper area with his life vest. It wasn’t till after I put my camera away that they all started playing cutely together.

Another day at the pool, another box of Cheezits.

Summer is here

Semi-officially. Jeff still has one more week of school to teach, and then another week of online classes after that, but the pool opened today. So that makes it summer. Mostly. That plus the 95 degree weather and endless scorching sunshine.

After much debating, we decided to get a family pool pass to the Prosser Aquatic Center this summer. The place is amazing. It was brand new last summer but I never saw it due to a certain illness (I wasn’t allowed to submerge the tube in my arm anyways). Now I can say first-hand that it’s SO totally worth the 15 minute drive and $100 pass.

Apparently my writing style of the moment is incomplete sentences. Forgive me. Kids up at 5am all week. Running. Babysitting. Late-night grocery shopping. Swimming. Sunshine. Tired.

Today when Jeff got home from work, we met up with Steph and Layne and went on Summer 2013’s inaugural SWIM.

Can you believe darling little old Prosser has such a sleek place? It was packed today, but we still managed to get wet. Jay and Rose adored the slides. They went down the small yellow one by themselves over and over and over (Rose especially), and Jeff and I took them down the bigger red one a few times too.

Little Miss Laynie splashed and smiled at her cousins while we parents tried not to take up too much space in the kid pool.

Isn’t she the most delicious morsel in her suit? It was too tight, so Steph unbuckled the halter strap. Topless babe alert! No tan lines for this girl.

Bathing suit rant: I strongly dislike them. They are like expensive neon underwear with no clothes on top (except my underwear is more modest than my bathing suit). How has society become ok with that? I hate wearing swimsuits! I’ve pretty much decided that the only people who look good in bathing suits are age 10 and under. The rest of us just feel squished and exposed in too many places. Awkward. And yet we all wear 'em anyways in the name of SUMMER.

 

Soon I will get a video of the kids going down the slides. Be excited.

What is it about kids in towels? These pictures all look more or less the same and yet I can’t pick just one.

 

If this is a pool, no wonder they call the other one an aquatic center.