Our 4th of July treat after we got back from camping.
Arletta's Birthday! The kids are so great at doing all they can to make things special for adults. Eliza, the craft girl, came up with the birthday hat.
We all wrote messages and put them in balloons and Arletta had to pop the balloons to get the messages.
Then we had a fun game of Jenga. Rick likes to make it as wobbly as possible on the bottom.
We were cleaning the house before Valeri cam to visit and I told Eliza she would have to take down all her artwork from her walls. She was so sad, so I told her we would take a picture of it so she could remember it.
The night before Valeri came we had a crazy storm. We took our dinner to the back porch and ate while it hailed small marble size ice. Then it started raining and the kids could hardly control themselves and they just kept getting wetter and wetter.
Each time it rains a lot we have to manually scoop the water out of our back downstairs porch because the drain is plugged. One of these days we will get to that . . .
It has been SO fun watching Vienna and Alissa play together. I have never seen Vienna have a friend so perfect to play with. They were singing and playing the piano and trading places and giggling. It was so cute!
My girls begged to have a make-up day when Valeri was here. So here they are for the first time wearing mascara and eye shadow, lipstick, and blush! Vienna saw what the older girls were doing and wouldn't be left out!
We did a lot of things that I didn't get pictures of, like playing soccer in the front and back yard, riding bikes and running around the neighborhood, and playing tennis. We went for a picnic at mission park and because of the weird people wandering the park and the flies that gathered when we opened the food, we went to Minihaha park. I wish I had pictures! I converted Val to my Hummus on tortillas with cucumbers and vinegar onions and tomatoes. YUMM! We then went frizby golfing. It was crazy with all the kids throwing frizbys. It is amazing no one got hurt! We had a few close calls. The kids had a great time and then we went and tried to skip rocks in the river. Valeri is more strict than me in some ways sometimes and didn't want her kids getting in the water but I let my kids get their feet wet and soon Valeri gave in for her kids too.
We played tennis for a few hours. Rick and Aaramie are really getting good! Rick did pretty good last year and has improved and Aaramie has improved a lot from last year. Eliza tried it for about 5 minutes and then went to play in the playground. Will Eliza find a sport she likes?
It was so hot at the park that we had to run through the splash pad every 20 minutes or so to cool off.
Unfortunately this is the only picture that I got of the piano recital. Without thinking I sent Eliza home with Valeri that morning so she wasn't there for the recital. I was very happy with all the kids. They all did a great job, even Taylore! Kennadi is the kind of student every piano teacher wants. She loves playing and is intrinsically motivated. We had a lot of fun for this recital. I had the parents play a couple of the games from our group lessons.
They didn't let us take a camera on our Pioneer Trek so we don't have any pictures except this one of our feet. Can you tell whose shoes had more holes for dirt to get into? You can see where I had duct tape to help prevent blisters. A girl in our pioneer family got really bad blisters and we were trading her shoes around so she could wear tennis shoes. When I put her shoes on my feet were getting blisters too and I prayed that my feet would be toughened and from there on out I didn't have any sore spots on my feet.
