Summertime... and the living's easy (ish)

I'm a little behind on blogging. Okay, I'm a big behind. Ha ha, and I have one too. Anyway, May is long gone and I'm not sure where it went, but summer is here now and there is no turning back.

I was worried about the kids being bored once they got out of school. Taylor has informed me that it's all my fault when he gets bored because I never let him do ANYthing fun or go ANYwhere fun. This has put a lot of pressure on me. Fortunately, the first week of summer went very well (thanks largely due to the lots of nice kids in our neighborhood and Taylor's new bike).

Here are the highlights of some stuff we've been up to since last I posted:
Jane's Kindergarten graduation. She's in there somewhere. Wearing a pink shirt (does that really help if I tell you that?) The award that she got from her teacher was the "hardest worker" award. I thought that was a good compliment. My award to Jane is the "most quotable" award.

Example: Jane had a friend over playing the other day and I heard her inform her friend that Hannah doesn't need to wear sunscreen because she is Chinese. No, I corrected, she is not Chinese, she just has dark skin. To which Jane replied, I know she is Chinese because she speaks Spanish really well. I guess I could have given her the "most culturally aware" award.It was really warm one day, so I told the kids they could run through the sprinkler. Did you know you need swim goggles for that? Unfortunatley, by the time we got properly equipped and set things up outside, it was cloudy and cool. I actually like this sunny and rainy weather mix we've been having, but it does put a damper on the water sports. (And obviously has still not helped out our lawn all that much - except to make the weeds grow taller.)The rain won't bother you at all if you are Jonathan and you like drinking water from rain gutters. I'm sure this water is full of minerals and who knows what else. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than seeing him get down on all fours and lap up water from a puddle a few days before. He does own a sippy cup, just for the record.

We all took a trip to the Bingham copper mine last Saturday to celebrate school being out. It was really cool. I've lived in Utah all this time and never new that there was a hole as big as an entire mountain over there west of Salt Lake. Utah doesn't have a Grand Canyon so we made our own.Jane learned to ride her bike with no training wheels after I offered to buy her a pack of bubble gum. It was a good investment. It also provided us with another great quote from her. Apparently, riding a bike causes her a bit of discomfort in the seating area. I was trying to get her to hold still while I was tightening the straps on her bike helmet when she very calmly and seriously informed me that, "It's hard to be patient when you've got a wedgie." I can't argue with that.


The second year we've been able to attend the Pony Express Days parade. This year we lived closer to the very start of the parade, whereas last year we were at the very end. We quickly discovered that the start is much cooler and the kids got a whole bag of candy each, a frisbee, several toothbrushes, some shirts, otter pops, balloons, a pen, and a lanyard. Please come and join us for next year's parade - you won't regret it. And best of all, you don't even have to get up at 5 am to get good seats - we just walked on over about 5 minutes before it started yesterday morning. Hannah especially liked waving to all of the "Princesses" in the parade.Last but not least, we had a very special afternoon yesterday. Taylor got baptized and Logan got blessed. Jef always says that he loves seeing our kids in white clothes, and I agree. We are proud of both of these guys. Thanks to all of the family who came and made them feel like celebrities. Sadly, our camera has not been working very well lately and a bunch of the pictures I took did not turn out. Phew, imagine if it had happened on a really important day or something like that.