You would think I would learn that Summer Break doesn't actually mean that I get a break. This summer has been so BUSY and we're only two weeks into it!! In fact, it isn't even officially summer yet! Our first major adventure of the "summer" was the weekend we spent up in Montana visiting Grandma Staples. It was so fun to see James and Aimee and their family and we all had a great time visiting and watching the kids play - in the rain and the mud...I am absolutely sure that Grandma's entry-way will never be the same again. I had to take Katherine up to Philipsburg to buy "new" shoes at the thrift store because she ripped the sole off one of hers. On Memorial Day we went up to Hall Cemetery and found the family graves (Grandma, of course, knew where they were, but we had fun looking).
As you can see, the kids had a great time with their cousins. We sure do have some good looking kids in our extended family.
The Sunday after school let out we celebrated Andrew's 13th birthday. He is now officially a teenager! I'm not sure how I feel about that... The cousins came to celebrate with us and when I went to the cupboard to get the birthday candles, I discovered that we didn't have enough. As you can see, we filled in with tea lights we had leftover from jack-o-lanterns.
Last Friday, Tyler and I left the two little ones with Aunt Alice (what a Trooper she is!) and took Andrew and Katherine for their first ever trip to an amusement park. The picture is of us in front of the car before we entered the park. We didn't want to take the camera in and have to figure out what to do with it on the rides. I'm here to tell you, that was a smart move!
Our very first ride was the old wooden roller coaster. It was great fun, but Andrew wasn't sure that he really wanted to do this after all. He was practically green as we were standing in line. The next ride was another roller coaster, but this one was on a rail and went up in two big loops. If Andrew was almost green with the first ride, he was positively chartruese with the second. But the fun didn't stop there -- Tyler and Katherine insisted we ride Wicked next. This coaster starts by going straight up and then straight down with a barrel roll or two after that. This ride lived up to its name and I ended up with a wicked headache afterwards. Andrew discovered after those last two rides that the wooden roller coaster wasn't really all that bad after all. His favorites were the ferris wheel and the Sky Ride (which is basically a ski lift from one end of the park to the other). Katherine loved Wicked and she and Tyler rode it twice! I had a great time with everything (my headache notwithstanding) until The Bat. The Bat is a fairly tame, suspended roller coaster billed and a great family ride. It would have been wonderful if I hadn't lost my glasses on it and had to spend the rest of the day blind. That kind of took the wind out of my sails. It will cost us nearly $300 to replace the glasses, but I found that the rides were slightly less intimidating when I couldn't see what was coming up next.
Saturday morning Tyler decided that he would like to go to the Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg for their Father's Day Weekend show. This time it wasn't an actual Airshow like they have done in the past, but they had the planes out for everyone to see and didn't charge admission. So Tyler and I took the two little ones to see the planes while Andrew and Katherine stayed home and did chores. We figured it was a fair swap after their day at the park. When we got there we found that the owners of the museum were offering 30 minute rides up in some of their planes for varying (exobitant) fees. Tyler and always wanted to fly in an old plane "just to see what it feels like." So, I bought him a chance to find out as a Father's Day gift he will never forget.
This is a picture of the type of plane he got to fly in - a Stearman. The one he rode in was painted in the style of the WWII Navy training planes - yellow with a red stripe on each wing. His grandfather flew these planes during his time as a Navy Flyer in WWII and called them Yellow Perils (because they were the trainers). Tyler had a great time on his ride and was even given the opportunity to try and fly it (with the professional supervising, of course). They even did some aerobatics - loops and barrel-rolls. Needless to say, he was smiling when he finally came down.
And finally, Alvin. He is growing up so fast! He talks in complete sentences and does a very enthusiastic happy dance over every little thing. His most recent reason to dance is that he is finally potty trained! After two weeks of frustration, he has finally had three accident free days!!
Here he is showing his Lightning McQueen car - his coveted reward for learning to use the toilet. Alvin longed for this car with all his little boy heart and I'm not sure he would have bothered being potty trained at all if he hadn't had something to work for. He even takes it to bed with him and sleeps with his arms wrapped around it.
And to round out our (mis)adventures, yesterday for Father's Day, Tyler and I got to spend and hour and a half at the ReddiCare center because Alvin had dislocated his elbow. The poor kid was in agony until it suddenly popped back into place when they were moving his arm around to position it for x-rays. All of a sudden he was happy and laughing and moving around again. It was amazing!! When we brought him home he did and extra enthusiastic happy dance because Grandpa was coming to dinner.
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