Summer Fun...So far

Already this summer has been a busy one, but we've been having lots of fun! I've been really busy in the mornings teaching swim lessons, so we've only had the afternoons to have some real fun. We've gone to movies, gone swimming, had friends over, and had an end of season baseball swim party here at our house. Here are some other things that we've been up too.

Here is what I've been doing every day until noon, swim lessons. It's been fun, but after 3 hours of being in the sun, it tires me out! The kids are so cute though. :)

A friend of Nick's gave him some tickets to a DBacks game, so he took Cole. This was actually before school was out, but it was during the final week of school so I guess that qualifies as summertime. They were handing out these Tony Pena masks to everyone, so Nick took Cole's picture with it, haha.

Someone brought these giant cookies to the Twins end of season baseball party. Aren't they cool? The party was a swim party here at our house and these cookies had all of the kids names on them. The boys loved them. Sadly, these are the only pictures I got of the party. I kept forgetting to snap photos of all the kids. People were being pushed in the pool too so I was kind of scared to take the camera outside. I didn't want it to be thrown in the pool by mistake. Someone got thrown in and his cell phone was in his pocket, OOPS! ;) It was a lot of fun!













Here is a picture of the boys climbing a tree at their grandparents house one Sunday afternoon. Loads of fun!

We made a trip to Amazing Jake's the other night and sadly I left my camera in the car. It's a really cool place with tons of stuff to do there. They have an all you can eat buffet that is massive and then they have all kinds of fun things to do there like Laser Tag, Go Karts, Bumper Cars, Bowling, Mini Golf, a Mini Rollercoaster, and lots of video games. We won a gift card to there and had some coupons, so we went for family night and had a great time.

More summer fun photos to come soon! We leave for California on the 18th of July, so I will have lots of fun pictures to post. We plan on going to Legoland and of course the beach! I will update our trip while we're there! :)

Salsa Festival!

Every year our City of Maricopa puts on an awesome Salsa Festival! People come out and prepare their famous salsa's and everyone gets to sample them and then vote for their favorite. They have a fun kids area there, as well as some vendors that sell items or enter people into a drawing to win free things. Oh, and let's not forget the yummy food vendors! Snow cones, cotton candy, barbeque, hot dogs, ice cream and my favorite, Fry Bread! They passed out bags of chips so you have something to sample the salsa with too. So I had some delicious salsas, a snow cone and Fry Bread! Mmm, it doesn't get much better than that! It's all free too except for the food that you want to eat. Well the salsa samples are free too of course. Here are some pictures from the kids area where the games and bouncy house things were.

Cole is just coming down a slide that is part of a bouncy house thing. When are they going to be too old for these things? The lines are long and then they only get 5 min to jump around. There were a lot of different ones there and I let them pick one to do. Good thing it had a slide or they might have been super bored.

Jacob is actually pausing for a picture on the bouncy house.

Now here he is coming down the slide.

They played this hammer game where you have to hit it and ring the bell. I guess the hammer was heavy they said. They did great though!

Here is Jacob with his wicked spider face painting! He was thrilled with it. Did I mention that all of this stuff was FREE? LOVE it! :)

Spring has sprung!

Here it is the last day of March and it's looking and feeling like Spring! I love it! Summer is just around the corner and we're excited! We have about 2 months of school left. Summertime is going to be HOT, so I'm enjoying this beautiful weather that we are having now. Can't wait for swim season though. The pool is warming up! :)

I found some old pictures that were taken at spring time that I wanted to share.

Cole is 15 months old in this picture. It's taken at the Temple grounds and it's one of my favorites of him. :) Pretty flowers in the background.

This was taken at Easter time at our old house. Jacob was 2 years old and Cole was 4. I love the smile on Cole's face here. So cute!

Then of course one with the Easter Bunny. Jacob was 3 years old here and he's looking pretty brave! :)

These are the pretty flower fields near my parents home in CA. We took this picture when we were there last year at spring break. Love it!

Here is Nick and the boys in front of the flower fields also taken last spring break.

Happy Spring everyone! Enjoy the beauty! :)

Witch Mountain at the Drive-in

Friday was the day that the new movie Race to Witch Mountain came out, so we decided to try something different and take the kids to the drive-in to watch it. Nick and I haven't been to the drive-in theater in years and the boys have never been. It was a beautiful night for a drive in and we had such a good time. We even saw some of our friends there that had the same great idea as us. I forgot my camera, but we made a bed in the Durango and the boys were super comfy there. The movie theater hasn't changed much since we were there last time which was about 15 years ago! Witch Mountain gets two thumbs up from us! So good! :)

More Spring Break Fun!

On Wednesday we went camping as a family up North to Canyon Creek. It was beautiful, but um, FREEZING! It even started snowing when we first got there and then again as we were packing up to leave. That wasn't a very good night's sleep, to say the least. There was snow nearby all over the ground. I'm not much of a camper, but since I'm outnumbered in this house 3 to 1, I was out voted. We were the only ones at the entire campsite. Probably cause no one is as crazy as we are to sleep in a tent in that kind of weather! :) We did have a good time though. The sun came out in the morning and we were able to enjoy the area and the view. The boys played golf and shot the BB gun. Good times!

Cole and Nick have been into playing chess lately, so they brought the chess set and set it up near the fire so they could stay warm while playing. Jacob is doing his usual thing, finding something to climb on. :)

Night time by the fire. We were playing some fun games and telling stories.

This is on our hike. Not sure what is with the Clone Trooper guns. Maybe they thought that they would shoot a wild animal that scared them, hahaha. Even Nick was getting in on that. ;)

Here is Canyon Creek. We had to drive across it with our car. It's built to do that, but it was a little freaky I thought. I kept having visions of the creek carrying our car away, LOL. It was so beautiful! :)

Here is Cole target shooting with the BB gun. They were having loads of fun shooting cans and other targets.

This is on the ride home. They were nice and quiet. Jacob had his iPod and some snacks and Cole had his DS. Ahh, peace! :)

This is a video that I shot of Jacob. He made up a little dance about the fire finally being out. I won't mention how they got the fire completely out, boys! ;) He was proud of himself for helping out so well so he started doing a little jig. He hammed it up even more when he saw me recording it! This kid cracks me up! :)

Hiking anyone?

Friday the kids had a half day so we decided to go to South Mountain to go hiking. It was a BEAUTIFUL, warm day! Our friend Lynda invited us to go with her so she wouldn't have to go by herself. It's a pretty easy hike and the boys did great! They kept up with no problem at all. It was 79 degrees outside and I even got quite warm while hiking! Where is all the cold weather? I'm not ready for it to be this warm yet. Isn't it still January?

Lynda and I at the top. There was still another 15min to go until the very top, but we were almost there at this point!

Nick and I at the same point.

The boys at the same part. Such a great view behind all of us!

Here are the boys at the very top. That is the lookout tower that you hike to and there are benches in there that you can sit and rest on.

Here we are headed back down the mountain, from the backside (I don't like that view), and then from the front.

Another one of us heading back down.

Cole and Jacob resting on a rock.

This cactus is almost as tall as Cole. :)

Here is Jacob standing next to a painted rock.

Another one of us coming down the mountain.

Their faces are kind of dark, but it was a cool picture of them standing by a Saguaro cactus.

We all had a GREAT time!