Temple

We're loving getting back to the temple, slowly but surely! We got to go with one friend who received her endowment and another who went to do baptisms for the first time.

And of course, the best is being there with our kids. The first time we went, Ali had a cold so she had to stay home!

But we went again a few weeks later!

 

They like you to be able to staff your baptism sessions if you can, so its been fun to invite friends to come with us too!

I love the temple!

Jake's Food

Chef Jake still likes to help cook.

When he finds recipes in magazines he wants to try them out; this was rainbow pizza as suggested in his Highlight's Magazine.

He still loves cherry tomatoes, maybe too much. He ate a huge tub of them (that was brand new and meant to last the week) in one sitting!

Stitches

Eli was out riding his bike and came in with blood pouring out of his mouth! He'd hit a parked car and managed to cut open his lip pretty good. I wasn't overly worried about it because it didn't seem deep and actually stopped bleeding pretty fast, but it looked pretty ugly. I texted my mom a picture to get her thoughts, and she showed it to my nurse brother who recommended going to an urgent care to see if he needed stitches. He did. In fact, he needed seven stitches. He is our first (and hopefully last) stitches experience, and Jason said he was so brave. 

He's been very patient with his lip that swelled to about twice it's normal size for a couple of days, and me putting Vaseline on it all the time. A week later it looks a lot better and we're glad for modern medical care!

Young Women's Camp

Ali had a wonderful time at our ward's young woman's camp. Between the fact that Jason was lucky enough to be with her for the first couple of days and the fact that it was ran by mothers, we have a lot more pictures of her experience than we do of Logan's!

They did some fun ropes' courses and ziplining activities.

They camped right next to a beautiful river!

All the girls loved doing her hair:)

Kayaking was fun and Ali was proud that because she had done it before she was one of the fastest girls.

The white water rafting was clearly the highlight!

We're so thankful to the leaders who worked so hard to make this great week possible!

Children's Museum Covid Style

The Children's Museum is open again after about a year and a half of being closed. It closed when we had about 2 months of membership left, which of course they pushed out to let us use now. It actually worked out pretty well for us: Jake was kind of over the museum a year and a half ago, so I doubt we would have gone much, if at all, those last couple months of membership. But now that we haven't been there in so long, it's fun and new again just in time for summer. Eli even humored us and came too, which made it even more fun!

Young Men's Camp

Logan got to go to his first Young Men's Camp this year! They went camping at Starved Rock for a few days and had a great time, in spite of the 90-100 degree heat! Logan's favorite part was white water rafting, and his least favorite was slicing open his arm the first night. He came back super tan and tired; seems like proof of a good time to me!

Chick Flick

I had a movie I really wanted so see, and so I invited one of my best friends to go along! We also invited some of our mom/girl friends to come too, but no one else could make it. We didn't mind; we had the whole theater to ourselves and loved the reclining seats!

 

Dinosaurs!

I found this random Dinosaur Experience being put on in the parking lot of our mall and decided we needed to go. There were dozens of life-sized dinosaur replicas and a soundtrack to listen to as you drove through. Something different to do anyway!

Jake thought it was amazingly fun, and the older three thought it was amazingly fun to mock the soundtrack (which was a little corny). We all thought this huge alligator look-alike was so cool! 

Got us out of the house!