Late-June Randomness

So far, this summer hasn't had as many Family Fun Fridays as we're used to. This could be because I have a new piano student who has been coming on Fridays this summer, so we're not available as much. Sometimes it's just other parts of life (like chores or church responsibilities) getting in the way. But no big deal! It just means that we're having our fun outings on other days of the week instead.

The second half of June was a little bit slower than the first half; we didn't "party" as hard, but we had no shortage of things to do or errands to run. This was more than made up for in early July, which I'll write about later (suffice it to say, I am STILL recovering!). But here's some highlights from the middle of our summer:

Reptiles. Lots of reptiles.

The library has had lots of cool activities offered this summer. We'd already attended two hands-on science activities, and now it was time for some more educational fun. A representative from the nearby Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum dropped by with several of his reptile "friends" from the museum. He was a fun host, with lots of random facts at his disposal, and the kids got to be up close and personal with the scaly guests.

The adults were offered a chance to pet the turtle, lizard, and snake as well; not all of them took the offer (because reptiles can be sort of creepy). I really love lizards, so I was happy to pet one; I have sort of fallen in love with them since moving to Arizona!

Lorelai's summer camp.

Just like her little sisters before her, Lorelai had a week in mid-June to participate in a summer wellness camp for kids, run by local health-care provider Carondelet. Lorelai was in the class for older kids, aged seven to twelve. This camp had slightly more challenging activities offered for the kids; instead of games like duck-duck-goose and Red Rover, the kids played soccer and basketball, as well as the yoga and Zumba exercises. Like the younger kids' class, the last day of camp was spent at the pool; however, the kids were limited to the water-slides because of the swim lessons going on in the large family pool. Lorelai was a bit annoyed by this, so I signed her out early so our family could go swimming together wherever we wanted.

Overall, all three girls really enjoyed their time at the camps; I'll definitely consider enrolling them for next year as well. I just hope I keep them hydrated enough; Lorelai actually got sick to her stomach Tuesday afternoon, and I suspect too much sun was to blame. Gotta fill my kids up with water in the summertime!

Lots of playdates--both home and away.

Summer can sometimes be slow and boring for my kids; the hot weather tends to keep us indoors more than usual, and friends are often gone on vacation...Lorelai's best friend Abigail will be occupied with family get-togethers all summer, for example, and Celeste's friends are often out of town as well. Worse yet, other friends have moved away! This summer, Lorelai had two good friends move out of state; her friend Elnorra in May, and her classmate Joey in June. Lorelai's other best friend, Hyrum, moved last winter but had still been attending school with her. This fall, he'll be attending another school as well. I sometimes worry about Lorelai making new friends when school starts again. I hope her fourth-grade year isn't too lonely!

But not all the summer news is so depressing. Thanks to the summer camps, the girls got to spend lots of additional time with their friends. We've also had several playdates with friends who attend other schools, and whom we don't get to see too often. On other occasions, we've gone on outings away from home with friends. For example, Joey and his brother Kimball got to do a movie/McDonald's playdate with the girls before leaving town (luckily, this gave their mom Lindsey time to get the house packed):

We also went to the Tucson Children's Museum with our friends the Balls. We hadn't been in a while, and it was nice to let them run rampant for a few hours while visiting with their mom and goofing off on my phone.

 

 

Finding good family-photo locations.

It's been a few years since we've updated our family photo. We really love our previous batch of family photos, but the girls have gotten older (and Nathan and I have gotten older AND fatter), so we figured it was time for an update. We decided to speed up the process when we discovered that our friends, the Ransoms, were about to move from Arizona to Utah. Nathan and Gavin Ransom have been exercise and board-game buddies for a long time, and Aurora and their son Benson are apparently going to get married when they're grown-ups (according to Aurora, at least!). Deidre Ransom, among her many talents, is a good amateur photographer, and I'd long wanted her to take our family photos.

Realizing that Deidre was about to skip town on us (the nerve!) made me that much more motivated to find a good spot for family pictures! We'd originally planned on taking pictures in Madera Canyon again, but I thought it might be a nice change of pace to have "city-based" pictures.

One location I've wanted to take pictures of for a while is the Green Valley Mall. It's a "mall" in the sense that it's a group of retail sites linked together by brick and mortar; it is not, however, a mall that would be very fun for teenagers to hang around. Many of the suites are vacant or only sporadically open; the majority of the stores are locally-owned businesses (although an Ace Hardware does anchor the mall); and most of the businesses cater almost exclusively to the retiree set that populates most of Green Valley. That said, the Green Valley Mall has some vibrant, idiosyncratic architecture that I thought might make a nice backdrop for our pictures. Nathan wasn't as convinced as I was, so the girls and I took a short trip to the mall one afternoon to take a few "sample" shots:

The girls, of course, couldn't help hamming it up. However, that did result in some cute pictures of my own.

Nathan approved of the location, and just a few days later, we visited the mall again, this time with Deidre in tow. She took lots of pictures, and the girls behaved themselves and smiled sweetly for maybe 25% of them. Oh well; Photoshop is a miraculous thing. It was really fun to be photographed by a friend, and the few pictures we've seen so far look quite nice. I look forward to seeing the rest of her pictures (and sharing some of them here on the blog in the future!).

And the rest?

You know...the usual summertime stuff. Substitute teaching Primary classes in church (summertime is when lots of people, including teachers, leave on vacation). Catching the odd movie in theaters; the whole family finally watched The LEGO Movie at the summer movie matinee (we all loved it, for the record), and Nathan and I snuck out for a quick date to see X-Men Days of Future Past (which was pretty good, if not quite as good as its predecessor, X-Men: First Class). I hosted a sparsely attended book club (no surprise, since it's the middle of summer; those that came had a great time). We had a couple of dinner invitations (one to Nathan's parents' house with the sister missionaries; one to our next-door neighbors). We got our temple recommends renewed. I attended a church activity that showed us how to change tires (I hope I remember that for the future!). More swimming, more games, more fun. It's been a good summer so far.