Hooray, it's blogging time again! At least for now; fall is approaching, and with it, many many busy days! But our summer, with a few exceptions, was fairly laid-back and not over-crowded. That should make it easy to blog about, right?!? (I hope!). Anyway, here are some of the ways we spent our summer break:
The girls had a wild weekend and dyed their hair. One of Celeste's best buddies, Alissa, has often dyed the tips of her hair blue, just for funsies. Recently, several of my friends (grown women, mind you!) have taken the plunge as well, adding bright red/purple/maroon streaks to their hair. The girls (and me, too!) have been curious about dying our hair for a little while now. Finally we had our chance; there was no school;
Sally Beauty Supply had a big sale on all their semi-permanent dyes; and it was too hot to do anything else anyway.
So, I invited Alissa, her two brothers, and her mother Jasmine over for some serious hair-coloring:
The girls were all very patient, thankfully (the process involves massaging the gooey dye onto the hair, wrapping the hair in foil, then letting it sit for about an hour, keeping it warm). Each girl wanted different colors in their hair, and each girl had different ideas about how much color they wanted. Jasmine (Alissa's mom) was a total champ, staying on her feet for a really long time and patiently taking care of each of them. I hope the lunch we fed her kids was payment enough!!
Celeste wanted her whole head purple (in other words, she wanted to look like the character Mal from the Disney TV movie
Descendants. As a result, coloring her hair took more time than it did for any of the other girls.
But the results were pretty brilliant! I loved Celeste with purple hair; she looked very sassy and bold.
Lorelai and Aurora both chose lighter colors; Lorelai got several purple streaks in her hair, and Aurora (the most conservative of the girls) decided on just a couple of pink streaks.
They all looked very cute! And to make things better, we had a dinner date with Grandma Barrett that same night at the
Green Valley Country Club. It was a great opportunity for the girls to show off their new looks.
The only downside to the dye jobs? They didn't last too long! The girls went swimming in the pool the very next day, and most of the dye washed out. Celeste's was all gone in just a couple of days (to her great disappointment). This, however, was not a total surprise, given that: A. Celeste's hair is darker than her sisters', and B. Celeste LOVES to swim and dive underwater, thus speeding up the "bleeding-away" process of the dye.
However, we managed to get some great pictures in before we lost all the dye, and we learned a few things about what to do for next time. We have a bunch more dye we bought this summer, and the girls want to try a few different colors out during winter break. We'll see how it goes!
The girls each got a workout (or two). Since our charter school doesn't have any sports programs to speak of, we are sometimes forced to improvise (or wait until summer) for our girls to get their fitness "fix." That was the case this year, as each girl took their turn participating in our clubhouse's fun (and FREE!) "Be Well" fitness camps that they hold each summer.
These camps aren't anything amazing or groundbreaking, but they do give kids the opportunity to get outside for a little while, run, play, and interact with other kids. It's a nice alternative to sitting around watching TV all summer! The kids get to swim, run, and play a variety of games, like dodgeball and soccer. There's a little yoga and Zumba thrown in there, too. This year, each girl participating even got a free T-shirt and water bottle. The program lasts four days, for two hours each morning. It's a great way to fill up the summer weeks a bit. They all enjoyed it quite a bit!
Lorelai also signed up for a basketball camp this summer, which was held at one of the local high schools. She has always wanted to play basketball, and while we haven't really had time or opportunity to sign her up, we hoped this camp (which primarily focused on basic skill-building and scrimmages) would be satisfying to her. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of Lorelai playing basketball (oops). However, she attended the camp with a few friends and had a pretty good time. She then asked if we could sign her up for a basketball
team sometime in the near future...and I tried to change the subject! I am such a boob when it comes to getting my kids signed up for sports, especially basketball, which is extra expensive and which requires a lot of traveling. We will have to prayerfully consider that option when and if it comes up...and if Lorelai is still interested after a few months.
Celeste also got a sports "extra" this summer; she attended
The First Tee, a golf camp for beginners held right at the Green Valley Country Club...which is a short, convenient walk from Grandma's house! Lorelai was able to participate in this program
last summer, and Nathan wanted to be sure Celeste had her turn. Like her big sister before her, Celeste had a great time learning golf basics, she made new friends, and she got to party with Grandma for a
whole day in between camp sessions. And, like Lorelai, Celeste
also got her picture in the local newspaper. I guess if we want all our kids to appear in the paper someday, we just need to keep signing them up for First Tee!
Aurora participated in the Be Well fitness camp for one week, but that was her only "organized" athletic activity this summer. Don't feel too bad for her, though...she played soccer in the winter and is starting up again in the fall! Plus, she and her sisters got to visit the pool
a lot this summer...
The girls splashed, they played, they had fun with their friends. We may have spent more time at the pool this summer than usual, but I heard no complaints. It's a great way to burn off the pent-up energy accumulated from sitting in an air-conditioned house all day.
Our local library wowed us with their activities. We absolutely love the
Pima County Public Library. The library and I have been BFFs ever since we moved to the Tucson area almost 13 years ago. It's a county-wide system, which means we can have books/movies/music/etc. sent to us from virtually anywhere in the area. They have been great about seeking out obscure books we have requested, and getting them to us. The service and efficiency has been almost faultless in all the years we've used them. And, to top it all off, they have offered
so many great kids' programs for our family over the years. We took our girls to story times for
years when they were teeny toddlers; now, today, there are still a lot of awesome programs to capture their attention and imaginations. Here are some of the library's summer highlights:
-Rodents Of Unusual Sizes! That's how this activity was marketed, and I thought it was a cute joke. I thought we'd maybe get to see a few rats/guinea pigs, and then learn about a bunch of larger rodents. But
I was wrong...we were treated to a bunch of really large, furry, friendly beasts. The most impressive creatures were a capybara (the world's biggest rodent, seen above) and a Patagonian mara (look how adorable!!!!!)
These ROUS's were from the
Tucson Petting Zoo, and all the kids in the room went completely nuts over them. My girls petted every animal there, over and over, for close to an hour.
But there were some tiny rodents on display, too...like these baby rats which Celeste flipped out for. This day began Celeste's current obsession...to own a pet rat someday. She has studied it on the Internet, checked out books from the library, and talked to me about it almost non-stop. This girl
really wants a pet rat. I hope someday we'll be able to get her one!
-Half-Shell Hero. The Tucson Petting Zoo visited the Sahuarita Branch library a couple weeks later, this time with a bunch of terrapins in tow. Aurora attended this activity, and she was dancing with excitement over petting these turtles.
-A "Coding Club" for the bigger kids. This was the first summer I'd seen this club offered, but we were very excited and happy to get Lorelai into the library's Coding Club. Laptop computers were provided for each participant, and the club ran every Thursday for a whole month!
There was a programmer on hand to help the kids out, and Lorelai and her fellow coders were able to create online accounts and do a lot of tutorials and activities teaching them the very basics of programming. I was so impressed that this club was offered for free! Lorelai may not have a career in engineering ahead of her, but she had a pretty good time with the club and we were both very happy they offered it.
We visited the library several other times as well. One really cool activity was an "inflatable planetarium," in which a visiting astronomer brought along a large inflatable dome, which everyone crawled underneath. Then all the lights were turned off, everyone laid back on the floor, and we watched constellations projected onto the curved ceiling. It was neat!
Another activity included a "Fire and Ice" science show, which dealt with cooled liquids & gases, and various states of matter. The "scientist" passed around little smoke-filled "bubbles" to all the kids, and set a whole bucket of dry ice boiling. The kids loved all the effects.
There was also a magic show...
...and an electricity show (Aurora loved putting her hands on this static electricity generator!).
Of course, there were also loads and loads of books to check out. Here's my summer pile:
I'm still working on it as of this writing! Almost done, though.
We went out on the town (several times). One new thing our family discovered this summer was the Kids Bowl Free program, which gave each kid two free games of bowling each week. We didn't go every week, but it was still a fun way to get out of the heat and (occasionally) hang out with friends.
The girls and I also managed to fit in a couple more short trips, like this one to the
Tucson Children's Museum...
Look at that hair! I'm putting these pictures on my daughter's wedding invitations someday.
We also went to the
Reid Park Zoo's annual "free day" for participants in the library's summer reading program (See?? Even when we're not visiting the library, they're
still helping us out by giving us free stuff elsewhere! Our library is the best!!). I've posted many pictures from the zoo on the blog before, though not as many in recent months, now that we are no longer members there. However, we got to see a few cool things there...
...like this elephant "training" session, in which one of the female elephants came
right up to this large gate, put her trunk through a small window, and interacted with both the keepers and the audience.
Everyone loved the "trick" of the elephant blowing handkerchiefs through a tube into the audience!
Plus, the kids got to ride a camel (again). So you know the Zoo trip was a success based on that experience alone.
Nathan and I actually got to sneak a date into the middle of all the summer fun! We went out for some West African cuisine (which was delicious, by the way)...
...and then we met up with some friends and participated in an
"escape the room" activity (the location was
Ace of Escape in Tucson). For those who have never heard of this activity, it's an interactive activity that's slowly becoming popular in many cities. The premise is simple; a group of people (either friends or strangers) are locked together inside a room. The room contains lots of puzzles, locks, and clues that must be solved if the players want to leave the room. There is a time limit (usually an hour); if the group can escape the room within the time limit, they "win" the game! It's reminiscent of a lot of point-and-click computer adventure games, but even more fun, since you're working with other people and in a real environment.
Our group was given an "International Thief"-themed room. Basically, we were in the office of a man who'd stolen a bunch of money, and was planning on leaving the country. There were several locks in the room, of varying types that we had to open, using clues throughout the room (and sometimes within locked-up boxes!). It was a little stressful, a little funny, and a lot of fun. We managed to escape the room with literally seconds left! To celebrate our great victory, we went out for ice cream afterwards. It was a really fun night and I would love to do another "escape room" date in the future.
The very next day was Father's Day, so Nathan got two consecutive days of celebrating! It wasn't the most exciting day, but we still had fun & games as a family...
...plus, Nathan got this incredibly fetching shirt. He is such a great dad and we all love him very much.
The kids and I spent a lot of time at the movie theater this summer too. Most of that time was spent watching older movies via the summer movie program, but we did manage to catch a few first-run features. We saw:
Finding Dory (pretty good, but not quite as good as its predecessor)...
...and
The BFG (based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name). It was sweet and charming, if not exactly incredible.
Last but not least, we took a small trip up to northeast Tucson to have a look at the LDS temple that's being built in our area...
I can't tell you how excited I am to have a temple of the Lord in our town. It has been really exciting watching it slowly come together, both through pictures online and by multiple visits to the site. For this visit, the girls were able to go inside the small visitor's center that's sitting just outside the construction site. They were able to talk to a missionary couple, play a temple "matching" game, and learn more about how temples are constructed and the materials that are used in the construction. It was a really informative, exciting visit.
We spent some time with friends. As I mentioned earlier, we saw our friends at the swimming pool a
lot this summer. Nathan and I did a really fun group date. And we were also able to run into friends through sports camps, bowling trips, and other activities in town. But once in a while, we had friends over to goof off.
Sometimes they would just wrestle with one another, like Aurora and her "special friend" Logan...
...or, in the case of Celeste and Alissa, they would take it upon themselves to "create" new dessert recipes in my kitchen. I had to supervise them pretty closely, but otherwise let them experiment (I admit to being curious about what bizarre things they would come up with).
In the end, the kitchen didn't burn down, and their cookies and muffins were (mostly) edible. It's not an activity I would encourage on a regular basis (that's a lot of cooking supplies I'll never get back!), but I think it was a good experience for both girls to stretch their creative abilities and pick up some skills.
And then there was the time we had most of the Jackman kids over for a couple of days! While Dad was at work, and Mom and Oldest Daughter were at our LDS stake Girl's Camp for the week, our girls got to hang out with their friends and have a bunch of fun. We went and saw a movie together, and also played at
Get Air, a large trampoline gym in Tucson. Lots of fun!
We discovered the Desert Museum's "nightlife." I'm going to end our summer recap with a bunch of pictures from our trip to the
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. For a few summers now, I'd wanted to try attending the museum's "Cool Summer Nights" program, in which the museum is open until late in the evening.
Attending the museum is a bit pricey, and our evenings were often otherwise engaged, but when Nathan went out of town for a few days in early July, the girls and I decided to give it a try.
Seeing the Desert Museum at night was a great experience; the late-evening light revealed new dimensions to a familiar place, and made it even more lovely and intriguing. We also discovered parts of the Museum we hadn't seen before, like this pretty little art gallery.
We didn't stay at the museum quite as long as we usually do (it was completely dark by the time we got back into the car), but it was still great fun. The cooler weather and light crowds didn't hurt, either. Maybe we will have to try this again next year!
If you have read all the way to the bottom of this incredibly long blog post, congratulations! Now you know about the majority of our summer. It was eventful but relatively unstructured, just the way we liked it. But this isn't the end of my summer blogging; there are a few more special events that deserve their own post. Stay tuned.
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