Summer Games

In the spring I had the idea to have a fun "Summer Games" day over the summer break.  Seeing as we only have just over a week before school starts, it was about time that we did it!  I have been thinking about different things we could do, but hadn't really made a plan for the day.  So this morning Louis and I sat down and came up with a list of games we could do with the kids, then we went around the house gathering the things we'd need for the day.

We let the girls pick which parent they wanted on their team.  Mary picked me, and Avery picked Louis.  Our first game was the football throw!  We hung a hula hoop on a branch of a tree and we had three throws of the football each.  Each time you made it through you earned your team 5 points. 

For our second game we had 6 cups and some plastic golf balls.  Each person got 6 balls and got to try and get their balls into the cups.  For each ball they got in they got 5 points for their team.  

Our next game was one of my favorites of the day.  We had a big cooler full of water and two ice cream buckets sitting about 20 feet away from the cooler.  As a team we had to take turns filling a cup with water and transferring it to the bucket.  Avery and Mary took the first run down to the ice cream buckets and Mary put her cup of water into Avery and Louis' bucket!  We cleared up her confusion and started again!

Thinking back about it, this next game actually might have been my favorite!  It was also Avery's favorite.  Sack races!  The kids had never done it before and they did great!  Ethan even tried it out.  Which was adorable.  

Then it was onto 3-legged races!  We talked out our strategy and then hobbled along around the trees!

Mary and I won, but Louis may have let us.

Ethan wanted a turn after our race was done

After the three-legged race it was onto an obstacle course!  What we did was we timed how long it took for one team member to go through the course, slap their partners hand, and for their partner to go through the course.   Step one was to walk with a ball in between your legs making your way over to a piece of PVC pipe.  Once you got to the pipe, you dropped the ball and hopped back and forth over the pipe.  Then you walked across a balance beam, did 5 jumping jacks, and ran around both trees.  After that you went and grabbed a balloon from your partner and had to pop it either by stepping/jumping on it or by sitting on it.  The obstacle course was also a lot of fun and we all enjoyed it.  

Our next game was hopscotch.  During this game I learned something new about Louis, in elementary school (1st grade I think) Louis won a hopscotch competition!  What we did for this game was throw a Frisbee onto the hopscotch and wherever it landed we had to skip that square.  If you fell off you didn't get your 5 points, but if you stayed on until the end you earned 5 points for your team.  

We were almost done with the day, our next competition was a spoon race.  

Mary surprised us by doing really well with this one!  

This next one was Louis' favorite of  the day, cup flipping.  He liked it because the kids had to keep trying until they succeeded, not just throwing something and either they got it or they didn't.  We each had an upside down cup hanging off the table a bit, we had to flip it with one hand until it landed up right side up.  

Our last game was the Frisbee toss!  We had four mats on the ground, if you get your Frisbee on the first 

mat you earn 5 points, 10 points for the second mat, 15 for the third, and 20 for the fourth.

In the end Louis was very sweet and played the Frisbee toss game in a way that made it so the teams tied!

Everyone ended the summer games happy!  It was such a fun day of playing around!  

Possibly a new summer tradition.  

Chalk Adventures

We like playing outside with chalk.  I can't remember when I started doing chalk scenes for my kids to be in, 

but they love it and they are so fun!  Here are a few that we've done through out the years.

This one is Ethan

How we announced Wyatt's name

This one is Wyatt

Temple Square

On the weekends I always get the itch to go and do something different.  Most of the week we're at home or somewhere not too far from it.  A few weekends ago we decided to head down to Salt Lake and walk around Temple Square.  I think we've only taken the kids to Temple Square once before so it made for a nice little day trip.
On the way down I discovered that my niece Madison was with my parents so I asked if we could pick her up and take her with us to save my parents lots of extra driving.  It worked out that she was done with the things she needed to be doing so we picked her up in Roy and continued on our way to Salt Lake.
The first thing we did was find a spot to eat our lunch.  We had planned on just sitting on the grass and having a picnic, but they had signs saying that the grass was new and to stay off of it.  So we went over by the reflecting pond to some tables and ate our lunch instead.

Since we were already by the reflecting pond we headed up to the Church Office building and rode the elevator to the top.  The kids were excited to see that the roof of the temple is green!  After we got back down we walked to the reflection pond again and the kids loved putting their hands in there.  

We walked through both visitor's centers and went up to see Jesus.  All the kids loved it and of course Mary was the one to climb right up onto the statue!  We took a quick picture and then went and got her down.  After we were done going through the visitor's centers we headed back to the car.  It was a nice day together.

Cowboy Wyatt Jack's 1st Birthday

Just after Wyatt was born his Aunt Megan Westbroek (he has three Aunt Megan's!) gave him a short story she had written about a cowboy named Wyatt Jack.  So for Wyatt's first birthday we did a cowboy theme.  To Pinterest I went!  I found a bunch of cute ideas, but went pretty simple.  I put funny labels on the food like "haystacks" for the rice krispy treats.  We had family over and just ate food and talked.  We sang to Wyatt and let him eat his cupcake, then he opened some presents.  He had no idea what was going on the whole time, but we enjoyed celebrating him!

Wyatt was a difficult newborn.  He got an awful eye infection when he was just a few weeks old, he cried all the time, and wouldn't take great naps.  Around 3 months old though he totally changed!  Some of it probably had to do with him starting to suck his thumb.  It was amazing that he could so easily soothe himself!  Not to mention it was super cute!

After that three month mark he was such a wonderful baby!  He is happy all the time, smiles easily, sleeps great!  He is such a joy to have in our home.  We all love him so much!  Especially his sisters.  They love sitting next to him at the table so they can feed him his food.  They are a great help.  Wyatt is just about the bounciest baby you'll ever meet!  He wouldn't stand up for the longest time because when you'd put him on his feet he'd just start bouncing.  We love our bouncy boy!