Park Fun

We have had fun at some of the parks near us this summer. One morning, I took the boys out for a bike ride and we stopped at the little park a few blocks away from our house afterwards. The boys especially had fun in the sprinkler that was running. They kept running over to it, getting wet, and then running back to show me.

When Camden saw me taking pictures, he wanted to see what they looked like. He takes the best pictures in selfie mode, so I took a few of us.

I don't know why, but I have this amazing ability to copy the facial expressions of my kids almost exactly. There is a picture of myself and Alyssa as a baby and we have almost the exact same expression. Well here is my picture with Camden. It made me laugh when I first saw it.

Tyler jumped in on the fun as well. They forgot to tell me that I needed to stick my tongue out for the picture.

We had some friends invite us to join them at this new splash pad in Bluffdale. I had no idea when people talked about this splash pad that it would be so nice and so gigantic. We played hard for at least two hours. The kids were not ready to leave at that point, but our friends left along with their shade tents, so we left too.

There is this park that I've been wanting to take the kids to all summer. Well, it isn't really a park, actually, but a small lake. We headed up to the splash pad nearby and when it was closed for the next hour, we decided to check out the lake. The kids loved it, despite the fact that we didn't have kayaks(or even life jackets) and that it was filled with ducks and fish.

 The girls were excited to show me that they could swim all the way out to the dividing ropes.

We only spent about 30-40 minutes there, but the girls have been begging us to take them back(and to bring rafts or boats or kayaks of something because that is what most of the people at the lake were doing and they thought it looked fun.
This has nothing to do with parks, but Alyssa had fun with the boys and my phone while they were waiting in the car one day. I thought this one was cute. I especially like her Indian headband😉.

We have been having a fun and busy summer. I am almost all the way caught up for now. The girls are finishing up tennis lessons this week and Tyler is in the middle of a 3-4 year old soccer camp(pictures to come later). And then we(me and the kids) leave for California and Danny leaves for Nashville on Saturday. We are looking forward to spending some time with Grandma and Grandpa and with cousins. I'm not sure if Danny is excited for his conference, but I am grateful that he thought of the idea to send us to California while he is gone.

Foam Day

Every year on July 24th, the Lehi Fire Department hosts Foam Day at a park close to our house. This is probably our 4th time going since we have lived here. I don't know why, but the kids love it. Walking through the foam kind of grosses me out a little bit but they play in it like it is water, especially Ashley.

Camden was a little freaked out by the foam and wouldn't even step into it. I had to carry him around as I followed the kids to get pictures and videos. After we were done with the foam, we walked through the different sponsor booths and collected balloon animals, candy, prizes, and business cards. The kids also played games and built a throne with these huge lego blocks. 

After the booths, we waited in the too-long lines for water covered inflatables. There were maybe 6 bouncy houses set up, but I only let them do 4 before we called it quits. Danny was already home from work by that point and we were heading over to spend the afternoon and evening with family. We had a lot of fun. The only down side was when Alyssa started to really be bothered by her allergies a few hours later. We decided it was probably from crawling through the grass infested foam. 

Bowling

While Danny was at High Adventure with the young men, I took the kids bowling. It has been a long time since I have tried bowling with them and I wasn't sure how well Tyler and Camden would do with it. They actually did pretty well with the lightest ball possible and the metal ramp.

They were pretty insistent about carrying their balls to the ramp themselves even though they dropped them a couple of times.

Ashley and Alyssa did well too, with the bumpers in(Alyssa tried without bumpers for a few frames, but gave up on that when she threw a few gutter balls in a row). Ashley is wearing headphones because she was going through a phase of her ears not popping like they should. The headphones seemed to make it not be annoying so she wore them for like 3 days straight.

We had a "buy one game get one free" coupon so we stuck it out for the 2 full games. I think Alyssa and I were the only ones that actually enjoyed the whole second games. The others were pretty much done after the first.

After bowling, we played a few arcade games, picked some prizes, and then headed home.