July's Joys

Our July was fun and busy busy busy.  Summer just zooms by when it's full of so much fun!  My older girls are in year round school so their official summer didn't even begin until July 3rd - crazy!  They both worked very hard throughout the school year to accomplish a long list of goals and all the hard work paid off when they earned their Distinguished Cub Awards.  So proud of these cute girls.

 As I was doing the ever-present and not-my-favorite task of dishes one day, the kids thought it was super funny to put the utensils in my pockets instead of in the drawer where they belong - so silly.

 We like attending the Riverton City Parade the night before Independence Day because it's much cooler and the route is much more parade-friendly than our own town.  Plus, we get loaded up with lots of candy they throw at the kids!  Here's our group this year - so much fun!

 Our 4th of July activities started with a breakfast that included my favorite patriotic fruit salad I made and a yummy breakfast of bread and gravy that Matt's mom made. 
  

Then we had fun SWIMMING all morning! 

 Our next meal included this fabulous flag jello...

 Matt and his dad spent all day building these rocket launchers - his dad's is a much larger version.  They loved playing with them and I'm sure they loved that all the kids were eager to run after each rocket and bring it right back like obedient little puppies playing fetch!

 The fun holiday ended at our house for an impromptu BBQ that was a lot of fun - more rocket launching into the school's grassy field, lots of yummy food and fireworks all over the place. 

 Some more joys we found in July included the fun of watching a movie on the side of our house!  Taletha had a projector and we had a house.  :)  We invited our neighbor friends the Wilkes over and we enjoyed snacks and watching the funny movie UP.  Such a fun summer activity.

The older girls were ever-so-eager to have a list of craft and activity options for their summer.  We made use of all the fun things found on Pinterest and made up a calendar for them.  This day was simply jumping on the trampoline with water balloons - entertained them for a long time!

Matt has been trying to finish up a bunch of home improvement projects we've wanted to do and some have been started but not completed - this is his latest big project - he's adding walls to build shelves and a desk/sewing area in my laundry room - gonna be AWESOME!  He even left an open spot under the desk for storage space and the kids loved it when he showed them that it makes a fabulous hiding spot for when we play hide and seek (the game of choice for many FHEs!)

  Our fun Spaulding cousins and Kiana were able to spend the night at our house this month.  They have kids the same age as ours so everyone was loving all the extra friend time.  This is a shot of the many girls having a nail painting girl party - Jacie was loving that they included her!

They tried valiantly to stay up later than us - but they crashed...some of them literally!

 We attended a reunion with Matt's dad's side of the family while they were visiting so Taletha kept them happy until we returned then Matt got to chat with Jeep about manly home improvement stuff while we women had a blast playing the new Heads Up game and finishing off treats.  So fun.

 While the girls were busy being girly with their nail polishing, these cute boys were having a ball playing with cars and putting Little People toys in my pots...hmmm...guess that's fun for boys!

 And we ended our fun visit with them with this fun toy.  Our neighbors across the street gave this awesome toy to us because they were tired of storing it in their garage - worked out well for us!  I loved this first picture because of Kinley's face in the center of the shot - hilarious. (just click on the picture to make it bigger...)  She's scared, she's cold, she's sad...she's a T-Rex?!

 Kam and Cam - loving the water guns and that I kept telling them to shoot toward my camera!

 FORTS!  What childhood doesn't include building forts at one time or another?  Too fun.

 July also brought visits from Uncle Lane and Aunt Mallory!  Carly got Lane to play Twister with her and we introduced them to the joy that is playing Rummy and eating popcorn.  They were so thrilled by the game that I even dug out a couple extra sets of Rook cards for them to continue the fun at their own home! 

 Cameron was a super hero one day and was thrilled with the cape I made for his favorite monkey.

 BATMAN!

 I made some cool flannel board stories this month and these girls enjoyed playing with all the scraps!

 Impromptu Paper Airplane Flying - man, I love summer nights!

 One Sunday morning...

 Alissa kept begging to rearrange the bedrooms so they could have a girl room and a boy room so she sent the furniture measurements to her dad at work where he used his engineering equipment and mad skills to print out these cool things from which we were able to make Alissa's dream come true. :)  I really like the  new arrangements.

 We tried planting inside-out radishes this year - red on the inside, white on the outside.  Not too many actually grew into radishes but that's probably because this beast took all the room!

 Matt's sister Sandy moved to a new apartment so we helped with the big job of moving all their stuff - quite convenient that the neighborhood is new enough that they were able to just drive the UHaul right to door in the back yard!

 The kids found this awesome dirt hill to play on - and I found this awesome photo op.

 Our July ended with a fun Fisher Reunion - my mom's side of the family.  LOTS of cousins for every age to play with.  So fun.

 Cameron figured out his Great Grandma Paskett's giant bubble wand...

 And Carly and I enjoyed doing a puzzle together - lookin' good!

Thanks for watching for our latest blog post and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about our summer.  August has already started with a bang with yet another reunion and a fun wedding/blessing weekend up north but you'll just have to wait until next month to hear about it and see some of the many pictures I took of our fun!  School will also be starting soon so the fun continues - enjoy your August!