A Great Weekend!

Today was the first 'real' day of summer vacation in my book. The kids' last day of school was on Thursday, but it has felt more like a long weekend with Memorial Day instead of summer vacation. School ended. It should get it's own post, but I can't bring myself to go back and recreate 'the end.' Suffice it to say there were tears of joy (and sorrow) for several days leading up to the end. We did several 'ending' events, but by now it feels like time to move on.

Friday morning we were just getting rolling and trying to figure out what 'summer' meant when I looked out the window and saw our street flooded. It just so happened that the city was doing some work on the fire hydrant nearest our house and had opened it up. What a great way to start summer playing in unexpected water! We all loved it. It only lasted a little while, but it sure set the tone for a fun time.

Friday night we did our traditional, annual trip to the Drive-In. We got to see Shrek 4. We had an enjoyable time with our friends. The evening was gorgeous, and somehow at their location in town there were NO BUGS which we can't say for our neck of the woods. When that show was over we loaded up the kids and turned the car around and then watched the opening sequence of Iron Man 2. (It was rather disappointing.) James would have loved to stay for the whole show, but he nicely brought us all home for bed.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures until it was dark and the movie was starting.

Saturday we went to our summer pool and got all signed up. Unfortunately the work they had scheduled to have done over the winter is still being done so no swimming yet. We also went the the nursery and started on our garden in earnest. There was also a photo shoot with Katherine to try out my new photo skills, baseball practice, running through the sprinklers with friends (I thought of getting up from my nap to take pictures, but I didn't), and the start of a new fun card game in our family -- BLINK.

(We have my sister Miriam to thank for the photo editing!)

Sunday was a nice day. Not too much happened. We had our second week of the VTC -- our own little training center where we study the scriptures, a language, have a music lesson, a home ec. lesson, and any other lesson we drum up. The kids are loving it.

Yesterday we worked on planting the garden some more and then made it to a Foxes Baseball Game -- another tradition. (I love how doing things more than once or twice can become a tradition! If it's something really good, I figure it can even be a tradition the first time you do it :) ) Anyhow, this is at least the third season we've made it to a Foxes game. They are fun for all of us, and we always go home with something. This time we went home with free T-Shirts for all of the kids and a coupon for a free Bloomin' Onion from Outback.

In the afternoon Katherine and I went shopping. On our way, we passed one of our neighbor's homes who had three nice pair of rollerblades out front with a FREE sign on them. I stopped and backed up and we checked them out. One fit James, one fit me, and one fit Katherine. We already have a pair that fits Michael, and Sarah has a set of 'Wheely' type shoes that has four traditional roller-skate wheels that can pop out. So after dinner we went rollerskating as a family. I was able to do really well as long as I was pushing the stroller and James showed us all up. We had a great time.