Happy Birthday America!

Everyone was excited to celebrate America's birthday...it also happened to coincide with the ward pancake breakfast, so there was equal amounts of asking if it was pancake day.  Our week was much slower as we are done with all of our summer camps.  

We started off the week with playing with some of our favorite people.  I am always surprised at how well the kids get along.  They ran around playing with all sorts of things like knights, pirates, chase, tag, hide and seek.  

We also officially finished our screen free June.  The kids made it all the way through and I was extremely pleased with them.  I feel like after this the kids are much less likely to rely on technology for their entertainment, not that they did a lot of technology.  They play more games together and generally are better behaved.  I look forward to the day when we have more space to let the kids roam more outside.  The the kids were playing realtor after we viewed a house.  This is the house that was on the market.  

I don't have any pictures to document it, but I did some experimenting with canning.  I tried to preserve some lemons.  They are currently sitting out on the counting fermenting, so we will see how well it turns out. I also had a giant bowl of garden tomatoes that I made into spaghetti sauce.  The idea was to just make up a sauce that we could just dump on some noodles.  I'm not opposed to trying it again in the future, but I didn't really like the recipe I used and I'm not sure I want to go through the work in the future.  For now, mom's recipe wins.  It was amazing how easily the steps to preserving foods have come back.  It's been years since I have done anything, but it wasn't hard to get going.

Owen's little personality continues to develop.  He's becoming quite social at church.  We tend to wander the halls during second hour and he just spends his time switching between climbing on chairs and saying hi and giving hugs to people.  He also loves to get a book and read.  It's funny, because he doesn't really want us to read to him, he will sit or lay down and chatter has he turns the pages.  It's pretty funny.  This week he learned to say baby.  Any time we say baby, he will run to the stuffed animals and get a doll to hold.  Liam did the same thing and I think it's funny.

This is some of Lila's creativity.  I asked if she was making a flower box and she said no that it was a picture of flowers.  

Thursday was an exciting day.  The kids got their pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  Tim said that Owen slammed down three and was eyeing more, but cut him off.  The other kids enjoyed running around with other kids.  We stayed a little after to get a head start on cleaning the church.  It was our week.  I typically do the vacuuming...it's my thing.

We made it home for naps.  I made some homemade buns to go with our burgers and fries.  The kids also requested some lemonade so we made some of that as well.  We then went out to shoot off some fireworks.  We typically get sparklers and poppers, but Hyrum found out about roman candles and requests to shoot some off.  

So, the other kids got to shoot those off.  We only started one minor fire that was easily put out.  It was so hot on the fourth.  Summer in the south is no joke.  

The kids went home to take baths before going to fireworks show.  It didn't really work out, because the place that was suggested that we go was too far away.  They ended up going to do some more small fireworks at a friends house and running around for several hours.  They were all sweaty and very tired when they finally got home.  

Friday Tim took the kids to swim at the house of someone in our ward.  They had lots of fun swimming with other kids.  I went to finish our part of cleaning the church with another friend.  Call me crazy, but I really like cleaning the church without kids.  

Saturday was a vacation from out vacation.  We didn't do anything really special, except I realized the kids had never had cobbler, so we I made some blueberry cobbler.  Tim also was able to fix a chip in the car windshield.  We were going to take it in, but the cost was outrageous.  Tim used to do chip repair in college, so he just went to get a kit to fix it himself for 20 bucks.

Another end to another good summer week!