Children's Museum

 We recently went to the children's museum with our friends, the Francis'.  Our kids have loved this museum since day one and for the past few years Mimi (Ken's mom) and Grandpa Gene have paid for a membership for our family.

 Sky has always enjoyed the dress up area where you can sing and dance on a small stage.

 There were lots of shows...

 with multiple outfits...

 It was very entertaining!

They had a new exhibit of science and I thought these stuffed animal germs were very clever.

They even went on a road trip...

Summertime Fun

 At the beginning of the summer, we made a list of places we'd like to go during this summer.  One of them was the Irvine Regional Park/Orange County Zoo.  Sky is getting very interested in horses and they have horse back riding there.  Even Brad and Lila got in on the fun!

 Sky was grinning from ear to ear!

 We met some church friends there and had a fun day hanging out with them.  Below some of the kids were measuring their "wingspan" compared to that of certain birds.

 They have a petting zoo there and they even had a goat named Dora.  Lila really enjoyed the goats!

 We fed the goats too.

Another item on our to-do list was to go out for shaved ice.  Shave It! is a really cool shaved ice place and the kids were so happy to go there.

 Soooo yummy!

 And then there's our sweet cat Peanut.  There have been some recent coyote sitings around here so we hope that she can stay safe!  She is such a great cat for the kids!

What else have we been up to lately?  My days tend to blur together but I'll do my best to try and remember some of the recent happenings.
My brother and his wife Michelle had their second baby, a boy named Nate, a couple of weeks ago.  He is such a cutie and I am so excited to go and visit them and meet him in October!
We started homeschooling again on Monday, with Brad in kindergarten, Sky in 3rd grade, and Lila doing some preschool activities.
Brad was recently evaluated for speech and, thankfully, they gave me some take-home activities to do with him (no future appointments) and said that his speech development is withing the range of normal.
Ken has had orientation this week and starts teaching again on Wednesday.  He will be teaching an overload this semester.
We hosted a BBQ for our home group last Friday.  We will start meeting again every Friday starting in Sept.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the Lord will work in our group this year!
One of my students from MVCA in Cincinnati will be a freshman at BIOLA this year so I'm hoping to connect with her sometime soon.
I will be speaking on a panel for MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) on the topic of organization this fall.  Not sure I'm qualified but maybe I'll learn some new stuff in the process.
I am still on my weight loss journey although I seem to have hit a plateau and am a bit frustrated.  I started wearing a pedometer so hopefully that will inspire me to move more and be more active.
We (meaning Ken) repainted the kids' rooms this summer.  I'll probably blog about that at some point and include some pictures of the new colors.  They turned out really well.
I guess that's all for this side of the country.  Hope everyone is staying cool (it's been brutally hot here) and enjoying their last bits of summer.

More Summer Blessings

 Sky has wanted to take harp lessons for about 2 years now and a girl from our church offered to do some introductory stuff with her this summer.  Sky LOVED it!

 We recently hosted a MOPS water/bubble day.  It was lots of fun!

 Ken had built that white PVC pipe sprinkler thing last year and he hooked it all up again and it still works!

 The water might LOOK clean but by the end of the day, I think there was more grass than water in the pool.

 This picture is hard to see but some baby birds were hatched in a nest on a beam on our patio.  They were very cute!

Beach Day

 A few days ago we attempted to go to Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach but we found out that everyone HAS to have tennis shoes and we all had sandals.  Bummer!

 So we decided to go to the beach instead and it was so much fun!

 The kids collected lots of shells and Sky loved the waves and the water.

Ken's Camera to the Rescue!

 This is an addendum to the last post.  Ken had taken some pictures with his camera and I didn't even know it.  So, apparently, we DO have pictures of the other cakes.  Above is the Dora cake I made for Lila's party and below is the Hello Kitty cake that I made for Sky's party.

 And, yes, I even let the girls help me make the cake.  They got to lick the bowl.  They liked that.

 The bounce house company was a day late in picking up the bounce house so we got to enjoy it for a bit longer!

Party Time!

 Summertime is birthday time for our kiddos.  I have done the combined party thing but it is definitely getting more tricky as the kids are getting older and have different sets of friends.  We've done the princess/knight slaying the dragon party and the pirates/mermaids party but this year, Lila wanted Dora (which the other 2 despise), Brad wanted superheroes, and Sky wanted Hello Kitty.  Sooo, we decided to do something crazy-have 3 separate parties in 1 day!

We rented a bounce house and tables and chairs for the day and Lila's party went from 12-2.  It was very fun!  I pretended that Swiper swiped the cake and we had to consult the map to find out where Swiper's hideout was.  Brad was the Grumpy Old Troll who made the kids solve a riddle before they could pass over a little bridge.  Then we went to a tree in our yard and Sky threw ping pong balls at the kids and they had to look in backpack to decide what would be best to clean up the ping pong ball mess (a rock, a shovel, or a flower?).  We finally made it to Swiper's hideout and found the delicious Dora cake.  I made 3 different cakes, one for each party, but forgot to take pictures of them all.  I had let each kid pick out the cake flavor that they wanted.  Lila picked chocolate, Brad picked vanilla and Sky picked funfetti.
Then the kids played pin the tail on Swiper.

Each kid also got a pinata that went along with the theme of their party.  

Brad's party was from 2:30-5.  Isaiah was pretty funny wearing Brad's broken pinata!

 Above, everyone was waiting patiently for their turn at bat.

Brad's cake was the easiest since we just used one of his Batman figurines as a cake topper.

 We played a few games at Brad's party.  Sky dressed up as the villian, the Cheetah and the guests ad to try to tag her.  If they tagged her, she would throw candy out of her basket.  Below we played the wonderball, but instead of a ball, we used green hair gel, which I told everyone was kryptonite.  "The kryptonite goes round and round, to pass it quickly you are bound, if you're the one to hold it last, the game for you has surely passed."  Whoever was left with the kryptonite was out.

 Below is Sky at bat for the Dora pinata at Lila's party.

 Lila takes a moment to enjoy her Dora cake.

 Sky's party was from 5:30-8 and I don't really remember much of it, to be honest.  The exhaustion had set in by then and the kids were older so they were happy to just do their own thing.  Sky ran a game of pin the bow on Hello Kitty and everyone enjoyed her Hello Kitty cake.  All told, it was a fabulous day and so much fun to celebrate our kids!