Remember in my last post I wrote how busy we are- with fun stuff- this summer? Here are a few of the more major fun things we did in the last week. Besides big stuff we also go on a lot of bike rides, have playdates, and go to the park.
Swimming
So you can't really see her, but that little person splashing around in the water is Julia. The goal this summer was to get her to swim. We finished a third and final round of swimming lessons for the summer last week and she did it! Julia made a lot of progress from the first lessons to the last and she is now able to swim on her own- not with a lot of finesse or style, but she can make it from one side of the pool there to the other without touching and without help-and really enjoys it. I was talking to the kids today about how some people are professional bike riders (versus Robert who is an amateur) and Julia said, "I want to be a professional swimmer!"
Micah also did three rounds of lessons and did really great. He is making a lot of progress and I bet we will get him swimming next summer since he is not afraid of the water.
Julia's big hangup with learning to swim had been that she didn't like getting her face wet. Once we got her goggles and she could open her eyes under water she had a blast. Here she wanted me to take a picture so she could see her raccoon eyes after taking off her goggles.
Hogle Zoo
We have zoo passes this year so we have also been to the zoo a few times this summer.
Julia wanted to stop and get her picture taken here, and the boys wanted a turn too. I love how they all got into it (although I have no idea if Camden knew what was going on).
This is from another zoo day earlier this month. They have four zoo storytimes for members during the year where they read a book and have an animal from the book come visit. The book they read had a bunch of animals and as they were taking the animal out they had us guessing what animal they brought. I thought it was going to be a turtle. Boy was I wrong! Julia was excited to pet the boa of course, but I was surprised that both the boys wanted to as well. (no pictures of them because I was helping the boys pet her)
I remember measuring up to these when I was little. Hogle Zoo has changed a lot since I was young, but they still have certain things like this that live on.
I scheduled into our calendar that last Saturday we were going to do some home improvements (we have a long list of half done projects around the house to complete). But then I remembered we told my family we were going to Lagoon with them that day. Home improvements get pushed back to another day!
Our little family got there before my parents and brothers and went to the water park for an hour since no one else wanted to do that. The kids had fun, but the skinnier ones started to get cold after an hour anyway. Robert, Me,...and Camden were all fine, but the other two were ready to get out and warm up.
Micah was just barely tall enough to ride all of the kids rides, even the most "extreme." I was wondering if he was going to freak out on this ride- or love it.
The ride goes up like in this picture and then spins them and drops them down quickly, then rises up and down several times.
Aunt Reah was scared, Micah loved it. Of course, because he's crazy like that.
Camden got to go on a lot of rides too. He wanted to be included with the big kids and insisted on going on whatever the big kids were going on. Except unlike Micah he is pretty cautious. But if he was tall enough for the ride, I let him go (with Julia if adults weren't allowed). He looked a little shocked on some of them (eyes wide, mouth wide open), but didn't cry.
The baby boats was one of the tamest rides and he happily waved to us every time he came around.
There was one ride that he had to ride in his own little car and it freaked him out not having anyone else there with him (but he had insisted he wanted to ride it) and he cried and shook his head no during the short ride.
Then there was the child size roller coaster. We got in line for it. He was technically tall enough to ride with an adult. But after watching how fast it went my mom and I decided he would probably not like it so my mom got out of line with him. But Camden kept insisting he wanted to go on it, pointing at it and saying "fast" and trying to wriggle away back into line. Finally they got back in line. I warned Camden it was fast and asked if he wanted to ride it with me or with Grandpa Sandberg (who was holding him). He tapped Grandpa Sandberg on the chest turned toward him, so Grandpa Sandberg it was.
They sat a couple cars behind Julia and I, and as soon as the ride started I heard him scream. He cried for the entire (short) ride, but then stopped crying as soon as we got off and said astonished, "Choo choo fast! Fast Choo choo!" And he kept babbling on about his ride on the fast choo choo to everyone.
Silver Lake
School starts up this week so we won't be able to go as many places during the day (or at least we can't tell Julia about any fun places we go without her) so we did a last hike to Silver Lake today. We saw two big moose really close to the trail (Camden loves saying "Moose!"), lots of duck (Camden also loves saying "Duck!"), some squirrels, birds, and fish. .
I opted to make Camden walk the entire .8 mile instead of bringing the hiking backpack. So we went slow- but only because we kept stopping. Camden has two speeds, stopped and running. So he would run, stop and look at something and I would have to convince him to keep walking, and then he would take off running again. Unfortunately he likes to do that lately in public places too and he doesn't care if I am running after him or not! What a little stinker!
