We went up the canyon for a campfire on Memorial Day. Since we got a firepit in our yard it's so much easier to have fires more often! But it also means we don't get up to the canyons as much, so it is nice to do that once in a while too! We forgot the hot dogs, of course (left them in the fridge at home—somehow we always do that!), but luckily there is a Costco on the way so we just picked up some new ones!
The girls went off exploring
The men took charge of the fire (look at these five men of mine! We were missing Abe, though).
Goldie gathered little found-flower bouquets, as she always does, everywhere
They adorned the table nicely
The girls, I am sorry to report, were in very silly moods.
Grinning Clementine
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I had been wanting to go to the new Deseret Peak temple, and my dear friend Cathy lives out in Erda, so when school ended, I set up a day I could go visit her. It was such a good day. I loved the temple, and Cathy has such a calming presence, I feel peace just being around her.
The strawberry bed Seb built for her is still going strong!
The pigs Tilly and Orien have been gone now many years. The bunnies died this year. :( The lamb Daisy is gone now too (just sold to someone else). So the farm has shrunk a little. But I met the donkeys, Clementine and…hmm, what was the other one? Maybe Buttercup?
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Daisy is pleased with herself for stacking all these rocks (just like Yumi) while waiting for me to pick her up from seminary. The number of stacks likely indicates that I was a bit late.
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Another planespotting picture by Seb
And visiting the burrowing owl (you can't see him in this picture)
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What has Gus been up to? Well, making Caws out of Legos, for one thing.
Being a bunny
Making forts in his bed
Being a Caw Man
Sam's mom let each of the kids choose a stuffed animal or two from her give-away bag. (Just what we need! More stuffed animals!) Gus took quite a liking to this hippo and this lobster. An odd pair.
I also got out the boxes of clothes the next size up for these boys, so they all had new (hand-me-down) clothes to wear and felt very handsome in them! Oh, I remember how much Malachi loved this plaid shirt. He wanted to wear it every day. And Seb pretended to be a soldier in the red one. *sniff*
Speaking of Seb, he took his little brothers to a car show and took these pictures of them. They had a great time!
Also speaking of Seb…and cars…he had to sell his beloved Forerunner. I thought I would be rejoicing because I have hated all the trouble this car has given him…the money and time he's had to pour into it…when he has so little money to spare…but to my surprise when he made the decision to put it up for sale I actually shed a few tears because I knew what it cost him, and the maturity it took. He loved his car, but it needed an engine replacement and he finally realized he just could not do that himself in any cost effective sort of way (let alone pay someone else to do it). He told me he hated to buy just some dumb car he didn't love, but he needed something reliable that would get him to work every day. (Hallelujah! He is learning!)
So he sold the Toyota to someone who likes to fix cars, and ended up buying a cute little twenty-five-year-old Acura which…clearly by divine providence…cost exactly the price for which he sold the Forerunner!
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I try to remember to keep track of this all day long, and I definitely always use the "snakes" when I need to, but one of the best parts of this system has been sitting together and reviewing the day as he tries to think of more "dogs."
"Remember Mommy, I ran and put my shoes away when you asked!"
"That's right, you should definitely get a dog for that."
"And I helped unload the dishwasher!"
"You did! Okay, another dog."
It is so cute and I always give a dog for anything he thinks of, because I love him to remember the times he was good. If you are at our house at bedtime, you will probably hear "Mommy, how many dogs do I have?" called down the stairs, and now you will know what it means!
Somehow this has motivated Ziggy where nothing else has, and even when he's at his most stubborn, he usually calms down after just a few snakes—and a while later when he has stopped being mad, he loves to find ways to earn enough dogs to cancel out the snakes. And he is SO pleased when bedtime comes and I say, "Gus, time for bed. Ziggy, you have five dogs, so you can read for five more minutes." It honestly doesn't matter what the actual bedtime is. Sometimes the little boys are already up kind of late, and would probably have dawdled for five more minutes anyway, but the prospect of these few "extra" sanctioned minutes has really been something Ziggy is excited about.
At some point he decided he wanted to start "saving up" his dogs until he got 60 of them, and then stay up for 30 minutes after bedtime on one night, and 30 more minutes the next night. He planned it all out, looked forward to it, and was very focused on this goal. He reached it amazingly fast, in just a week or so, with very few snakes to set him back! This picture shows when the glorious day was reached! (He has branched out from dogs and asks me to give him other animals too sometimes.😄) What a good boy he is learning to be!
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One of our little kid field trips (we're still doing them through the summer, but now not tied down to one area by the choir rehearsals), to a fun park by the Olympic Oval.
Ice cream at Macey's afterwards
And a bonus picture of Clementine at a park with Sam
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I took these two little ones to a pizza oven demonstration at a cooking store I like. It was fun because they were making all kinds of pizza in these outdoor ovens, and then just giving it out to try, and they had shave ice and some live music.
We really liked this fun food truck, which is an old fire truck converted to hold a wood-fired pizza oven! They were making interesting sorts of pizza like shallot and bacon, or parsley and pinenut.
A lady was painting faces (or actually…arms) and of course Gus asked for a Caw. He had one on his shirt which she used for reference. :)
When Clementine's turn came, she asked for a strawberry, which I thought was weird (I assumed that of course she would ask for a gnome) but I think now that she thought you were supposed to get whatever was on your clothing. Which in her case, was strawberries.
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Another little outing to an outdoor "Italian Market" in Daybreak. These funny stilt people were fun to see.
There are some new playgrounds over in that part of Daybreak that we hadn't tried yet, so that was fun too!
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Clementine dresses everything in doll clothes. Everything!
She loves to match Evie most of all.
Strong big brother!
Clementine matching "the bats"
Clementine in her own little bed (a place she can very rarely be found! She prefers Goldie's bed, or Daisy's, or mine and Sam's).
Matching bunnies, Creamy and Milky
And a real bunny!
Good little Nutmeg.
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Sunday evening choir concert in the park
Swimming (or rather, not swimming while the lifeguards check the pool. Why do they have to do that every hour? Why?)
We went to a free Irish Dance performance for Family Home Evening, and at the end they let everyone come up and learn one of the dances. Clementine really wanted to do it, and Daisy kindly accompanied her.
Clementine had (of course unaware of what the dancers' costumes would be) worn her green twirly dress, and she was SO delighted to see that she matched the dancers! She wanted to have her picture taken with one of them afterwards.
Me matching Goldie! Or should I saw coordinating with?
Goldie can wear my shoes now, and does!
May and early June is such a beautiful, beautiful time of year. I love it!!
It's good to also get those last sunset pictures with Seb's car on the street, in that place it remained for so many weeks at the end of its life. I also love the dogs/snakes system!
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