Movie Madness

Tonight was the big night.....at least for Anastasia that is. :) She has been waiting and planning for weeks for Eclipse to come out. She invited 5 other friends to come stay the night, dress in character and all go to the movie together. The theater had a special night of showing all three movies in the series ending with Eclipse at mid-night.

I wasn't able to take them due to still nursing Jadon and I also wouldn't survive staying up that late! Jay was lucky enough to be the chaperon (lol). He was a good sport and even had a good time. The first movie started at 7:00 but they got there by 5:30 in order to get seats all together because it was sold out.

They finally got home around 2:30ish am. and they slept until about 10:00 then I made pancakes for everyone

I know people have all differing opinions about the books and movies and we keep Anastasia in check with it all. She has a good group of friends that were just all having fun with it and taking nothing serious. (Except probably ooogling at the boys and arguing Team Jacob was way better than Team Edward.) ;0 What a fun summer memory!

The Cast!

Children's Museum of Phoenix

A BIG thank you to our dear friends the Roger's family for tickets to the Children's Museum of Phoenix otherwise I don't think we would get to go considering the tickets are $9.00 per person over the age of one. Dan got them from his work, so Nikki and I took the kids Tuesday morning.
It was a lot of fun and a great experience for the kids and a wonderful indoor activity on a very hot day.
Everything was hands on and great for all ages even Anastasia had fun but I would say it really wasn't geared for her age.
There were wind tubes to shoot scarves through.

This great big structure was made up of all old recycled metal parts. It is huge (3 stories tall) and the kids loved playing all through it.

There were two full rooms all set up for cooking and grocery shoping. The kids loved this, everything was so realistic.

Jadon even had a good time. ;)

There was an art room set up with stations for the kids to paint, color and cut at.

One room was set up to build forts with blankets and great big clothes pins.

There was even a "bike wash" the kids loved riding through this over and over and over again!

Mt. Lemon

Now that we have discovered how close Mt. Lemon is to us, Jay is ready to head up there every chance we get. He thinks it is fabulous that we can drive only an hour and a half and go up 8,000 feet and be 35-40 degrees cooler. So you guessed it we headed back up there Sunday afternoon. This time we went to the lake area and walked around. It was so beautiful and of course MUCH COOLER!

We are very excited to actually go camping up here in a few weeks.
I didn't get many good pictures. But here are a couple that didn't turn out too bad.

Tasha loved running around and kept wanting to throw everything into the lake.

Alexa my poser!

A boy and his stick!

Two cute girls!

Jadon is 7 months

Jadon is growing so quickly and he is completely mobile now! He can scoot himself all around and he gets up on his hands and knees and rocks like crazy. He is working on getting his hands moving. We have been blessed with another easy, happy baby (at least for the most part. ;) )
He is definitely a music boy. Music needs to be playing for him to go to sleep and his favorite band is Skillet. I am serious! Joshua is counting down the days until Jadon gets to move into his room. He is so excited and can't wait. We will see if the excitement lasts at 2:00am. LOl.

Summer Time, Summer Time.....

Summer is definetly here with all the heat! Although I shouldn't complain because it did hold off for quite a while. My goal now that I am caught up with my blog it to post more regularly this summer. We will see how that goes.

So what is keeping us busy this summer.....well the nasty stomach bug hit once again the week after VBS (only the three little girls this time) I think we have finally said good riddance to it!!

This year our summer is going to be filled with swimming, summer movies and camping. Anastasia dog sat for about a week for some friends from church. They graciously invited us to use their pool whenever we wanted. We were able to go over twice and had a great time!

We braved the zoo one Saturday morning. We went with some friends from church and the kids played mainly in the water play area. I love the zoo but I have no desire to go back until fall!

Then we finally made it to the "big pool" aka the aquatic center where we go every summer. Savannah is able to go down the water slide this year and she loved it!

After spending part of the day last Monday at the pool we came home and Jay really wanted to take a drive up to Mt. Lemon. It is in Tucson and we have never been there before. Jay is going to be taking the youth on a camping trip up there in July. So we all changed clothes packed dinner to take with us and headed out again. It only took us an hour and a half from our house to get to the top of the mountain and it was beautiful! The top is at 8,000 feet and about 25 degrees cooler!!! That was awesome! We walked around some, checked out the campsite and then drove back home. And we also decided that our whole family will go on the camp trip and the best part is we get to use the motor home again!!! Whoo hoo. I can't wait.

I think that catches up our summer so far. We did go see Toy Story 3. I loved it! We are doing school a couple days a week and I am planning out workboxes and other school stuff which I will post about. I also need to start preparing for Awana next year! Jay also has several honey dos' this summer such as painting kids rooms.! We have plenty to keep us busy.

Gotta Say Y-E-S to VBS

There are three things we do every summer.....swim, go to the movies, and Vacation Bible School. This year for VBS we were on Saddle Ridge Ranch, rounding up questions, driving home answers. This was the first year I did not teach a class in I don't know how long. I opted to just be a floater since I had both Natasha and Jadon to contend with. Well the Lord knew this needed to be the case because during VBS week the stomach bug decided to visit our house again! NOOOOO! Let's just say Tasha was having issues at both ends for most of the week and I will leave it at that and spare you the details. The other kids were fine and attended all week. They were fine until after parents night anyways and then both Savannah and Alexa spent the night taking turns throwing up in our bathroom. (I will be greatful that they were each able to make it to the bathroom! lol)

Anyways here are some cute pictures to share. Anastasia is already looking forward to next year because she will be old enough to be a helper so I told her I would teach and she could help decorate the room.

Natasha's 2nd Birthday

It's official we have another 2year old in the house!!

It was time to celebrate around here once again. I took the kids shopping one morning so they could each pick out a gift for Tasha. It turned out to be a very Dora Birthday! Tasha loves (to say the least) Dora The Explorer! We came home and Anastasia made the cake. Then that evening we had a family birthday dinner. It was nice, no big fuss or mess and Natasha had a great time!

Natasha, you bring so much love and laughter into our family and are such a blessing to us all! We love you!!