Vacation Monday: kids in order

Every two years we get the kids in order from oldest to youngest.  The parents then snap a whole bunch of pictures, hoping to get a good one.

2013 (we didn't have our act together, so they weren't yet in age order):

2015:

Try 1:

Try 2, with happier kids:

2017:

And that brings us to this year.  I'll admit, I cracked up at these photos.  Mainly at Joshua, who is just standing there in the middle.  We had a lot of these pictures since every parent was taking them, and for a whole bunch of them Joshua just stands there.  The other kids move around, and we finally get a smile from Joshua at the end.

(This one might be my "official" photo if I had to choose one.  You can see all the faces and no one looks too weird.)

We tried again inside, but I'm not sure the results were much better:

(This has most kids smiling, so is a pretty good runner up.)

Maybe they'll eventually be old enough to organize themselves and take this picture on the first day of vacation so they can tell the parents that it's done and already in our photo stream.

Vacation Sunday: pool day

Since we had all gotten to the house semi-late after having driven a long time, no one wanted to figure out what we were doing on Sunday.  So we made it a pool day.

First Doug got us donuts and we semi-relaxed as people woke up.

It was a nice pool, although the shade was lacking.  They had two nice big shade umbrellas...that were broken.  However, they did have a nice splash pad that my kids loved.  It was kind of sprinklers and had no big amounts of water that would dump on your head.

In the afternoon we took some naps.  The kids were pretending to play pool until Ben and Dusty changed it to air hockey, which felt significantly less dangerous.

We started figuring out groceries for the week.  This was more of an ordeal than I expected.  Not because anyone was fussy, but because we needed to feed fifteen people for a week and since everyone has different backgrounds, every food item needed to be talked about.  For example, bagels.  What flavor?  Refrigerator or not?  Is cream cheese on the list?  Then it needed to be put into the computer for pick-up the next day.  It was probably my most annoying time of the trip, but that's a good thing since it wasn't that annoying and was important to do.  You can tell how thrilled we were below.

Laura had made some delicious chicken for dinner, but the kids weren't eating.  However, they were there was going to be delicious pie too.  One kid put all her green beans under her chair, and two kids, including Joshua, got feed by parents.  Well, I guess three kids got fed by parents if you include the baby.  :D  The pie was wonderful.

Some games were played before dinner too.  Isaac and Heather played tons of games throughout the week, with other people periodically joining in.

Friday: galaxy bottles and target pad training

This morning we went to the library and made galaxy bottles.  We also got way too many books.  :)

This evening Isaac and I went to special karate thing that included target pads.  It was a nice thing to do together.  (I know we go to class together, but we're often separated due to size and age.)  Anyway, it was quite a bit of fun...especially with having some knowledge of what we doing.

Thursday: cats

I bundled up the tunnel yesterday and Tornado has taken possession of it.

Vacation Saturday: arrival day

We couldn't get into the house until 4pm, so we hung out at the hotel for a while.  Well, the boys woke up early so we went to eat and then found a near by playground.  I thought it was a cool playground, but the boys grew tired of it a bit fast.  It turned out that was fine, because the early morning shade was about gone and it was hot out. 

We went back to the hotel and waited for the pool to open.  We played for a while in the pool and then got back in the car.

We passed the arch.

And got to the house a bit after 4pm.  It was pretty good timing.  We got there first, but just as we finished getting our stuff out of the car the next group showed up.  There was a little bridge by the front of the house with rocks under it and the kids loved this unique play area.

The third group showed up just a little later with our pizza!

The last family showed up maybe an hour later.  Overall, timing was pretty good I thought as we weren't stepping on toes while unpacking, but everyone got there in the same chunk of time.

Wednesday: Crazy Bounce

Crazy Bounce was one of the top things that the kids wanted to do this summer.  It is not one of my favorite places, but this time wasn't too bad.

It was hot though.  I'm sure the A/C was on, but it's a big room to cool and there's a lot of bouncing.

I think this is one of the better bouncy items.  You try to jump across on the red balls without touching the water.  Joshua was able to do it by the end...I can tell he's getting bigger.

...and a picture of penguins for Ben.

When we got home Joshua decided he wanted to make squid popsicles.  I think it was based off getting squid shaped toast.  Anyway, we came up with a method.

Unfortunately, he was rather sad about it in the end because the tentacles came off too easily.  I told him it was an experiment and that we could try something different to make it work better.  The problem is that I don't know what that thing would be.  Any ideas?

Tuesday: a classic summer day

Today felt like a classic day of summer vacation.  There was some school work done, but it was in the form of a video game.  Joshua had gymnastics.  There was a boring errand. 

We also went to something at the library called "Science Tellers."  They tell a story with special effects and then walk through the special effects to show the science behind them.  At first I was skeptical.  It was a good story, but I wasn't seeing how the kids would connect it to science.

She also used a lot of volunteers, which is always fun.

We had some more screen time after that and then the boys wanted to play in the sprinklers.  (Side bar: The sprinkler people finally made it here to 'start' the sprinklers today, on their third try.  I signed up for an 8am appointment so I would be first and wouldn't have to worry about the 4 hour window, but they didn't show up until 9:30.  Then Isaac noticed one of the sprinklers wasn't working.)

They had a great time playing in the sprinklers with the tunnel.  I know it's for toddlers, but it's a 'safe zone' from sprinklers too.