Summer of Firsts

Charles has experienced many "Firsts" this summer.

1. He started swimming without his LIFE JACKET! Hooray!!!!

He is doing such a great job but still loves to use his jacket. Which I am totally fine with, especially since Claudia is still so dependent in the pool.  

2. On August 2nd Charles lost his first tooth!

3. He is learning to ride his NEW bike without training wheels.
He was hesitant at first and kept wanting to quit but is finally getting the hang of it. He still needs some more practice but is doing good.

 
Madison has now taken over Charles' old bike and LOVES to ride.

4. We took the kids to the LA temple for the first time. 
My parents ward took their primary kids to the LA temple and asked me if I would take photos of each of the children in front of the temple. I decided to take advantage of the trip and bring the family along. The kids had never been to the LA temple and since that is where John and I were married we decided to show them the grounds and the newly renovated visitors center. It was AWESOME!!!!
The visitors center is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!

The new background of the Christus is breath taking. I LOVE IT!!!!

He's how old!!!!

John turned the big 30 on the 29th so I threw him a surprise dinner party with a few of his closest friends and their wives. Luckily his friends have GREAT wives who are some of my closest friends too!

It was a stressful day for me (I just couldn't get it together).....the kids and I drove out to meet him for lunch. We picked up Sonic (Yummy!) and then headed to a park near his work to eat. Unfortunately it was a REALLY busy week for him so we weren't able to let the kids play. He had to get back to work. From there I dropped the kids off at my parents house and then headed home to finish the preparations for dinner and the party.

John was planning on working late since he had a TON of work to get done. I was hoping to just have him come home and have his friends there with no thought that anything exciting was going to happen for his birthday. But since he kept telling me he was going to work late I had to tell him I was planing a date night for us and I needed him home on time. So he finally agreed to come home on time.

The party was Minute to Win It themed. I sent out these invites

Each team picked a name and wore matching outfits. 

I had John's outfit hanging up in the laundry room with a note that told him to get dressed before coming in the house. Two of the couple and I were waiting inside to surprise him. (The third couple came a bit later)

He was very surprised!!! I was so excited!

We had yummy Pork Tacos and chatted for a while and then headed to the park to play the games.

For the teams we had :

R2C2 (Rod and Rose Cristales)

 

Lycaon (Brian and Sarah Woolf)

AVATAR (Reed & Carly Sorenson)

 Black J's (Us)

 We had a BLAST playing lots of fun games. We laughed so hard we cried! It was a great night.

We played:

Breakfast Scramble

This Blows 

 Face the Cookie

Bottoms Up

High As a Kite

Defying Gravity

Movin on Up

Marbles Grande

Separation Anxiety

Check out the slide show to see some of the fun we had!

Havasu

Havasu was a BLAST as always. It was a little bit tough with a baby again but all in all things went great.

 

Swim Lessons

The kids were able to do swim lessons this year thanks to Operation Splash and my parents. They really enjoyed it even though there were not the best students. 

I'm afraid I have ruined my kids when it comes to swimming. I have allowed them to be in their life jackets too long and now they are their security blankets. They just don't want to let them go. 

A few days into swim lessons they finally listened and did as their teacher asked. But still were very hesitant about letting go. Madison won't even put her face in the water. But she LOVES to swim around the pool with her life jackets on. I'm going to try to work with them more on my own and hopefully by next summer they will be more confident in their swimming abilities without their life jackets.
 
Are friend from our ward was the one who suggested we do swim lessons; her kids and some other friends kids were in swim lessons with us too. It was great!

Big Spender

Charles was given $10 for his birthday and decided he wanted to spend it on a Lego Sticker book. He has never really bought anything with his own money so when he found this book and decided that he wanted to use his birthday money for it his face just lit up. He was so excited!!! I had him pay for it all by himself and get his own receipt. It was so cute! 

The best part of all was when he gave Madison his change. She was very excited to have a dollar just like Charles. I guess I'll have to take her to the dollar store or the dollar bins at Target.  It was so sweet for him to share with her. He is such a sweety. He will often times share things with her because he knows that she wants it too. Don't think that he is a perfect angel by any means, he has his good and bad days just like we all do and he is only 6 after all.But for the most part he is really good to his sisters.

Great Park--July 9th

We went with John's family to the Orange County Great Park Celebration. It was a lot of fun. The kids got to plant a flower, go through a maze, have a scavenger hunt in the garden, eat YUMMY fresh orange sorbet, see an Air show, tour some planes and emergency vehicles, see some animals from the OC Zoo, and play a little hockey. It was a great FREE event. Luckily the weather wasn't too bad. They do have a carousel and hot air balloon that you can ride for free also but since it was so crowded we decided to come back another time to do those.

 

Daddy tried to win us some Ducks tickets, we won a key chain!