Random Cute Photos

September 24 - JD's reading has really taken off in the past couple months. Here he sat down with Annabeth to read her a book. 

September 28 - Now that she is a little bit older, Annabeth has been going over to play at the neighbor's. Today, I drove over to pick her up and found her riding down the street with her friends in a car. All the girls were dressed as princesses.

October 14 - We have been learning about 10 famous paintings this semester. JD seems to really enjoy it. For each of the paintings I have printed a coloring page. JD wanted his coloring page to look just like the real Persistence of Memory.

October 18 - While Dad was watching football on the big TV, Annabeth and Wesley shared a little small screen time on his Kindle.

Summer Birthdays

We celebrated JD's birthday a little late this year and had a combined party for him and Annabeth in August. We also ended up having a few friends as guests (which we don't normally do) and it was a lot of fun! The kids had a great time playing with their friends, swimming, and eating.

Annabeth has been asking for a playhouse for a long time. I couldn't find one used anywhere. When I saw this one on an Amazon Lightning deal I jumped on it. She didn't quite understand what it was when it was still in the box, but she loved it after Jerry and Justus put it together for her the next day!

 JD got a bike for his big birthday gift from us, but in all the craziness I didn't even snap one photo!

Annabeth's School Picture

When I took back to (home)school photos a few weeks ago, I didn't get a photo of Annabeth. I took a few shots of her on her birthday instead. She is an official student this year, working on some pre-school workbooks with me each day.

Keepers New Year

We celebrated the end of our first year (and beginning of our second) with our Keepers of the Faith Club at church this week. We have done a lot of fun things this year: fire safety, archery,  nursing home visits, and tie dye to name a few. Jerry and I are the group leaders and we think it was a very successful year. You can see some posts of our fun activities here. We are looking forward to new adventures.

Here is a photo of our group:

Bathtime Baby

Well, she's not really a baby anymore... but here is Annabeth after a bath tonight!

Library Freebies!

Wesley got a nice surprise when we went to the library a couple weeks ago. In addition to his free book and a coupon for free food, he won not one but TWO of the random prize drawings. He won a Captain America t-shirt and a $15 iTunes gift card. We didn't see the notifications on the library website so were totally weren't expecting it!

Everyone except Jerry participated in the summer reading program this year. Wesley was the only one who won extra prizes. Too bad because some of the prizes were really nice - iPads, GoPro, etc. We all got a free book and coupons for free lunch at Chipotle.

We used our Chipotle coupons for a free lunch on Saturday. We just had to pay for Jerry's lunch and three drinks. It took the poor cashier forever to ring us up. Thankfully, we beat the rush by a few minutes and I don't think it upset too many people.

None of the kids had ever had Chipotle before. Some liked it better than others. We had a good time and you can't beat the price!

Silly Boo Boo

Here are a few silly photos I've taken of Annabeth lately...

One of the boys popped the lenses out of their cheap sunglasses. Annabeth thought she looked very smart!

Annabeth didn't know I was taking this group of photos. She was standing on the cedar chest singing quietly into her microphone. I couldn't tell what she was singing. She had the microphone in one hand  and a little Bible in the other. She likes to stand on the chest because she can see herself in the dressr mirror!

Two Left Feet?

We were walking along in Costco yesterday when I glanced at JD's feet.  "You have your shoes on the wrong feet," I said. This is not an uncommon thing with Pickle. Jerry looked down and said, "His shoes aren't on the wrong feet, he has on two left shoes!"

What?! How could this have happened? Does a neighbor kid have the same shoes and they got swapped? No. Jerry admitted he had seen someone with the same shoes at McDonalds when we were there TWO WEEKS AGO! He almost said something, but decided against it.

We sat JD down on a 50 bag of flour in the baking aisle and took of the shoes. Two left shoes, two different sizes. One a size 13 and one a size 1. Just one size off.

So, apparently, JD has been wearing 2 left shoes for the last two weeks and no one noticed. He didn't say anything and I guess his parents aren't very observant either! And somewhere in town another kid his age is walking around with two right shoes. I wonder if his parents have noticed?

We finished shopping and sat down in the food court to eat a piece of pizza. What do you know? JD also had mismatched socks on. Also, not uncommon, but one was his and one was one of Jerry's dress socks!

Oh, Pickle! What are we going to do with you!?

I posted this on Facebook and everyone got a good chuckle. Grandma Linda summed it up best when she said:

"JD you are such an awesome little guy. You just go with whatever. Will probably never have any health issues cause by stress."

So true!

The Real Elsa

Annabeth was invited to her friend Brooklyn's house this Saturday for a birthday party. This family knows how to throw a great party! Annabeth had an awesome time!

The party had a Frozen theme so the girls all wore their princess clothes.

There was a little Frozen karaoke. Annabeth sang "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"

We made several crafts - a necklace, a sun catcher, a crown, and a princess wand. There was lots of great food. Annabeth's favorite were the powdered donut "snowballs".

The highlight of the party was a visit from Elsa, or as Annabeth likes to say "the REAL Elsa". Elsa did a great job. She stayed in character the whole time talking about Anna and the land of Arendelle. She also did a pretty darn good job singing "Let It Go".

Annabeth was a little nervous about meeting Elsa. She kept her distance at first. I love the photo below where she is peeking at Elsa from behind another girl.

Elsa painted each girl's nails. Annabeth asked if I would stay next to her while she got her nails painted.

She couldn't stop looking at her sparkly nails afterwards! 

The only thing she didn't like about the party was the bounce house and water slide. She has never been a fan of bounce houses or trampolines. She did get in, which was progress, but fell over after one bounce and came right back out. Then she refused to go back in.

She watched everyone else go down the waterslide though.

She went home to tell Daddy and her brothers all about it. And she was still talking about it this morning!

Let's Go to the Movies

We decided to take advantage of Harkins summer movie program this year. We have gone to single movies in the past, but this year we bought the passes and have gone to every one. It works out to be $.70 per person per movie. Although, they don't really make you stick to your day - we chose to go on Thursdays.

We don't go the movies at the theater very often so it has been a special treat! We have seen about half of the movies already, but it is still fun to see them on the big screen. It is something fun to do to get us out of the house and the air conditioning keeps us nice and cool!

The movie starts at 9:45am, which is perfect. They don't waste any time showing a bunch of previews. We get done and home in plenty of time for lunch. Annabeth is finally old enough to sit nicely (although she doesn't weigh enough to hold down the seat on her own so get her a booster to help with that).

Every week we see friends and neighbors we know. Some weeks we have friends come sit with us and some times we just wave hello to people we know. Grandma Molly and Grandpa John even joined us for one movie (Peabody and Sherman).

We have even splurged on popcorn and drinks almost every week. We figured since we'd be there so much this summer it would be worth it to buy the special cups you can refill. Then we buy a large popcorn to share. You are allowed one popcorn refill and one of the cashiers told me I could save the bag to refill the next visit. So that is what we have been doing. I bring red Solo cups and divide up the popcorn. That works great because the cups fit nicely into the cup holders. Each bag fills everyone's cup twice with a bit left for me.

Depending on the movie, it has been crazy busy. Thankfully, they open plenty of theaters so it hasn't been hard for us to find seats together or anything. Although, we have had to wait in some long snack lines if we don't get there a little bit early. We should have the theater to ourselves the last two weeks since most of the kids head back to school July 20th.

*Bonus points to you if you know what movie the title of this blog post comes from!!

Chef Hayden

Today I was in the kitchen chopping celery for our 4th of July potato salad when Hayden walked in. He saw the celery and said he wished we could have ants on a log. I told him he should make some! He thought that was a great idea. I cut the celery for him, but he did the rest all by himself. 

We enjoyed his ants on a log with dinner. Nice work, Hayden!

Ocean Diorama

Wesley made this wonderful ocean diorama as a project for our church club. I think it turned out great! The photos don't do it justice, a few of the fish are actually hanging from blue thread so it looks like they are really swimming. 

Birthday Boys

Well, after a short break we once again have a teenager in the house. Wesley turned 13 this year! For his birthday dinner he chose a trip to Old Country Buffet, but we made him go a day early on kids eat free night. :) On his real birthday, March 20, we had pizza and cupcakes.

Wesley is a great kid. He is an awesome big brother and my ever present helper. I can count on him to help with just about any task, usually with a good attitude. He doesn't have to yet, but he could run the house if I needed him to. He has a big heart, especially for little ones, and will be a wonderful husband and father some day. I am not even worried about his teen years!

We had planned to have a combined birthday party for Wesley, Eli, and Justus in February, but it just didn't work out. We ended up having one March 28th, which wasn't too late for Wesley, but was very late for the twins. Oh well, better late than never, right?

Here are the birthday boys...

Wesley

Eli

Justus

The AZ extended family came to celebrate with us. We went swimming which was a nice perk of having it a delayed party. There would not have been any swimming at a February party.

We will now have a teenager in the house until 2031 when Annabeth turns 20 and leaves the teen years of the Shown Family behind!

First Swim of 2015

All winter long we told the kids we would swim "around St. Patrick's Day". Well, we were a little late. Mostly because we had to buy a new pool cover. The solar rings we have been using the past few years are not usable any longer.

The new solar blanket helped heat up the pool quickly though, so today was the big day! Our first swim of the season!