Bring Your Kid to Work Day

 Way back in April Dreamworks had their annual bring your kid to work day. You have to be 6 to go, so Emma got to go for her second year. She had such a blast last year and was SO excited to go again. The day starts with a big breakfast, and then Dreamworks plans a whole morning of games, art projects, and little mini classes. This year they did some outdoor races, and painted a tile to put in a mural. At the end, they have lunch with their parent and then get to collect a huge goody bag. At that point we met Jon and Emma for lunch and then headed home. This is such a fun tradition. Matthew can't wait to join in the fun next year.

Emma's tile

Road Trip!

My family's reunion was held this year in New Mexico. Since we were driving so far, we decided to go big and do a real road trip. I was a little nervous about how the kids (mostly Ellie) would do spending several days in the car and sleeping in different hotels every single night for several nights. In the end, I really had nothing to worry about. They were great...much better than I ever expected and we had a really great trip. Jon and I both have a lot of memories of road trips from when we were growing up and we have always wanted to be able to do a lot of travelling with our kids...let them see different places and really experience the world outside of our little bubble. We've already got next summer's road trip in the works and I can't wait!

So, for our sake, here is our little trip log from our first real family road trip. (We do the drive to Idaho at least once a year...so I say this is our first real one because it's the first time we've traveled somewhere else).

Day 1:  We spent the morning packing up while the kids had their last day of summer camp. Got on the road around noon and drove down to Orange County to visit our friends, the Kings. They were kind enough to let us come crash at their house for the night despite the fact that they were leaving out of town the next day too. I'm so glad we were able to squeeze a few hours in with them. We've missed them!

Day 2:  What a day! We headed off into the desert to Arizona.

Since we were so close, we went a few miles out of the way to see the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, AZ. It might have been more impressive if it hadn't been 105 degrees outside. It was a quick stop though...we got out, saw the bridge, and then spent the rest of our time waiting in line with everyone else in the city to get some shaved ice to cool us down. Then it was back on the road.

We had planned our day so we would get to our hotel by 5 or 6 pm and could go swimming before bed. Instead, we ran into monsoons (who knew there were monsoons in Arizona???). We spent the entire day driving through crazy rainstorm and crazy rainstorm. There was flooding, landslides, hail...all sorts of crazy weather. We trucked on until we came upon stopped traffic 20 minutes from our hotel.

Miles and miles of traffic at a complete standstill. Turns out the road had washed out. So, we let the kids out to run off some energy and waited. It felt like a scene from a movie. People were camping out, talking to anyone and everyone, kids running in the median. The first hour was kind of fun. Then it got dark, it was past dinner time and bed time, my 6 month pregnant self needed a bathroom, and all of our electronics just happened to be dead. We finally piled the kids back in and turned the car on so they could watch a dvd. Two hours later (10 pm) we were finally on the move again and made it to our hotel shortly after that. I dropped Jon and the kids off and headed to Denny's to grab some dinner. It was the ONLY place open in the entire town that late at night. So, everybody else that had been stuck with us stopped there too. It was insane! Sometime after 11 pm I finally got our food, we ate, and then crashed in bed.

Day 3:  Sunday....we went to church for the first little bit and then headed to the Grand Canyon in another round of monsoons. We were a little worried as we drove in, but we got lucky and the monster hail storm we were driving through ended as we pulled up to the visitors center. There was so much hail on the ground that the kids thought it was snowing. They were SO excited. (And clearly you can tell by the kids clothes we were completely unprepared for this kind of weather!) 

We were finally able to drag the kids away from the "snow" and check out some of the views. It was so cloudy and there were so many storms in the distance. I'm sure the views we got that day were very different from the sunny day views. But it was still very impressive and beautiful.

We stopped at all of the pullouts along the southern rim. We were literally racing another big storm that was right behind us and headed the same direction as us. We managed to stay ahead of it until the last stop, which was the Watch Tower. We RAN from the car to the tower in pouring rain...I'm sure we were quite the sight. 

After our whirlwind trip through the Grand Canyon, we were greeted with double full rainbows later that afternoon. So cool!

We made it to the middle of nowhere New Mexico that night and crashed for the night again.

Day 4:  We passed through Alamogordo...did you know the largest pistachio in the world is there? We had big plans to also stop at the space museum there, but had gotten a late start and were getting antsy to just be out of the car, so we continued on.

One of the stops Jon was most looking forward to...White Sands. I'd been several times as a kid, but coming back as an adult, I have to say it really is impressive. It was hot, we were all tired, and the kids were anxious to get to our hotel so they could swim. So, we didn't stay as long as we had planned, but it was a fun stop anyway.

That evening we met up with my sisters, Rachel and Esther, in El Paso. We grew up there, but moved about 20 years ago. Since we were going all the way to New Mexico, we wanted to take the little detour down to El Paso to visit our old stomping grounds. We met up for dinner at Peter Piper Pizza, one of our favorite childhood restaurants. After that we finished the night off with a swim at our hotel pool and called it a night.

Day 5 was spent driving around the city. We stopped by our old house, which looked surprisingly similar to how I remembered it. 

On a whim, we decided to see if our neighbors still lived there. Mr. and Mrs. Gross were our El Paso "grandparents". We were more than surprised to find out that Mrs. Gross is still there. We had a fun little visit with her.

We stopped by the swimming pool down the street from our house, where we pretty much lived every summer.

One of our last stops was the elementary school we all attended. We couldn't go inside, and it was well over 100 degrees outside, so we cut our trip down memory lane short, drove by our old church building, and then headed back to the hotel for some more swimming. 

I'm so glad we were able to spend those days in El Paso, and that it worked out to meet up with some of my family there. 

Day 6: Yep....STILL on the road! Our family reunion started this day, so we made a couple stops on our way to the ranch. 

We loved going to Hueco Tanks growing up and so this was a necessary stop. And it really is a cool place...except that it was over 100 degrees again...yuck! The kids loved exploring and climbing all over the rocks.

And there was no shortage of lizards, insanely large bugs, snakes, and other animals. The kids (and Jon) were in heaven!

After Hueco Tanks we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. I had been once as a kid and still remember it vividly. This was also somewhere Jon really wanted to go. It really is so impressive...the pictures just don't do it justice.

This road trip ended up being a lot more fun than I had anticipated (mostly because I was 30 weeks pregnant!). We thought we had planned it out pretty well, but of course things always take longer than you think. Every single stop we made, we commented that we really wanted to come back and spend more time. So, we may need to redo this whole road trip someday. :)

Musical Beds

I feel like we play this game every few months! We have tried to put certain kids in a room together and give other kids their own room, and in the end they somehow make their way back to the room they want to be in. It all started back in December when we decided to have the girls share a room, instead of Emma and Matthew sharing. Matthew was keeping Emma up late and she was exhausted every day when she went to school. So, we made the switch. And it only lasted a few weeks. Matthew thought it was pure torture to have his own room (he and Emma have shared since he was a day old) and Emma didn't like that she had nobody to talk to. When I pointed out that Ellie can talk, she responded with, "yeah, but I can never understand her". So, she was allowed to sleep in Matthew's room on weekends. And that slowly turned into "just one more night", which eventually turned into Emma moving right back into his room. Sigh...

So, fast forward a few months. Surprise! We've found out we're expecting another baby. I really didn't want to have Ellie sharing a room with the baby, but there was no convincing Emma that it would be fun to share with the baby. And Matthew wasn't going anywhere either. So, we toyed with the idea of having the 3 of them share...but every time we put Ellie in with them, it turned into play time that stretched into all hours of the night. Fun for them...not for us. We spent the entire summer battling this sleeping situation. Ellie REALLY wanted to sleep in the kids room. Sleeping in her own room became a form of punishment. So, we kept letting her try. Sometimes she was able to stay and sleep with them. Other times she would end up back in her room. And now, with one month left before baby arrives, we're pretty much still where we started, but with a few more sleeping variations thrown in for fun.

Matthew usually ends up in the toddler bed that we bought for Ellie...he says he sleeps better there than on his bunk bed...

And Ellie insists on sleeping on Emma's bed (see her there in the red and white?). They often end up in awkward looking positions with Ellie slung over some part of Emma, or Emma's feet resting somewhere on Ellie, but it works...except for the nights that we see Ellie wander out of the room after the kids fall asleep. She slowly carries her pillow, blankets, and other miscellaneous items to her room and puts herself to bed there. Sometimes it's in the twin bed, and recently she has started climbing up into the crib to sleep....agghh! No! I'm beyond the point of worrying or caring anymore because it'll probably all change again before the baby comes. :)

And that my friends is the story of our musical beds.

The Summer That Never Slowed Down

Every year as the school year is coming to an end, I panic a little. I am always ready for summer to come...for a slower pace and to have some down time with my kids. But, I always worry that we are going to be bored out of our minds. Somehow, our summers always fill up and before I know it, school is starting and I have NO idea what we did or where the time went from June to August. This year was no exception. More often than not I found myself stressed and exhausted, wishing that we could have just one day where we didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do. It was a pretty insane summer! So, since blogging was the lowest priority on my list (and I just haven't had the brain power for it this pregnancy), here are some of the highlights of our summer. 

-Emma and Matthew took swim lessons again through our city's rec department. They did one 2 week session last summer and loved it...but I swore off ever doing it again because it gets to be so much to get everyone ready and drive to the other side of town every single day in the middle of the day for a half hour lesson. But, somehow I found myself signing them up again...They ended up doing 2 sessions this time (even though I swore up and down we were only going to do one...ha!) because they were both doing so well and making a lot of progress. Emma moved up two levels and Matthew moved up one. They are little fish! 

- Emma also started taking piano lessons from one of her very favorite people from church, Sister Park. It has been a really positive experience. She is flying through her books (and actually skipped a few of the beginner ones because her teacher said she was too advanced for them) and making a lot of progress. She still voluntarily practices, sometimes multiple times a day. I know it'll end eventually, so we're taking advantage of it for now.  :)

- Matthew started gymnastics and loves being able to go with Emma. And I love that one day a week they get to go get some serious energy out! 

- Jon went on a million and two campouts with the scouts...and they somehow seemed to line up for 2 or 3 weekends in a row, multiple times during the summer. I'm not going to lie, I definitely hit a point early on in the summer where I hated the scouting program! Four days on a high adventure, followed by a two day campout the next weekend, and 5 days at scout camp the next week was more than enough for me...and Jon. 

- In the middle of the campout craziness, Jon and I were able to sneak away for a night. Jon's parents took the kids so we could have a relaxing getaway before baby comes. Because of Jon's crazy schedule and the fact that we HAD to get a new car before our big family reunion road trip, we ended up spending our "relaxing" weekend car shopping. But we got a car and were so happy to have that done and out of the way.

- Between friends and the YMCA, we were able to go swimming quite a bit. The kids have been in heaven! We had a heat wave for a couple weeks at the beginning of the summer and all the water time was a life saver! I don't think we left the house at all during those two weeks, except to go swimming or hang out in various air conditioned stores. 

- We attempted to do summer school. I had all these great plans and ambitions to have school time and do fun projects, read, get Matthew practicing his reading and writing...and yeah...that lasted about 2 days. I am a little bummed that it didn't happen. Emma was especially excited about it and I felt horrible letting her down. Sigh...maybe next year...

- I've survived my first summer being huge and pregnant. I've always sworn I would NEVER have a fall or winter baby...and I've been reminded a million times over this pregnancy why I said that. Hot weather, lazy mornings, pregnancy brain, and exhaustion are just not a good combination when you're home with 3 kids who have endless energy all summer. We've definitely had more screen time than I hoped we would, but we've all survived.  :)

- Emma and Matthew did their first ever summer camp. It was through the Lutheran church where they both went to preschool and it was a lot of fun for them. Several of their friends also went, and they spent a week doing fun projects, learning lots of new songs and games, and playing hard. They LOVED it...we hope we can do it again next year.

- We took our biggest family road trip yet for my family's reunion in New Mexico. It was an overall good experience, and the kids did amazingly well, for as long as we were on the road. But, this trip gets it's own post...hopefully sooner than later!

Last day of school...my goodness, that feels like FOREVER ago.

All ready for the 4th of July

Our new (to us) van....LOVE!

Jon won an iPad mini in a drawing at work! Sweet!

Turbo Day at Dreamworks...they always do a big lunch party the day a new movie is released.

At the end of summer camp, they had an ice cream social. The kids sang several songs for us and then we chatted and ate ice cream. It was fun to meet their new camp friends.

This was me at 31 weeks...I'm now 35 weeks and feel like a blimp. So ready to be done!

Silly faces courtesy of Jason and Lindsay.  :)

School FINALLY starts this Wednesday, and I'm pretty sure I'm more than ready. It's  been a good summer and I've definitely loved all the down time, especially since I've been so tired. I'm looking forward to the routine though, and the kids are so excited to be heading back to school.