Ah, Summer. It’s certainly in full-swing here in Utah. We’ve had a stretch of 100 degree temps and aside from the brief thundershower last night, it hasn’t rained in weeks. With the warmer weather we’ve been busy busy busy (compared to normally…where I would only use two “busys” to describe our busy-ness).
Since I last wrote we’ve had a series of family outings and adventures to document.
We’ve taken several walks over to our local park to enjoy the playground. Andrew continues to 
prove his daring by showing us how to go down the slides on your belly–head first! There’s also a new splash pad at our local park, so the older boys have had a fun time trying that out. Andrew wants nothing to do with it. These days he barely tolerates getting wet in our bathtub. I’ll be a little happy when this phase of disliking water is over and he will go splash with his brothers. As much as I like his sticking close and sitting on my lap, it is less enjoyable when it’s 100 degrees in the shade.
At the end of May we took one last trip up to Red Butte Gardens before the free family pass Marion included us on last year expired. I think we made it up there at least 3 or 4 times this year, which is honestly more than I expected.
They had opened a new area of the gardens that is a dry/desert plants type display winding up the side of the hill. The view from the top is really great, but I was thankful it wasn’t too hot when we visited because the walk up is in full sun all the way. It will be fun to see how that area develops in the next few years as the plants become established.
The very next weekend we took a trip up to the Tracy Aviary. Ironically it was the same week as when we last visited…must be a time of year with good weather that we decide we should make a trip to the Aviary. This year we decided it would make sense to buy a season pass…so I’m hopeful we’ll have quite a few more trips in the not-so-distant future.
Some Saturday in here we headed up to the Utah Scottish Festival at the Utah State Fair Park. This trip for me looked like a lot of fun on paper. There would be Highland Games which I find enjoyable, Scottish dancing, mass bands of bagpipers, and booths with various crafts to explore. About an hour into this adventure I realized we had made the mistake of bringing all three children, none of whom had an attention span for anything lasting more than ten minutes. Just as we would get settled to enjoy something they were ready to move on to the next thing. As we left the park William was sure to let me know “he didn’t want to leave because he wasn’t done seeing everything!”…seeing things on his terms means seeing everything in 5 minute bursts.
For Father’s Day weekend we took our annual trek to the Chalk Art Festival at the Gateway Mall. They 
have it the same weekend every year as a fundraiser for Utah Foster Care. Looking back through our pictures we’ve been there every year since William was born except for one. This year Lee and Marion met up with us and we enjoyed the chalk art together. We had dinner from Costa Vida on the restaurant patio and the boys had a great time playing with the bouncy balls they won from one of those spin-the-wheel games. It was beautiful weather and a really nice time!
We’ve had quite a few ‘firsts’ big and small over the past several weeks. One of the bigger ones was that Andrew got his first haircut. Unfortunately, I can’t say that he really enjoyed it. In better firsts, William lost his first tooth! After wiggling it non-stop for a couple weeks he was pretty excited when it came out and he got a visit from the Tooth Fairy. Christopher and William also took their first try at swimming lessons. They both made a lot of progress, and will start their second session next week. I will be happy if at some point they are no longer fearful of putting their faces/heads under water. That would be a huge step in the right direction. We also took the two older boys to their first Baseball game over 4th of July weekend. William made it 3 innings before asking what else there was to do at the ballpark. Luckily we sat on the grass near the kids’ playground area, so all was not lost. They were still quite restless, but luckily there were fireworks at the end of the game to make all of the waiting worthwhile.
I cranked through a few projects over the last 6 weeks also. I managed to finish the exterior trim-and-door painting project I had started. NO MORE PINK TRIM! Woo! A few weeks later I got the itch to paint once again and cranked through the mudroom project that has been waiting since we moved in (5 years ago). That room was particularly satisfying because when we started, the ceiling, trim, cabinets, and walls were all the same yellow-ish cream color. 6 days later, the walls are tan, the trim and ceiling are white, and the cabinets are blue. Two light fixtures were replaced, a door was removed, and two shelves were hung for coat/hat/purse organization. This room was also satisfying because it was a challenge–basically a laundry list of things that make painting difficult: lots of prep-work, TONS of trim, a stairway, a closet, and everything being painted above dark brown carpet…but now I can say DONE and DONE!!
Somewhere mid-June I was tempted into buying a few perennials on clearance. When I say “a few” I might mean a dozen. Enough to re-do an entire flowerbed in which we’ve spent the last 4 years killing off weeds in preparation for this moment. Really it started out as two new plants and just ballooned from there. If you’re going to water one tender new plant you may as well water the whole flowerbed right? In any case, I’m happy with how it turned out and already looking forward to seeing what comes up next spring. In the meantime we’re in lawn raking season (AGAIN) as the huge Basswood trees in our front yard drop their nutlets all over our lawn…nothing like using the lawn-sweeper when it’s 100 degrees!
They boys are doing great! Andrew has transitioned out of crawling and is now a full-time walker/runner/climber. He definitely climbs more than the two previous boys. It isn’t unusual for us to catch him on the top bar of the bathroom step stool attempting to climb onto the counter. Some of the furniture 
is a little too high, but he is in and out of the rockers like a pro, and up and down kitchen chairs pretty easily. He also refuses to sit in a shopping cart or his high chair for any lengthy period of time, so I have to watch him very closely. The two older boys were formally introduced to legos one warm afternoon this month. We have an assortment that used to be Jason’s, and after one day of having them upstairs, decided they should live in the basement guestroom. The good news is that if both boys are in the mood, they will disappear for a couple of hours to play. The bad news is, that neither of them is brave enough to go alone, so one of us (usually Jason) has to go downstairs with them if a brother is unwilling to play.
Yesterday we attended a 5th birthday party at Bounce Around Utah. It is basically a warehouse full of bouncy houses, along with a large jungle gym and a large bouncy floor. It was 5-year-old paradise! William and Christopher ran until they were sweaty, and Andrew had a fun time once he got brave enough to try out the bouncy floor. We will definitely need to head back there sometime soon (perhaps when it is a little cooler). I had a cold this week so I followed the birthday party with something I rarely do–I took a nap! Andrew also caught some ZZzz’s while the bigger boys happily played legos. We followed it up by watching some shows before heading out to the patio to play in the kiddie pool. I’d say that was basically the perfect summer day!
