Here are our five baby birds on July 1st.
They're practically overflowing the nest!
We had mentioned how horrible Spam was and had seen it as a required ingredient our new favorite cooking competition program "Guy's Grocery Games" so we finally let the kids try it on the 3rd.
They thought it wasn't too bad except for the cat food aftertaste!
Christian had picked out some smoke bombs and party poppers at the store a few days before, and here the kids are popping out some streamers.
Christian helped me dice the vegetables for pepper jack corn chowder for dinner that night. We are still loving our little chopper machine!
As a birthday surprise, the kids made me this chiffon cheesecake and spelled out "happy b-day" mom in berries :)
That night, we went over to Joy and Jordon's house where they were hosting Cul-de-sac of Fire. Basically had just a bunch of neighbors, friends and family each bring a couple cool fireworks and a treat to share. It was so fun! And Tony only got minorly injured when one misfired that he was setting off!
On the afternoon of the 4th, we went to sonic for lunch and had extreme tater tots and half-off slushes.
That evening we went to Braegger's for their barbecue and fireworks.
Faith made sure she had patriotic sparkly glitter nails!
Christian, our little firebug, absolutely loved helping to set off the fireworks this year.
And surprised us with a squirt of silly string!
One of the parachute fireworks we had done the previous day didn't have a parachute inside, so we got some replacements on the 5th. Luckily, the kids were able to retrieve this guy. The ones we did on the 4th all floated behind grandma & grandpa Braegger's neighbor's house across the street :(
After that, we set off on the Frontrunner
for dinner at Tucano's! Christian astounded us by taking meat every time the servers walked by, and keeping up with eating it all!
We stopped in for the exhibits at the planetarium,
and thought the stuffed animal giant microbes were hilarious! Faith's holding an amoeba and a muscle cell, but they also had strep, tapeworm, leprosy, salmonella, and a lot more.
We were supposed to go to Park city on the seventh, but mom and dad got their first and called us to say that Sue had misunderstood the schedule and was already there and unpacked.
The kids were extremely sad and I was upset that I had worked so hard to trade my hours off from work. To make up for it, mom and dad took us and Joy's family to the aquarium on the 8th.
We hadn't yet seen their new building. It was supposed to open in December of last year, but kept getting put off until the spring when they opened without everything being ready.
Luckily, there were only a few exhibits which were not open or working yet. I felt that even though the building was much bigger, that the number of exhibits was about the same. The rain forest area was new, though, and it was pretty cool. Here is a rope bridge with Sierra and Lily crossing, but my kids chickened out.
As usual, the stingray petting pond was a huge hit!
The other awesome new feature was a walk-through shark tank.
Later that afternoon at home, Christian spent about 20 minutes trying to get your buds to stick in skittles here for this photo. He asked me how people usually have them stick, and I answered that most people didn't have their pets listen to music through earbuds!
Even though it didn't work out the way he imagined, Christian was so proud of his photography that he posted this on Facebook with the text: "I'm cool" :)
July 12th was Evelyn's first birthday! I loved the chalkboard info graphic and number one made out of photos which Joy created.
It was a carnival theme and we got to "step right up" and answer trivia questions about Evie, do some carnival games, and eat ice cream and fresh cotton candy.
A few days before, Christian had drawn this picture of robots, each controlling each other with remote controls. Haha, that kid's so creative!
On the 14th Tammy took the kids to the aquarium (and the kids loved it again), to Sonic for lunch and then back to her house where they played games and had Chinese takeout for dinner. They slept overnight and then all went to the zoo with Tina on the15th.
Christian was so impressed that he was able to sneak a photo of Zach actually smiling because Zach hates having his picture taken!
Here are the stuffed animal souvenirs they got:
On the 16th I got to go with the kids and meet up with Tammy, Zach, Lana and Larry at Johnny Rockets in Station Park. I'd never been there before and thought it was so cute that it had such a 50s diner feeling. Christian, of course, became obsessed with the jukebox.
Afterward, we all went to the movie Maleficent.
We love Station Park!
That day at a work meeting, Tony's won this Con-Way truck replica and had fun showing all the features to Christian.
At the candy shop earlier we bought these crazy Jelly Bellies. Buddy had always wanted to try Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans (like in the Harry Potter books), but these had similar gross flavors, and you got more for the price.
With this kind, they had delicious regular flavors and disgusting flavors which looked identical, so you never knew what you were going to get until you ate it. You wouldn't believe how stinky the skunk spray one was! After Christian bit into one a tiny bit, we had to flush it down the toilet because it would've stunk up the whole house!!
On the 17th I made patty melts for dinner. I had never made them before because we usually eat plain hamburger patties (Faith doesn't like hamburger buns and I still try to not eat bread), but I was inspired by Johnny Rockets and I grilled up a bunch of onions and put them together with American cheese, and everything!
July 19th we went to How to Train Your Dragon 2. We liked it a lot, but I still think the first one was better.
The 21st was Christian's first day of school! With this new year-round schedule he starts mighty early. He was excited because he already knew his English teacher, Miss Graham. She had been the computer teacher for the last few months of the previous school year.
On the 22nd I took faith to Davis High school so she could take some term tests for her online math class. She tried really hard, but we had signed her up for the program late and she wasn't able to pass all the tests. She still gets to be in seventh grade honors math, just not skipping to eighth grade honors math.
Here are some gems I found after downloading the pictures from both Faith's and Christian's iPhones:
Christian's pictures were 90% cute animal pics or photos he had affected using different apps,
and Faith's were 90% selfies, LOL!
