August fun

Let's start off with some August Crazy Christian pics from Aug. 1st. This boy is always asking me to snap his photo! Here he is using a pajama shirt as pants:

and using bubbles as his five o'clock shadow.

On August 4th we went to the condo in Park City. We did our usual shopping and swimming, but instead of going out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's, on the 6th my dad took the entire family swimming in a volcanic crater! We drove the little ways to the Homestead Resort in Midway where you can go swimming or scuba diving in a naturally 94º hot pot inside a domed rock mountain. It's not very big around, but it's 55 feet deep! Here are the kids just before donning the required life jackets:

Tony is afraid of deep water and didn't want to go, but dad paid for him anyway and I pressured him to try it. He stayed on the floating entrance platform that was submerged only about four feet or so, but I'm proud that he even got in there at all! My dad was pretty excited that his entire family got to experience this together. It was so awesome!!

Several weeks afterward, Christian was still excited about getting to "swim in a volcano" and drew this cool picture. You can see the sides of the rock going up, and the orange dots at the top represent the grate that covers the top opening. The orange balls in the water attached by chains are the buoys that hold platforms at different depths for divers. I think the red at the bottom is the lava that Buddy imagines is geothermally heating the water.

Just after leaving the Homestead, we noticed this mama deer and her twin fawns catching a quick bite in someone's front yard. Awwwww.

 We came home on the 7th and cooked up snow crab legs for a special dinner.

On the 8th we met up with my parents, sisters and their families at Lagoon. The kids love having fun with their cousins!

Because we were gone the day before, we celebrated Crumpet's 16th birthday on the 9th. Faith made her the cutest cake!

Of course, Crumpy couldn't actually have any, but it was darling! I love that it had dog food and water in bowls and even chocolate sprinkle dog poop :D

On the 13th Tammy and Lana took the kids school clothes shopping. Can I just mention again that we are the luckiest people on earth because both grandmas and Aunt Tam keep these kids rolling in style!! They picked out some darling clothes and shoes:

On the 14th the kids wanted a sleep over in our bedroom and, for some reason, Christian became the princess in Princess and the Pea. He loaded all the cushions from our couches in and stacked them up into a very tall bed!

On the 18th we visited the Kaysville Farmer's Market where the kids made pencil shaped bookmarks and we bought corn, beans, and apricots.

On the 20th we went to the Davis County Fair. I love that it's free and even got $2 off the $4 parking fee by bringing in two cans of food for the food bank. The petting zoo had some amazing animals this year!

baby camel

baby zebra

baby miniature horse

lots of adult and baby sheep and goats

big desert tortoise

big, super soft rabbit (which they are petting) and a calf

And we love the animal exhibits, too. Especially the bunnies

and the chickens.

We . . .

Afterward we stopped for a treat at YogoTogo.

At mom & dad's house on the 21st I had to get a side shot of Joy's ginormous belly :) (Hi, Brandt!)

 The 22nd was Faith's first day of fourth grade.She was so excited!

The next day I went out to lunch with my Kaysville girls at the Layton Brick Oven. Christian loved his giant cookie.

On the 25th I volunteered to help with Dibels testing (where kids have to read aloud for a timed period) at Faith's school. The principal bought Subway meals for the helpers and, because I could only eat the meat and cheese out of half of my six inch sub, Buddy got nearly the entire thing to himself. I even ordered root beer for my drink. He was so excited! And he truly deserved it for hanging out in the school library, entertaining himself by copying the titles of books he liked for three and a half hours! He's my little volunteering buddy :)

On the 26th we had a little baby shower for Joy. She got some cute gifts,

and there was delicious food plus games for the adults and kids.

On the 27th we did a fun school locker craft at Lowes,

then went to a promotional event at Menchie's Frozen Yogurt shop. The kids got little prize bags, this fun picture,

jumping in a bouncy castle,

and their picture with Menchie.

That evening we used a gift card to eat at Chili's. We had a coupon for a free kids meal, plus we did the $20 deal that included two meals (we did ribs, of course) plus an appetizer. Plenty of food, with leftovers to take home--score!

Summer Staycation part 3

We continued enjoying our Connect Pass on the 22nd at Tracy Aviary.

Christian was so excited to find a big feather (probably from the turkey vulture).

Faith got selected to participate in the bird show!

We compared it to Hogle Zoo's bird show and, even though the zoo's was a bit more polished and spectacular, we enjoyed the aviary's more. It was so up close and personal, we learned a lot and there was a lot of child participation.

Tony and the kids got to give a raven their dollar donation.

Joy says I always post unflattering pictures of her on my blog. To keep with tradition, I thought I'd include this gem of facial expression:

After the aviary, we stopped in for a bite to eat at Moochie's because Jordan had heard they had the best cheesesteak sandwiches. I can't say that I was very impressed, it was expensive and not nearly as good as Charlie's in the Layton Hills mall food court.

We then drove up to Snowbird to ride the tram up the mountain. The kids remembered it from the year before and were super excited!

We got some fun pictures at the top.

And got to have a snowball fight at the end of July!

After that we went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point.

We LOVED this hands-on physics of movement exhibit!

We got to make cloud rings, 

trick our eyes with a "Benham Disk," make magnets float, play with a rope sqirter and many more amazing things.

After the special exhibit, we enjoyed all the dinosaur awesomeness.

So much fun! Afterward Tony, I and the kids went to Sizzler for dinner.

On the 23rd we started out with a Lowe's craft.

Then we went to the aquarium! We were disappointed that it was no longer on the Connect Pass, but I got a good coupon online and that just gave us more time to enjoy the sea creatures. Joy's family opted not to go since they'd just been recently. Just inside the front door they will take your picture against a green screen and you can pay to have it superimposed over an ocean scene. It was a bit pricey, so I took the kids' photo and did the editing at home:

Instead of making the kids see the exhibits before petting the stingrays, we went straight there.

They spent a good hour enjoying their favorite buddies,

We enjoyed some other exhibits,

went back to the stingrays for thirty minutes, saw some more exhibits,

the penguin feeding,

miscellaneous craziness,

and ended up back at the stingrays for a third time! Since we only go once a year, I'm glad they got an entire year's worth of stingray petting in!

We promised two items from the dollar store and got out of there without the usual gift shop drama! After we got our picks from Dollar Tree, we ate at the Olive Garden with some gift cards we had on hand.

And finished the night with some fireworks, including these giant sparklers.

For the 24th, the last day of our staycation, we went to Lagoon-A-Beach. We got tubes for the lazy river and did lots of water slides.

We loved our staycation and it was very inexpensive!

I thought I'd throw the rest of my July pictures on the end of this post. Here's Buddy on the 25th playing dress-up with our camping hatchet. Yay for safety mom.

On the 27th at Kaysville City Building fountain.

And a drawing with new dry erase crayons (love them!) on the 31st.