First Week of Summer!

 We survived our first week of summer...and actually had some fun, too! The kiddos had to come with me on a few cleaning jobs the first part of this week but they were mostly good sports about it and I tried to balance it out with fun stuff.

Bright and early Wednesday morning, we went strawberry picking! We broke the silence of the clearly serious strawberry pickers with our happy chatter and exclamations over the beautiful red strawberries we found!

And the kiddos all got to try one. Have to make sure they're good!

Samuel's strawberry blends in!

My niece ate more strawberries than she put in the box:)

Zakkai made it a goal to find the biggest strawberries he could!

                  Gosh, aren't they beautiful??! They blow store strawberries out of the water!

Had to do something with the 11 pounds of strawberries! I made some Strawberry Honey Chia Seed Jam with a lot of it and made this absolutely delicious strawberry pie and some strawberry lemon muffins today! The rest I froze for smoothies:)

Then after strawberry picking we met one of my best friends and her girls at a splash park!

Braving the chilly weather;) It was in the mid-60s but none of the kiddos cared! They stripped down and ran into the water. They were a little chilly but stayed active so they had fun!

The boys getting dumped on by a bucket of water:)

 We stayed there for a few hours, eating lunch, playing in the water and on the playground next to it. Then on our way out, the kids wanted to stand on the park amphitheater stage and put on a little show:) Eliana just twirled and had so much fun. I love her serious face!

Chilly!!

Yesterday, I packed up a picnic lunch and we hung out at the park for awhile, after running a few errands. It was a beautiful day! Look how big she's getting!

She loves to climb!

All 3 kiddos loved this climbing thing (whatever it's called!) and spent a long time trying to master it;)

Samuel was so determined to figure out how to get around it.

He worked for so long but finally had to give up. Maybe next time!

Eliana, thoroughly enjoying her peanut butter and homemade jelly sandwich:)

Silly girl!

Then last night, we got to go on a date!! My mom came to pick up the kids and we headed out on our first date since Feb! It was much needed time, especially with all the busyness these days. We had a really good time. We went to our new favorite restaurant "Amul India" where we practically groaned with pleasure while we ate. Seriously. Amazing food.

Then we picked out a new paint-by-number to start! We so loved doing the one last spring and finally got a frame for it to hang it up! We spent the last part of our date getting ice cream and taking a long walk in the park until the thunderstorm started. It was refreshing (the date, not the storm!) and just what we needed!

A great first week of summer!

Parks and Recreation!

 One day last week, Ben dropped the kiddos and I off at the Park of Roses while he went to a meeting. It was a super hot day so we were wilting rather quickly! I snapped a few cute pictures before we melted:)

Lots of beautiful roses! They were just past their prime but still really pretty.

Without me even saying a word, my 3 darlings started sitting together on the bench to watch the waterfall. They looked so cute!

I asked the boys to scoot a little closer to Eliana and next thing I knew, the boys put their arms around their little sis and it was picture perfect! Just wish I'd had my nice camera instead of my phone...

We saw beautiful yellow roses.

Gorgeous coral colored roses!

Pink for Eliana!

A view from high above:)

We had to combat the extreme heat with constant trips to the water fountain and water on their heads! The boys were seriously due for a haircut!

A few days later, we took a trip to the park! It was a really nice day, as it has been for most of the summer.

We were spending time with the kiddo's cousin, E. She loves our three and constantly yells out, "Cousins!!!"

We were bored one morning and my aunt called to let us know that there was a speed limit checker out on the street and she saw some kids racing to check their speed. We thought that was a great idea and headed out for some fun! Zakkai consistently ran 11 miles per hour!

Samuel was 11 most of the time and sometimes all the way up to 12!

Eliana was too little to activate the checker so the boys ran with her at her speed:) She was about 5 miles per hour and very proud!

We found yet another park in our travels at the beginning of this week and stopped for a little much-needed energy release!

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We spotted these at the store yesterday. They are called "Jack fruit." Weird! They were really spikey and very heavy! Anyone ever tried one?

These beautiful flowers are growing in my mom's little backyard! So beautiful!

a few sweet moments! Eliana talked her Grandma-Great into reading a library book with her:)

My mom popped by to see if I wanted to go on a bike ride the other night just as I was getting my trio to bed. They quickly talked their Mugga into reading them a bedtime story and she, like most Grandmas, couldn't refuse!

Our kiddos are soaking up the extra love from their Mugga, Grandma, Grandma-great, Grandpa-great, Papa and aunts! They are getting extra hugs, ice cream, trips to the pool and the park and their very own fan clubs at soccer games!

Cinderelli...

Today I was the wicked stepmother and my boys were Cinderella. In boy form. Oh yes, I made my miniature slaves work their tails off this morning! Muhahahaha! Oh, sorry.

My boys suffer from the usual "messy kid" syndrome. It comes in different forms for each of them though. Zakkai just doesn't clean up after he gets toys out and it snowballs into a huge, gigantic, overwhelming crush of legos, books, papers, crayons, puzzle pieces, you name it! Very overwhelming. Especially to a little boy who has ADD tendencies!

Samuel's form is more along the lines of "pack rat." I may or may not have possibly been one in my former life. Maybe. Although his is extreme. I am talking not only the usual little boy treasures of rocks and special cards but trash. TRASH. Milk carton rings. Wadded up napkins. Ripped open envelopes from mail. Mulch pieces. Dead leaves. Plus rocks, cards, special notes, special teeny tiny toys that are never played with, socks with holes in them, papers with random drawings or scribbles on them. It drives me crazy! And it has gotten worse lately. No idea why he is doing this but we are trying to distinguish with him the difference between Trash and Treasure. Trash=bad. Treasure=good.

So you can imagine what their room often looks like! I worked my wicked motherly ways and we spent a good two hours in there cleaning! I even finished up with vacuuming to pick up those bits of toilet paper, dust bunnies and scraps of paper that were everywhere! Let's see how long it stays this way....I should take a picture for proof that it was clean once!

We went to the park before dinner last night. Here is Mr Z, fresh off his bike:)

And showing off his reading skills! He has really improved over the summer and I can't wait to see how he takes off with reading this year!

Ben and Samuel spent the whole time throwing the baseball in the field and Eliana did a little swinging. "Cheese!"

She's a keeper! She looks so big these days. Sniff.

Here's her funny "cheese" face:) She knows she's being cute when she does this one! Yesterday she started to have an accident in her panties. After we got everything finished and cleaned up, she was running around half naked. She said, "I don't have no panties!" When she said it a second time, I said, "You don't have any panties." She insisted, "I don't have NO panties on!" I repeated my correction, to which she replied,

"I don't have no ANY panties!" Gotta love this kiddo!

I scream, You Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream!

 I was SOOO tired last night and could not even stay awake for half of a movie, let alone blogging! My weeks are full and busy now and apparently I am old and get tired more easily;)

Yesterday I packed up my three kiddos, the baby and even one of our neighbors and headed out to a nearby park. It was a beautiful day, not too hot!

The baby fell asleep on the way there and slept the whole time. Here are the other four playing basketball with Eliana's pink ball:) Look at her right in the middle of the fray!

I got the boys a new pair of jeans and a shirt for school and Samuel was dying to wear his. Because it has skateboards on it:) He's easy to please!

Here's Samuel thinking that he's going to climb a fence to get a random, trapped ball of somebody's. I nipped that one in the bud!

Here is Eliana showing Baby C some pictures in a book:) He just loves our kiddos and watches them closely. They get big smiles out of him, especially Samuel!

Today we had a really fun, relaxing family day, which we needed! Ben didn't sleep well last night due to too late coffee-consumption (ha) so we left him slumbering and the kiddos and I hit a few garage sales looking for "treasures." I didn't really find anything that I was specifically looking for but we got a couple of small things~ a book, a $2 rug for the boys' room, some shoes for E and a camping chair. Garage sales are fun!

Then we came up, ate lunch while Daddy got ready and we headed out to the splash park!

The boys took a few minutes to get brave enough to get all wet but they had SO much fun once they took the "plunge" if you will. Haha:) Eliana took a long time to get brave but she was having a blast!

Whoever invented splash parks was brilliant! Free summer fun!

There was this bucket that would fill up and dump water out. It took a LONG time for anyone to be brave enough for that! Here are the boys, back to back:) Ben even surprised us all and ran over and got dumped on to get cooled off, clothes and all!

Eliana kept running over to show us how wet (or not wet!) she was:)

Daddy and Samuel took a break to play catch, which Ben just LOVES to do! Samuel is getting really good!

I love that they can bond over baseball:)

Crazy Z-man. The other night at dinner he said, "Mommy, sometimes I wake up and there are monsters in my room and I yell and yell for you but no sound comes out of my mouth. I can't hear myself!"

We all looked at him and I said, "Zakkai, that is a dream that you are having! Sometimes we have dreams like that, too. I have dreams that I am trying to run away from something and I can't run; my legs won't work." (sidenote: I really HATE dreams like that!!!)

Zakkai protested, "NO, mommy! It isn't a dream; it is real! I just don't know why I can't hear myself yell!" It took some convincing but I think we finally got him to believe it was just a dream!

We followed up our park fun with a little ice cream cone for the kiddos. We found a new place with cheap prices, which was nice. Sometimes ice cream places are SO expensive! This one was more than reasonable so we may go back. Nothing like an ice cream cone to put a smile on a child's face!

Now I'm off to have my ice cream....