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!

Splashin' Fun!

 Some things I just love about summer so far:

*Sleeping in past 6:30 (except on workout days:)

*Not having to pack lunches!

*Planning fun activities that we haven't gotten to do in a very long time

*Freedom!!!

*Shorts, dresses, cute little baby legs, and sun hats

*Fresh fruit!

*Grilling

*Pure joy on my boys' faces while playing tag and having a great time outside


Things I do NOT love:

*Applying sunscreen every single day to the kiddos. To the boys this amounts to pure torture. To Eliana it is pure joy. Go figure.

*Bandaids. We go through many bandaids with all of the scrapes and falls that happen during the above mentioned tag and other games. And oh, how children love bandaids...

*Dirty feet.

*Having to give showers and/or baths every night because they smell like puppies.

*When it gets too hot and we have to close everything up and turn on the A/C.

*Bugs.

But there is definitely a lot more to love than not to love!! The boys started a small soccer class yesterday through the Parks District!

Samuel was a little nervous but really glad tbe in a class with his bro (they are the 2 in red hats. As a matter of fact, just look for the red hats in most of our summer pics!) They had a GREAT time!! So glad we could get them involved in at least one thing this month.

Eliana enjoyed watching her brothers, sneaking sips out of Zakkai's cup and trying to push the stroller:)

In the late afternoon, Ben stopped work early and we went to a splash park! This was E's first time in her adorable swimming suit. Too bad she hated the sprinklers and wouldn't go near them:(

But the boys were SOOO excited! It took them about 10-15 minutes to actually get wet...other than a few sprinkles. I looked at this picture and totally thought it was Samuel. How did Zakkai get so big??

The blue circle he is stepping on is the button that activates the flower sprinklers and jet streams. He's waiting anxiously..

Here comes brother to the rescue to help!

Missy decided she's rather sit with us and watch....until we took her to the playground;)

Gosh, that little tush is cute!! She climbed up the stairs and went down on the slide with one of us over and over and over. She loves playgrounds!

Samuel told us he did NOT want to go and would sit out the entire time because we dared to pull him away from his friends at home. Right. Anyone else see the pure joy on his face and the sopping wet shirt?!

Samuel and Missy peeking down at me:)

Before we left to go eat our homemade pizza, we walked over to the gazebo and looked out at the pretty lake and ducks. We'll definitely be back!