Summer Hiking

My very kind brother sent me a book titled "Best Easy Day Hikes in Salt Lake City".

And I had a moment when I wondered why on EARTH haven't been taking my children hiking this summer.  Well, ok, there are obvious reasons, like a 3 year old and 1 year old, but I mean, my parents took my sister and I hiking all the time. I spent most high school weekends with my friends on some small local hike or another.

So we immediately set out to do 1 or 2 hikes each week. They've all been totally kid friendly, less than a mile, and my kids think it's the best thing we've ever done. I'm feeling really really silly it's taken me this long to think of this.  (Ok in my defense, I generally don't like to leave my home with little ones under 3, and for sure hiking can be dangerous with kids that age, but still...)

Ensign Peak. Short, easy, amazing views. We always bring my dad because hiking is so much more fun with him. And also, he can manage the 3 year old.

Temple Quarry Trail. Paved! Paved!, so baby could just chill in the stroller the whole time.

Silver Lake. Pretty much a classic for the area. Moose sightings are frequent. My little boy sidled up to me and said "Mom, I'm scared of that Moose." I half kidding said, "Don't worry, when we have Papa with us, we don't ever need to be scared. He knows all about wild animals." Then I realized that I would actually probably be scared without my dad around too. Phew, thank heavens he keeps agreeing to go on these with us.

Lisa Falls. Another classic. Really short, great for amateur rock climbing, and a fantastic waterfall.

Ocean School

Just to make sure we go completely over the top with my child's marine life obsession, at the beginning of summer I decided we were going to make our own ocean. I taped blue butcher paper over the largest free wall in the house. (In the kitchen.)  Then each week we checked out every book the library had on one marine animal at a time - dolphins, whales, sharks, rays, sea turtles, sea lions, sea horses, squid....etc. We immersed ourselves in that mammal/reptile/fish, and then added it to our ocean. Most of these, the kids drew. I tried to get the animals to be in proportion to one another. I also find it humorous that our now 3-year old can correctly identify several of these sea creatures correctly. I mean, she doesn't respond to "how old are you?", but ask her which one of these is the Mako Shark, and she'll be spot on.

Oregon Coast Trip Journal

We just returned from a week long trip to the Oregon coast. 30 people spread between two beach houses, 17 of them children.

I always take a million pictures on trips. In fact, since having a digital camera, I probably have 10,000 + pictures on my computer. Not ONE of those pictures is printed. So for this trip, I took along my FUJI Instax camera, and plenty of Instax film.

Each child was made a journal for the trip. I used Oregon coast maps to cover it, and filled it with blank paper. I brought along plenty of colored pencils, glue (for gluing in tickets, maps, etc.) and photo tabs for mounting Instax pictures.

Each day, I took one photo of each child at one of the outings (the beach, sea lion caves, lighthouses, etc.) And each night we gathered to journal the day.  Here are a few outtakes from my daughters:

Just how big is a whale? / Summer Painting

I have a child who has been obsessing over marine life for about a year. And what I have learned about these obsessions is that you dive in, and obsess right along with the child. They are going to whether or not you are along for the ride, so you may as well join them in going over the top and make it fun.

 

We live around lovely older people who are fairly quiet. They don't drive in and out much. We view this as a perfect opportunity to take over the street whenever we want. 

Marine life obsession ("Just how big is a whale mom? A bottlenose dolphin?!! A common dolphin?!!") combined with our quiet neighbors has resulted in some serious street painting this summer.

For the curious, a bottlenose is around 10 to 12 feet long.

And a blue whale is over 100 feet. So our blue whale is over 100 feet.

Blue Whale took us 4 hours to paint. And it's a darn shame that I couldn't get up in a helicopter to photograph him because the pictures will never do him justice.

And the common dolphin is around 7 - 9 feet long.

The killer whale is about 35 feet long. Yes these are all life size.

Spy Bags

You know, because children have a lot of secret missions. Like "sneaking" (heavily breathing and tripping over things) up on their mom while she folds towels. Watching their two-year-old sister watch Curious George. Those kinds of things.

The only thing not pictured are black gloves, and we are still on the lookout for a wig. (I actually own two wigs, but cannot find either one. One is a Cleopatra wig, the other is a wig that I wore to my Italian Class for an entire semester. Ha ha, I know, but you'd be surprised how liberating it is to walk by people you know and have them think you are just someone with gross hair).

School Clothes - Girl Style

I limited M's designing this year to two outfits, since she has too many clothes as it is. She very timidly told me that she wanted her school clothes this year to be "more rockerish". And as a brave new step for me, I let her pick out all the fabric. It was all hot pink, or black, and sparkly.

On the left: Drawing of what was to become a pink sparkly shirt that ties around the neck with black ribbon. It is actually a resubmission as I got it totally wrong last year and used a fabric with dots instead of sparkles. For pants, leggings with ruffles on the bottom.

On right: this one is a bit confusing, but she wanted a t-shirt embroidered with the drawing of the girl in sunglasses. (I'm pretty sure this is another ed emberly). Anyhow, then she wanted a black vest, and a jaggedy black skirt. Also a resubmission from last year, because, again, I got it wrong last year. She wanted it actually jagged as opposed to the implication of jaggedness. To be worn over jeans, but it's still too hot for jeans, so she is wearing it with the ruffled leggings. And I vetoed the black boots for now. An obscene amount of shoes already made that an easy decision.

For the leggings I just purchased some, and serged on the lacy ruffle. Embroidering that shirt took awhile because she requested more stars. HUGE thanks to my mother in law for literally slaving over that lined vest. I haphazardly assigned her the vest, thinking it would be easy, but it turned out to be like the hardest thing she's ever sewed (and that's saying something - she's amazing.)

So I learned a lesson that probably most good mothers have already learned. Let kids make their own decisions - within reason. It is totally reasonable that I could have let her pick out her own fabric last year, and I could have followed her a lot more literally. This year? She wears these clothes every day. She loves them, and is SO happy I let her have full control. They really are awesome.

Transparency Installation

In honor of my first turning 6, an installation of sorts was in order. I had a real 'thing' for transparencies in college, and renewed my love for them this week.

I picked 25 pictures of M, some from each of the six years of her life. Turned them all into B&W, and had them printed onto transparencies. (75 cents each at kinkos). Punched a few holes into the top, and tied thread through the holes. Hung from the ceiling with tape at different heights.

Reliving the memories is so fun.

Hung in the living room to catch the first light of day.

Picasso Peg Game

If you can get past the fact that I couldn't quite control the drill, you may enjoy these peg board games. I took a 3.5" x 3.5" piece of wood and modge podged on a color copy of a Picasso painting. Drilled holes the size of golf tees, and taught my children how to play what is possibly the oldest childrens game ever. I could also see these being really cool with a picture of the child, a castle in Europe...etc.

Here's to hoping...

that these quiet books I've labored over for the past month do their job this coming Sunday. Originally intended to be part of book week, I quickly discovered that I could not whip these 3 books (one for each of my children) out in one late night as I had thought. Wow, I must think pretty highly of myself if I thought that. Anyhow, apologies to those of you who received round 1 of the quiet books, as I had not yet worked out all the kinks.

I had planned on making a bunch of these for the LDS humanitarian project. I have so many scraps that need to be used up. If I can get motivated, I still may do this for the humanitarian center, but seriously, it took me a month to make 3... I'm not sure if I could stay focused that long.

Some designs are my own, and some are from The Cute Book, since my kids adore all the little dolls in it.

Carnival

Sometime in early June, M began handwriting invitations to what she was calling a "scooter party on July 15th", and began handing them out before she cleared it with me. But, as with most things with my kids, if I can roll with it, I will try. So the scooter party morphed into a carnival (with a scooter obstacle course), and went from a guest list of 5, to 8, to 20, to 40. Game ideas were presented to me weekly: "I know! I know mom, lets have a booth with 4 words, and 3 of them will rhyme and one of them won't, and the kids have to say which one doesn't rhyme!" M planned a good portion of it, and I got the rest of my ideas from this Martha Stewart Party.

For once I actually woke up on a party day excited. I was amazed that such a wide age range had a good time, even a few 13 year olds who asked me if I am doing it next year.

Fishing booth (thanks Jodi!)

Simple and cheap were my two rules for this party (especially with M's growing guest list) So for "booths" I hung dollar store tablecloths from the deck, and for banners, strung balloons.

Wonderful older neighbor kids (and some moms) worked the booths. In this popular game, kids had to spray away ping pong balls off of golf tees.

Bryan drew nonstop for 2 hours, giving each guest a caricature. And I must note that caricatures are among his least favorite use of his talent. But for M, he would do about anything.

Emily willingly provided her goats for the petting zoo portion. So cool. The kids loved this.

M's "Rhyme Time" game.

Bryan sketching...

Scooter obstacle course.

I tried to keep prizes non-sugary and cheap. These mustaches, from this amazing blog.

More prizes: Bookmarks I designed, and Scrabble zipper pulls (so cheap, so easy, and so cool).

I wish I would have had more time to properly arrange and photograph the treat table, but I was rushing around. For the snacks we had popcorn - M labeled all the bags, and drinks that were red, yellow and blue. I even had them arranged nicely, but never go to take the picture in time. I kind of have color OCD so you'll have to forgive this long footnote.

Family Tree Shirt

We have nearly cleared up the list of possible candidates for marriage. (This has been a big concern lately, especially when L took the crushing news that M and I were not options.) I heard M whisper in hushed tones to Mekella that if she could just marry L, then they could truly be sisters. Kella just says "I know!" and rolls her eyes. Thankfully L has chosen Maggie, from church. As long as they are not on the family tree, we'll take it.

For a good tutorial on the freezer paper stencils, go here.