Packing in Summer

♪♫ On the first day of summer break my true loves came with me

on a bus ride to the liiiibrary. ♫♪ 

Kieran loved the bus ride. He can't wait for kindergarden when he'll get to ride it every day. Hollyn has assured him the novelty wears off.

Ewwww. Take your lips off there!

 Usually Nate and I work alone on work nights, but one evening Hollyn volunteered to come along. She had a GREAT time standing in the hole, handing things to Nate who worked on plumbing under the house.

One Saturday, Nate had a paintball match in Portland, so I took the kiddos and his Mama to the coast. Going to the Aquarium had been discussed but I thought I'd save money and just have a beach day. Sadly, it was SOOOO windy that day! We tried, darn-it, but it hurt our eyes to be sandblasted. I didn't want the drive to be for nothing, so I gave in and went to the aquarium after all. Neither Marie or Kylea had never been so that was a special treat. It turns out that with a family of this size, it's only slightly more expensive to buy a family membership than to go once. So I went ahead and got the membership. I don't have guest passes, but if you want to go with us, I can get 10% off your tickets. :-)

Posing as a fish

Swimming with the pirahnas.

Heading off to Girl's Camp, last week of June

Our theme-craft for this year. I had to make 2 because I couldn't pick just one daughter to give it to. 😁 There where only a couple of colors to choose from, so I was kind of proud of being able to make an ombre effect.

This year to solve my childcare-during-camp (/while Nate was at work) issue, I invited Brian to consider helping at Cub Camp, where I was sending Hollyn in addition to Asher. With a parent volunteering, I could get Kieran into their Tot Lot and all the younger kids would have somewhere to be during the day! Even better, Brian would have an opportunity to spend a lot of time with them without having to pay to go anywhere or borrow supplies or anything. He jumped at the offer and can you believe it, given the choice of where to help he even chose Den Leader! It worked out so well for everyone involved. Kieran still talks about Cub Camp, and Hollyn got herself a reputation as a "doll" even though the camp leaders were concerned that she was in the wrong den, based on her size. Lol.

Unfortunately my phone died, but this song was hilarious!

I ran out of time before Girl's Camp, so it wasn't until after camp that I had the time to go through all the supplies, including the 4 tents belonging to the ward YW. Nate helped me open the 3 questionable ones and we threw one away. This one was in good shape though, so we took it to the back yard and let the kids sleep in it. Kylea didn't last more than a couple minutes without an adult in the tent, but the Stevenson kids were happy enough to give rid of the old man/woman.

For FHE last week, the kids joined us at the house. Kieran couldn't have been more excited to find out that there was more demo (aka wall hammering) to be done! That kid is our hardest worker whenever we go over there.

He enjoyed power washing a lot too, except for moment when he got splash back of mud all over his face. But he quickly turned around to get back to work.

With Kylea and Grandpa Templeman, we all got to go to the Knight's baseball game on Tuesday. The fireworks at the end are even better than the city did the following night. Kylea and Hollyn got kinda bored, which I fully expected. But Kieran got super into it! He wanted to go down and play baseball himself. I was surprised by how much action he noticed while he played with the boomwackers the kids had gotten for free. He played that his was a baseball bat. After the fireworks, per tradition all the kids who wanted to could go down and run the bases. Kieran loved every second of it. Sign this kid up for T-ball!

 After staying up very late on the 3rd, it was not easy to wake up and all be at the Stake Center by 8am the next morning! But we made it. Nate, Brennan, and Asher all had scout activities to prepare for the 8:45 Flag Ceremony, so the youngers and I headed a couple blocks over for the Fun Run. We aaaalmost won. Well, we almost weren't the last. Well, since we turned around at the half way point and even then came in second-to-last, I wouldn't rush to put us on your next race team. But we had fun. Then we hurried back to the church for the ceremony and breakfast.

We had heard that the city parade started at 10:30 so we rushed over to that only to discover it had started at 10am and ended about 7 minutes later. Hahaha. You blink and you miss it. Oh well. We strolled our way through the Farmer's Market and Kieran enjoyed the fountains in his clothes before we headed home for a quick breather.

Nate and I took a power nap and then headed to the movie theater where Grandpa took ALL 5 kids to see The Incredibles 2. He even survived! I warned the kids that though it wasn't his first time taking 5 kids out, it had been a very long time and they'd better be good to him.

In the mean time Nate and I hit up Home Depot to choose paint colors and prepare to order materials for the Salem house. We were so exhausted by the end and were completely incapable of making another decision. After ordering our paints, we had to pick up the kids and drop them off at home, then we drove back to pick up our paints and go grocery shopping. By the time we got home from that, it was past time to run another errand of dropping off the YW camp supplies filling the van and head to the Cochran's 4th of July party.

That was so much fun too! We didn't bring any fireworks, but others had. Eventually, every few minutes someone would approach me laughing about Hollyn being a pyromaniac, fearless, and so forth. One friend said, "Hollyn totally won the 4th of July." That girl was ALL about the fireworks! She'd take a sparkler and go up to a spent firework that still had some flames to light her stick. She didn't leave the action for a second. This girl can be fearless!

Yes, she's running in her robe.

Thursday and Friday were back to work, but we threw in some more fun Friday night. I thought I had something I needed to do in Eugene (which ended up being postponed), so I suggested we take advantage of going south by visiting or camping at Alsea Falls or Camp Alpine. Lots of decisions later, we ended up at the latter, which is church-owned and where we go for YW camp. I was excited to show the place to Nate and the boys love canoeing. We heard that Junction City ward was having a ward campout that night, but since there were lots of unused sites we were fine to go there. As we drove through and checked it out but not wanting to crash their ward event, Nate stopped and rolled down the window. It turns out his good college friend, who was actually his ROOM roommate (bunkmate in fact) was there! We chose a campsite next to his friend and though we didn't have the chance to catch up with him until almost leaving time on Saturday, we had a fan-TAS-tic one-night campout.

 At the pond we found a dragon-fly just having shed it's skin, near another old skin. Unfortunately we also watched a yellow jacket get the dragon-fly and kill and eat it. Most of the kids were saddened by the news, except Kieran who responded to the cycle of life with, "That's cool."

On Saturday morning we opened the Jr. Zipline and each of our kids had a turn. Yes, all of them. Hollyn, in true fearless fashion, jumped right on before the harness had time to cool down. Kieran was apparently shaking like a leaf, but went for it. As he got to me at the bottom he was grinning and declared it was so fun and wanted to go again. It's really a very small zipline, but you'd be surprised how your nerves can go up when you realize you're about to jump off a platform that's just high enough that it would be very uncomfortable to fall from.

Shhhh. She wasn't wearing the helmet because her head was too small for any of them. They kept sliding off.

 Other fun at Alpine includes the obstacle course and playing at the pond. Brennan passed the canoe merit badge when at 12 he completed the challenge where he has to swamp the canoe, flip in back over and climb back in. He knows all the commands and has taught them to Asher so they actually make a great paddle team. I let them take me out on the pond for a little ride.

Kieran is still terrified of boats so he played quite happily on the dock or the edge with a paddle, playing whatever was in his imagination. Hollyn likes to canoe as well, but on Saturday shortly before we left, others had opened up the pond's zipline.  That one is just a disc on a rope you ride on and fall off into the water when you want, or splash into the water at the bottom. She was quick to run up and do that despite the water being cold.

When it was time to go, directly from the pond, I was like, "Wait, where's Hollyn?" Then I found her. She had hopped in a canoe with some boy and they were way on the other side of the water. By the time I got to the dock to call her back, she was out of the boat and hanging onto the side. When she heard me call and told the boy he needed to take her back, he started paddling and she managed to simultaneously climb back into the canoe, life jacket and all. Then, she STOOD up to help them paddle back. They were horribly uncoordinated and it took forever to get back as they zigzagged their way, but she stood up and maintained her balance the entire time, paddling along. This girl is going to keep me on my toes forever isn't she!