Peach Picking

Pick-your-own fruit.  It is the kind of activity that is relatively popular in our semi-rural, lush, orchard-filled area.  Definitely not something I did during my years in the Mountain West.  We haven't done this here for a few years (translation: Ben), but every time I plan this sort of outing I think, "This will be awesome!  Summer!  Fruit!  The great outdoors!  Wild children (mine) running everywhere partaking of the candy of the plant kingdom!  What could go wrong?!?!"

Um. Yeah.

Well, there are bugs and the sun shines and it hurts the eyes of the children who have become accustomed to the gentle glare of the television.  But, mostly the bugs.  Little gnats which show an equal appreciation for fruit and attacking the human face.  Not biting (I think), but just dive bombing such sensitive areas as the eyes and mouth.  So the children went from saying things like "This is going to be AWESOME!  I love PEACHES!" to "MOM! WE HAVE TO GO NOW!!!  WHAAAAA!!!!!"

For. the. win.

In case, here is the before picture (Michael's face at this point having more to do with the fact that I have pointed a camera at him so he must try to be funny than the bugs at this point).

Ben and a peach.

Josh and a bag of peaches.

Michael and a peach.

Josh, Michael, Ben, A and L two pecks of peaches later.  I think their faces say it all.

Afterwards we chilled out at a little park with an old school slide.

And now I have two pecks of rock hard peaches slowly ripening on my counter.  ("Ripe" being a difficult concept for the ages 4 - 9 crowd).    Yum!

Rockets!

You really can't go wrong with rockets!

While Jason Was Away

Jason left us for 3 1/2 days to go to High Adventure with the Boy Scouts.  He went whitewater rafting, did a ropes course, went rock climbing and played at a water park.  Life can be tough sometimes.

While he was away we learned some valuable lessons.
1. It is not just nice, it is actually necessary for my sanity that Jason puts the boys down to bed.  My ability to keep the tattered shreds of my patience intact until 7:30pm is not good.
2. It is just as well that Jason doesn't have to travel often - see #1.
3. I think I would have to be heavily medicated to be a single parent - see #1.
4. Ben is a good snuggle bunny during the day, but at night he kicks in bed.
5. My kids (and the ones I babysit) are really good kids, but.... - see #1.

In any case, here are some of the activities we did while Jason was away:

We went to the park for some it-finally-feels-cooler-than-105-degrees-fun.  And we even met up with some friends there.  A cute little girl Ben's age.  Which makes it especially sad that this child can be so anti-social.  I think he has spent so much time during his short, little life playing with much older children that he doesn't know how to socialize very well with children his own age.  We'll just add that to the list of things he can talk to his therapist about when he is older.

We also headed over to the library and hung out by the fountain in front.

 What IS she reading?

And yesterday we went to the middle school for the cultural program put on by Josh's Arabic camp.  Below is the table his class set up.

Josh's class performed some Arabic songs for us.  Josh had been telling me that they were learning how to do a dance, so it was with undisguised relief that he said afterwards that they didn't have to dance for us after all.

Some of the classes made goodies which Michael and Ben were more than happy to try out.

Josh made this.  I don't know what THIS is, but he seemed really proud of it.

And then he showed me a "bey blade".  Nice.  I think he might have it a little bit backwards, but it was fun to see him so excited about a top.

Shortly thereafter Jason made his appearance and I couldn't have been happier.

Bribes

Ahh, the good old days.  The days when I didn't believe in bribing children.  The days when I thought there was a clear distinction between a "reward" and a "bribe."  

Well, those days are long gone.  At this point, the only difference I can see between a "reward" and a "bribe" is how you spell them.  Which is why when Jason and I developed a plan to help our boys start doing their own scripture reading, we relied heavily on bribes/rewards.  And we've had a decent amount of success.  

Our plan looks like this:  We have the family goal of reading the Book of Mormon.  Josh, Jason and I read the actual scriptures.  Michael reads the Book of Mormon stories book.  And one of us reads the Book of Mormon stories book aloud to Ben and he repeats after us.  Each chapter has a box that we fill in after reading that chapter.  The goal is for us all to finish this year.  Now for the bribes rewards:  We broke the books (either BOM or BOM reader) down into 8 sections.  After completing a section, marked with a light grey box, the boys earn a Wii game rental for one night from Redbox.  This was a wildly popular incentive.  At the half-way mark and at the end, we earn a family ice cream party.  The charts look like this:

And the ice cream party looks like this:

Friday was our half-way ice cream party!  Hooray for ice cream the Book of Mormon!  We've had some rough patches when Josh wasn't at all interested in participating.  And we've had times when it seems like all the boys do is play Wii games because they keep earning them one after the other.  But, all in all, we're pretty happy with the results.  Michael has become a much better reader just within this short time.  They all enjoy discussing where they are at in the scriptures respectively.  And, best of all, some of what they read seems to stick.  Wonder of wonders!

Updated

• We reached a milestone a couple of weeks ago:  BEN CAN BUCKLE HIMSELF IN HIS CARSEAT BY HIMSELF.  This may not be the promised land, but it is pretty dang close.  It has been over nine years since I have been able to just get in the car and worry about buckling in just myself.  Wahoo!
• Ben also, at some point when I was not paying attention (Who am I kidding?  He's our third - I am pretty much never paying attention), stopped sucking his fingers and holding his ear.  I am a bit relieved since I didn't 100% believe the pediatrician and pediatric dentist when they told me he would stop on his own eventually.  I also a bit sad because that means he is just that much less my baby.
• I have been doing some volunteering at the hospital this summer in preparation for applying to nursing school next year.  On Wednesdays I help out at a medical camp for teenagers (which is awesome) and on some Saturdays I volunteer in the Emergency Department.  This means I have my first official set of scrubs (for Wednesdays) but I won't post pics because they are teal so I just look like a huge teal marshmallow in them.  
• Josh started his Arabic Startalk program this week.  This year we were smart and let them send the bus to come get him.  He has the same teacher as last year, Ms. Hala, and seems to enjoy seeing his friends from last year and learning the language again.  I'll post pictures when he and Jason go on the field trip and from the program the classes put on at the end. 
• Jason was called as the Elders Quorum president.  The day he was sustained people kept telling us "Congratulations!" but I think what they really meant was "Suckers!"  Just kidding, it isn't that bad (so far).  I think Jason will do a wonderful job.
• Now maybe I can try to keep the blog updated.  Between babysitting, volunteering, camps, schoolwork (mine) and callings this has been a busy and not quite as relaxing a summer vacation as I had envisioned.  I must try to schedule in more naps.

Horses

Michael was lucky enough to get to spend this last week at a horse camp.  He was so excited that he spent most of the week beforehand saying, "Do you know why I can't wait for Monday?!?!?!"  Since he only asked that question about 100 times, we did all know why he couldn't wait for Monday, but we were glad that he was so excited.

Monday came.  Camp came.  Over 100 kids came to camp.  It was a Groupon deal and the lady running the camp neglected to set a cap on how many kids could attend each week.  This ended up being a bit time consuming for Jason who stuck around with Michael at camp when he saw how poorly it was organized (as in not) and how overwhelmed our little introvert was at the prospect of 100 kids (for 15 horses - the horses were probably a little overwhelmed as well).  

All that aside, what really matters is that Michael got to ride horses this week and he loved it.  Loved.  Loved.  LOVED it.

Thanks, Nana!  This was a great idea!

4th of July

They told us we were crazy.  They told us not to go.  

Did we listen?  No.

And thus began our 19 hour long 4th of July in DC experience.

No, that isn't a typo.  Nineteen hours from when we left our home in the wee hours (okay, 5 am-ish isn't that wee) hours of the morn until just after midnight when we returned.  I can neither confirm nor deny that it took Jason and I about 3 days to recover.  We're getting old.

But, it was fun.  We will never do it again.  But it was fun.  

We drove into DC early so we could get a parking spot.  Pro: We parked close to the capitol and the boys could sleep on the return trip.  Con: We were in DC all day in the heat.  Pro:  There are lots of places to go in DC.  Con:  All of which open at 10am and we arrived at 6:30am.

So, first we spent some time outside the American Indian Smithsonian.  Here is what the boys looked like at the beginning of our day:

We had a bit of time to kill.

Eventually we headed west on the Mall and came across this.  Josh was good enough to pose with a kissy face for me.

Luckily, the outdoor sculpture garden at the Hirshhorn was open and the boys could scamper around and check out some art.

The museums did (finally) open so we hit up our favorite - Natural History - and walked into a live demonstration of some creepy bugs.  Creepy being my word, not theirs.  Josh got to hold this ginormous grasshopper.

Back outside on the Mall for lunch, I took this picture of how the boys were holding up after the first six hours.

After our picnic lunch, we headed over to see the parade.  By this point it was hot.  And we were late to the game of finding a spot for the parade.  And Jason let the boys take turns sitting on his shoulders so they could see.  Josh might be a smidge too big for this.

Luckily, this pool was open for people to cool off and for Jason's back to recover.

After a quick run through the American History museum to look for Josh's teacher's wrestling medals, we headed back on the Mall.  This also happened to be the week of the Smithsonian's folklife festival.  This year showcased Hungarian Heritage, and since some of Jason's ancestors were Hungarian, we decided to take a peek.  We listened to some traditional Hungarian music and watched some traditional Hungarian dancing.  Not pictured here.

And then we took a break.  In the grass.  Which probably explains why Josh's face and ears swelled up like a chipmunk with Dopey the Dwarf ears for the next 3 days.

After we all recovered a little bit of energy, we walked back to the van to fill up our water bottles with cold water and to sit in the A/C for a while.  I also took this picture of how the boys were holding up after 11 hours.

We dashed over to the National Gallery of Art to look at the waterfall and check out this cool tunnel of lights.  Sadly, they close at 5pm so this was also our last air-conditioned bathroom experience of the day.

Then we camped out on the Mall so we would have a good view of the fireworks (still 4 hours away).  We were all a little burned at this point.  Turns out that SPF 50 sunblock only works if you take out the bottle and apply the stuff to your skin.  Go figure.  So Jason gathered up all of our umbrellas and we made a little cave.  There was no direct sunlight in the cave, but there was no breeze either so the boys weren't very interested in hanging out in there for too long.

Which was fine since we brought frisbees and balls and gloves.

Oh, and little flags which the boys were under strict instructions not to use as weapons because 1) that would be disrespectful and 2) going to the ER in DC was not part of the game plan.  And here they are about 14 hours into the day.  I know they don't look very chipper, but that had more to do with them being tired of all the pictures I was taking than of being just tired.

A little after 9pm the fireworks started and they were lovely.  Although we couldn't hear any of the music, there was a concert going on in front of the Capitol behind us.  Part way through the fireworks, they set off the cannons.  Not the best idea to do to a post-9/11 and post-Boston Marathon crowd in DC.  Several people jumped a bit and looked around for an explosion.  

 After the show, we headed back to the car for more water and the long drive home.  The traffic in DC was a mess (although the Metro was just as bad) and it took us over 2 hours to get home.  Luckily, the boys passed out quickly and stayed asleep until we got home.

I am so glad that we were able to have this experience.  The boys did really well (I won't lie, there was some whining) and we all had a good time (well, other than the whining).  But Jason and I have decided that we have crossed this experience off of our list and don't need to do it again.