Swim Lessons

I'm so thrilled my children are up to date on their gross motor skills. They both can ride two wheeled bikes and both can swim.  (Ok, so they could ride bikes last year, but still an accomplishment.)
This boy can swim!!!!!! There is no enough exclamation marks in the world to show my excitement.

 Quick story, he has been in swim lessons since he was four. Some years only a month out of the year, but every summer he has been in swim lessons. Still at the beginning of the year he was like a rock in the water. I asked him what we could do differently so he enjoyed swim lessons. He said, I just don't like them, I don't want to take them. I said, well, I think its important you learn to swim, so you are going to be in swim lessons until you learn, and then still be in swim lessons. So if you cooperate and are happy they will be more enjoyable. It was a night and day difference. He is swimming! Still doesn't really enjoy them, but he works hard and can swim!!

Ok, my daughter can't swim more than a yard or two independently, but she is only five.  Still I'm pretty proud. From what I can see she is star pupil in class.

Its a good thing I love this boy. He gets to swim everyday. He never goes to childwatch at the pool, because he refuses to. I don't want to create problems at church Nursery so I don't push it at the Y.

 He does the cutest things though. He learned to blow bubbles in the water, and kick. He watches the three year old class and then copies them.  Free swim lessons! He thinks he is three and half not almost two.

And poor Ikey! He has never been in the pool. He has never been in any pool! I didn't let him go in my mom's pool this summer when we were visiting. There is no way I can watch a not quite two year old and hold an infant at the pool, so Ike is never allowed in because I don't want him to know what he is missing. He could go to childcare, but he also doesn't like it. He was almost always  crying when I picked him up, he has stranger woman anxiety. Not stranger man, just stranger woman, he is one of my momma's boys and does not want other women holding him. So instead he just sits in the stroller and watchs the kids in the pool. Its faster anyway, it doesn't take 5 minutes to check him in and 5+ minutes to check him out. This picture doesn't show it but he honestly seems happier at the pool than in childcare. He sometimes naps, and usually only cries about 5 minutes out of our hour and half adventure.

Poor kid! I often feel a tad guilty he doesn't get to swim. He is starting to really love splashing in his bath, so honestly I can't take a chance of him knowing the fun of the pool. 

The other day a little 6 year old asked me his name. I told her his first name, and she said woah that's a big name for such a little baby. Five letters is not a long name, so I guess she meant a grown up name, and I guess I agree which is why I always call him Ikey.

Library Party

At the end of July the library hosts a summer reading party. I hate it.
My children love it. So I took them.
We were blessed I found a really close spot when we showed up at 10:45. We left by 12. It was actually pretty nice. (Its suppose to be finished by 12.)
Our summer reading theme was Fizz Boom Read like the rest of the nation. See my cute boy carrying his robot.

One of the stations is spray temporary hair dye. She was beyond excited to finally get her pink hair.

 He got green, you can barely tell. I think his hair is too dark/coarse/thick. Maybe if it was a different color?

 If the big kids were doing it, of course Turbo wanted it. He got red dots, J thought the red head needed red hair.

 At 11:45 there is no line for face painting!

 Plus robots robots robots, read for fizz boom read. The kids go around this summer, saying that and teaching Turbo to say it.

 He calmly watched his siblings make robots, and then we tried to leave. He freaked out, that he didn't make one.  Apparently he knows how to wait his turn. He carefully carried around his robot for over an hour! He is adorable. He posed this picture.

 This child. He is my Vulcan. He asked for this picture and then purposely looked away. Wikipedia says Vulcans are, "...noted for their attempt to live by reason and logic with no interference from emotion" This picture captures, along with all of his singular pictures, his lack of emotional interference.

 Oh this boy, I just want to hold him on the couch and never let him grow up. Minus the tantrums I love this age, and I know I'm going to blink and he is going to be going into third grade, and gone will be the babe who thinks the sun rises and falls with my permission. Gone will be the boy that has to watch every truck drive by our front window, and yell at all the dogs. I know this will happen, because I have a boy who long ago stopped screaming in joy when we drove by diggers at construction sites.

This girl is growing out of her pink obsession into a purple craze. I knew it would happened, but now that its happening I don't know I feel about it.

I should mention, we did swim lessons before the library party. I am wonder woman, if you have never had two under two you have no idea how hard it is to do normal every day life, and to add adventures for two elementary school age kids, and woah. I took a nap when we got home. Mr. A's doctor told me when she had two under two she would tell people what you can do in a half an hour, I can do in a half a day.

Mini-cation

My husband had a training two hours north of us, so he booked a hotel through work.
It was a Castle hotel, Nat was so excited. (We passed a really ghetto castle hotel in Amarillo, and she was upset that we didn't stay there and instead stayed in a Marriott.)

The kids and I went up and joined him after it was over, stayed the night. Ahh, staying in a hotel as a child.

He went back to the training and we set off for an adventure.  The kids were so thrilled, overall it just made me sad, we always went on adventures before we moved to Colorado and now they don't even remember them. It started with donuts in the park.

After which my 5 year old told me her tummy hurt, this is while I was changing a dirty diaper, it made me wonder why the heck I even tried to go on adventures.

She seemed to feel better once we fed the ducks. An older man gave us some old bread, the kids loved feeding the ducks.  

My four little ducklings. (Holy smokes four is a lot!)

After an hour or so we had enough fun and enough doubts that maybe we should just go home. I couldn't really decide what I wanted to do for the real adventure, we never go to Denver because I'm just too tired with all my growing of babies.  I ended up deciding on the Art Museum, four year old J and I loved the Art Muesum in SLC back in the day, and baby Nat hated it.

  I picked the Art Museum for a few reasons.
1. We have never been
2. Brent doesn't like Art Museums and he wasn't with us.
3. It was relatively cheap.  kids 0-5 are free, kids 6 and up $3, and adults $10. With $5 all day parking in a covered garage so the car didn't get hot, I spent less than $20.
4. Josh has been obsessed with modern art lately
5. I checked out about 20 art books the other day, and he went through all of them. Mind you they were written for children.

Now my pictures are out of order and I'm too lazy to fix them.
I like to take pictures of my children with their favorite pieces. This was Turbo's favorite. He told me truck truck truck, and would not let it go until I took his picture. He knew I what I was doing.

This is one of my favorites.

And this one. (This girl cracks me up, her pose. Her personality in general. She is larger than life, that's why she is hard to deal with some days. She just has so much pent up in that little body of her, it just explodes out.)

The art museum is actually two buildings connected with this bridge.

Ikey was there too!!!
So I'm terrible at planning these days. So I threw two strollers in the car but not the double. Partly because I forgot and partly because they are huge. I decided to just use two singles and have the bigger kids help me.  I'm not sure if I was insane or not.  For the most part it worked better than a huge double stroller. Although sometimes I fear I expect too much out of my older kids. We were there much too long for me to wear Ikey with my back problems. Assuming I wasn't going through doors, I actually could push A and pull Ike.

She was actually dressed up in the Incan King clothes. The museum had an AWESOME kids room. Especially since it ended up being the first place we ended up, on complete accident. Plus we were also there when it first opened so we had this HUGE room all to ourselves to explore.  Plus great couches to nurse Ikey.

Crafts in the kids room.

A model of the museum to play with.

Guess who, the Game. If I lived in Denver we would definitely come back more.

This was one of my favorite pieces, its a mother who has just slain a bear. What I really love is one child looks like its slipping even though you know a woman who just killed a bear to protect her kids has a vice-grip on that child, and another child at her feet. This is my life. Ikey floppy looking like he is barely hanging on, but I wouldn't drop him, and Turbo following me around all day never leaving an arm's length.

The had SO MANY craft/hands on/kids exhibits.  This was a political art center. My kids working hard on political posters made the political scientist in me swoon. This center was actually the only rough patch of the day, Turbo had a melt down, and the older kids were really loving the area.

More modern art for J.

This was Turbo's favorite. It was red with gray foxes everywhere.

More modern art.

Nat with pink and sparkles.

More pink and sparkles

At one of the kids exhibits Nat made headphones. I really can not say enough for the kids' exhibits, we were there for four hours and didn't have enough time to fully explore all the hands on, create your own art. Plus we skipped half of the art on the wall part of the museum.

Another create your own art. We rushed J here, everyone was losing stamina.  I took this picture because I told him we could do this at home.

Here they are sculpting.

Even little Turbo sculpting, this picture was not posed.

Here they are making faux antique postcards.

Riding the horsey while their brother continues to make postcards.

Across the street was the Denver Public Library. My son was amazed at how large it was. So we went in. I wish we could have stayed longer but my babies needed to get home, and we need to leave before traffic got any worse.

Being up at the Museum and the Library really made me miss living in Salt Lake. I wish we lived closer so we could explore more. But then we got into traffic at 3 pm and I remembered I love my small town. But I hate my library, the only benefit is they give out free duck food.  And the hold system has a huge selection, but it is so lame for kids in comparison to big cities. Sigh, sad face.
I texted my husband that I missed SLC, and he said how bad? I said I miss SLC not Utah. He said oh nevermind.
The more I look at this picture the more I remember how VERY awesome the children's library was and how much I loath my library.