Elephant Toothpaste & Other Random Photos

Our sweet neighbor, Kathie, brought over “tie-dyed” cupcakes for the boys.  Yum!
We adore our newest neighbors ~ they are the most thoughtful people!

We found a recipe for Elephant Toothpaste on Science Bob’s website.  We didn’t have 6% hydrogen peroxide, but we decided to give it a try with regular 3%.   The results aren’t quite as amazing as 6%, but it’s still fun! 

Alex says that next time he wants to make Giraffe Toothpaste.  Maybe we’ll find some 6% peroxide and try that.

   

It’s called “toothpaste” because it looks a bit like toothpaste coming out of the tube. 
You certainly would NOT use this to brush your teeth!

The boys’ favorite part was playing in the pan full of warm goop
after the “toothpaste” was out of the tube.

We’ve had some fun playdates with Gage & Grace!  One day, Cindy & I did a kid swap.  I took her kids for the morning while she cleaned her house, and then she took mine for the afternoon while I ran some errands.

At our house, the kids played with playdough and then played Mario Kart on the Wii.

At Cindy’s house, the boys played with monster trucks and a Bob The Builder playset.
The girls played dolls together…and Jensyn even got to “BE” the doll ;)

We also met at the inflatables place for a morning full of fun.  There were probably 12 kids in the whole place, including our 5 kids.  It was nice!

Grace is in a “make a funny face for the camera” phase ;)

Jensyn ADORED this walking/step toy in the toddler play area. 
Since she’s just starting to walk on her own, she had a great time walking up and down, over and over and over…probably for about 30 minutes straight!

 

Jensyn also had to try out the big inflatables.  She actually crawled halfway up one slide before giving up & letting herself slide down.  I was impressed!

I took her up the biggest, steepest slide and let her ride down on my lap.
I think I’m too old for this stuff (ha!) but she had a lot of fun!

 

Happy Birthday Mom!

It’s my mom’s birthday today.  Happy Birthday!

We visited them last week.  My sweet mom is making Jake & The Neverland Pirate costumes for my kids for Max’s birthday party in a few weeks, so she & I were working on things together.

She had the idea to make monkey sandwiches for the kids…think they liked it? ;)

 

Another Camping Trip

We vowed to camp more this summer.   We don’t have a newborn.  We don’t have an excuse.  We thought our summer would have plenty of time for camping.

Yeah, right.

This summer has been SO CRAZY BUSY!  Every single weekend, we have something going on!  We managed a second trip last weekend, and it was lots of fun.  

We stayed close to home this time…as in 10 minutes away from home.  We try to visit this campground once every summer. This is the third summer that this campground has been under new ownership, and we’ve enjoyed watching the improvements they make each year.

This year, they’ve added theme weekends.  Each weekend, they have crafts & activities to match a particular theme.  This weekend was Christmas in July.  (They’ve got a pirate weekend coming up…wish we’d be around for that!)  The kids made Christmas ornaments and frosted Christmas cookies.  There was also “ice skating” and “reindeer games” in the afternoon, but we thought our kids might be too young.  They finished off the weekend with a “sleigh ride” (a wagon decorated to look like Santa’s sleigh) on Sunday afternoon.  My kids watched and waved as the “sleigh” circled the campground, but they didn’t ride.

Alex’s ornament (with some help from Mommy in squeezing the bottle)

 

Max’s ornament. 
I’m not sure if it’s a gingerbread man or a pirate who’s been in a sword fight ;)

 

decorating Christmas cookies
(well…eating the cookies they decorated…)

 

At the campsite…

      

  

We brought the Buck for the boys, but JENSYN rode it all weekend!
She is very proud to be big enough to ride this.

ice cream & snow cones

playground fun

       

The lake was MUCH smaller than usual, due to the lack of rain.
It was also nice & warm, which I appreciated!
Alex & Keith were able to swim to the island together.
Alex thought that was pretty neat.
Max chickened out and stayed with Mommy & Jensyn.

 

Camping with three very young children is HARD WORK!  You can’t just send them to the playground or sit back and read a book while they dig in the dirt.  You have to be on your toes almost every minute.  All three kids LOVE it, though, and we enjoy it too.  I must admit that, even though I don’t want our kids to get any bigger, I look forward to the days when we can allow them to go to the playground or ride their bikes around the campground while we sit in our chairs and enjoy a good book!

We have one more scheduled trip to go camping (on private property) with our Bible study group in September, and we have one weekend in August when we might go camping.  We’ll probably book kind of last minute for that, as it’s just been so hectic that we might prefer to just have the weekend at home to do nothing ;)