{So far...}

So far this summer we have had tons of fun. It is WONDERFUL waking up to no routine. :) That may seem crazy to some people who need a routine all the time. During the school year mornings are somewhat chaotic, so its the chaos that i do not miss. This last weekend we took a trip up to Okuma. There was a dental picnic we had to attend and we figured we would stay the night and enjoy our time up there. Our dental friends stayed the night too and we all stayed in a condo that has 7 rooms. It was lost of fun. We played at the beach Friday and Saturday. Friday at the beach was fun because the kids had big waves to play in and they had a blast with the waves. Saturday was perfect because the sand was so soft(normally is very rocky because of all the corral) and the water was perfect. The heat that day was intense, and it felt good getting into cold water and just playing. Here is part of the view we have on the beach.....

I am still in awe and amazed by how beautiful the water is here. There are times , while on our drive here and home, the blues you see in the water are unreal. I could stare at it all day.

 

 

We hiked up one of the steep hills to get some great views of the ocean. We ran into this monster spider. This is a banana spider. Don't even get me started. I have a phobia of spiders. If we didn't have a bunch of friends with us i would NOT have walked under his web. I would have turned back around. I am getting the itchy just thinking about it. You probably can't tell, but these spiders are the size of my hand.

 

We went on another buggy bike ride and stopped here for a picture. I love being goofy in pictures because it makes them so much more fun to look at. I am trying to carry on the tradition of the open mouth smile that we did so often with our friends in Thailand..... oh, by the way.... we really didn't plan what we were going to wear this day. We often find ourselves wearing the same colors and i never realize it until someone points it out to me. We happen to be wearing blue today. Not planned.

Playing in the sand with his friend Jack...

Also, this summer, we have made smores. Smores over our firepit in the backyard and smores over the stove top....

 

We also went to look at the Bon-homme Rashard. I don't know if i spelled that right. It's a carrier. On it you can see a bunch of Ospreys....

You can also see two different kinds of helicopters and on the very left those are a bunch of Harriers. Hopefully i spelled that right.

 We have found Tons of HUGE hermit crabs....

 Really cool shells...

 And TONS of sea urchins!!! I was most excited about the sea urchins. They are hard to find usually. But for some reason on this particular day they were all over the sand!!

We have also been to the pool. Gavin knows how to swim, and gets the wrist band to swim in the deep end. Tanner can swim now, but he still makes me nervous. His head is barely above the water when he swims. Jaydon has usually been pretty scared of the water. He clings to me pretty tightly. BUT after being at the pool for a couple hours he warmed up. He started putting his face under water and jumping in while gripping the side. I was standing at the side of the pool as he was doing this. He put his face under, and let go of the side. He then starts kicking for his life when he realizes he let go of the side and can't swim. I grabbed him and pulled him out of the water. He scares me.

We have also started making our own popsicles. The boys loved helping me put them together and were soooo excited to finally get to eat them.

Tanner and Gavin were in a basketball campe last week. It was Monday through Friday from 9am to 3 pm. They really liked it. Jaydon didn't like the boys being gone again. But it was good for them and they learned a lot. After they got home from basketball camp they would then play basketball at home the rest of the day. It was a lot of basketball!

I can't remember if i mentioned this in a previous blog post. I am sooo impressed by Tanner's reading skills and his abilities to figure out how to say words. I would say the scriptures are pretty difficult for kids. Tanner is six but he can read the scriptures and often is able to figure out the harder words. He is a full on reader now. He is reading The Friend. He just taught us FHE last night out of it. I am so excited for him.

I will post more of our summer adventures as time goes on. :)

{Summer time!!!}

 

June 13th at 11:30 a.m. school was dismissed for the summer!  The boys are excited! :) I am excited too!!!

 

 

 

June 11th was my 32nd Birthday. eek!  Shane surprised me BIG time on my birthday. He was getting ready to walk out the door to head to work. Before he left he told me to look behind the speaker on the computer desk. There was a paper and I opened it up and it gave me clues to find "events".  He lead me to the first event that said he has taking the whole day off to spend it with ME on MY birthday. I have really been needing some major one on one time with him, so of course i started crying because i was so excited that i would be spending the WHOLE day with him. He found a babysitter for Jaydon all day long. I haven't been so excited for something in so long. :) So, first he took me scuba diving. This picture below is of us AFTER scuba diving...

Then we went home to shower and we went out to lunch. After lunch, we went to a couples massage. ONE hour couples massage. Oh man it was wonderful. I loved it.

The massage place was called "Secret Garden". It was a secret garden. I really like this place.

 

 

Then we went to pick the boys up from school. It was a pretty hot day so we sent them outside to play with their squirt guns and run in the sprinkler.

While they were out running  in the sprinkler shane was baking my birthday cake. He also was really on a mission to get our house looking orderly. I loved it.

Shortly after dinner there was a knock on our door. I answered it and all our friends were standing there and said "surprise!"... Man, i felt really loved. Shane had called them and asked them to do it, but it still felt so nice knowing i have friends that close to me that would be willing to come over and make me feel loved. Shane got the firepit going in the backyard for us, we all sat around it and chatted and ate cake and ice cream. We also had a pinata for the kids. It was actually supposed to be for Jaydon's birthday party but we forgot to do it. It was such an enjoyable evening hanging with friends who feel like family. Shane really made me feel loved on my 32nd birthday. It was much needed and i feel so grateful for that day. :)

On June 12th Gavin had his last field trip of the school year. They went bowling. I hadn't been on a field trip with him and he asked me to go on this one. I found a sitter for Jaydon and i went along with them. It was so fun watching the kids. They did glow in the dark bowling, they blasted the music and had a huge screen at the end of each bowling alley that played music videos(appropriate ones of course)...some music by Bieber, Swift, harlem shake, michael jackson. All the kids sang to all the music, danced , etc. I think they got more into dancing and singing than they did the bowling. It was fun.  I was able to get some video of Gavin dancing. He was cracking me up. This picture below is Gavin and his friend Triego. He and his twin brother were in our branch for awhile until the boundaries changed. Plus they were in the same class. Gavin had an amazing teacher for his 2nd grade year. Mr. Reinert. He was just such a good teacher. This was his last year. He is now retiring and moving to Hawaii with his wife.

Eating lunch at the bowling alley, the YMCA song came on and before you knew it , all the kids were up SCREAMING Y, M , C, A! It was fun watching them. :) Most of the kids are to the right of this picture.

{Fun and more fun...}

There have been a few things going on around here lately that i haven't posted about yet. There was a father and sons campout that ended up getting cancelled due to the rain. So, the boys still had an outing. They had a lot of fun. I went over to a girls night out, but everyone of my friends brought their daughters. I didn't have one. I felt kind of out of place, but i still had fun. :)

 We ended up buying the boys bunkbeds. They all wanted to share a room really bad. We looked into a different set, but when we realized it couldn't all fit into their room we were all very disappointed. I had the bright idea of putting a trundle bed underneath the bunk bed set so they could all be in the room. :) So smart i know. haha. The boys love it. We all love it.

At the beginning of the school year Gavin and Tanner signed up for the 100 mile club. You are supposed to run 100 miles by the end of the school year. You can only run the miles at school...you can't count miles you do at home. They all did it! Well, Jaydon didn't, but he did run a lot with the boys so one of the teachers ended up giving him a shirt too. :)  Once they hit 25 miles they received a shirt. At 50 miles they received a 100 mile club pencil. At 75 miles they received a 100 mile club sports bracelet, and at 100 they received a certificate and a gold medal! Tanner had to work extra hard the past month in order to get it. Missing a whole month of school set him back. We were getting up early and going to school to get some miles in, and we would stay after school. He finally finished the day before the ceremony for it. They were all so proud of themselves.

 Jaydon had a birthday get together on Saturday. He turned 4 years old on June 1st!!! I can't believe it. 4 years old!! My kids are growing so fast and it kills me.  :,(  We invited a few families over with kids that are friends with Jaydon and we grilled up some chicken and veggies, and the rest of them brought sides to go with it. Of course we had cake and ice cream! Good thing i made two cakes because both the cakes and the gallon of ice cream were devoured in minutes. Serious.I would say the kids devoured most of it. And of course Gavin puked for about 4 hours that night. Pretty sure its the ice cream. It's happened before. I notice a pattern here. haha...We also had a bouncy house, and they all had fun jumping on that. plus we turned on the hose and let them play in the water since it was a pretty hot day. I just can't believe he is 4!!!

 We have been wanting a firepit ever since we arrived to okinawa. A few of our neighbors have one and we get excited when we see them out there because it makes us want to get one. Finally, shane got online and ordered us one. We went outside in our backyard and used it for the first time last night. We made smores. It was so fun. We want to make this an FHE tradition, and hopefully invite a family over every monday to do it with us.

Tanner is such a good little reader!! He is really doing great. I love watching them grow in school, and in every aspect of their lives. I am impressed. I just received a letter from the school saying that Tanner's kindergarten class exceeds all the other kindergarten classes when it comes to reading and writing. They were very impressed with their skills. They have such a great teacher, so i am not surprised by it. :)

We went over to our friends house the other day to let the kids go down their slip n slide. They have a steep hill and it makes the slip n slide awesome for kids. About Gavin's second time going down he collided at the bottom with his friends knee. His knee went right into Gavin's forehead. I mean this when i tell you, i have never seen such a huge goose egg on a kids head before. My kids have had some pretty big ones on their head, but this was the mac daddy of them all. I was worried that something serious was going on underneath that goose egg. Shane took him home. 3 days later he still has a deformed looking big bump on his forehead. It is blue looking. I feel so bad for him. Then, the next day he nearly broke his pinky toe on the bouncy house. His pinky toe is all swollen and blue. Plus he got sick. All that in a couple days. It comes in 3's right? And my boys have a thing with 3's. Jaydon's birth month is 3 months from tanner's birth month. Tanner's birth month is 3 months from Gavin's birth month. We have 3 boys. Then look at this pattern....Gavin was born 1 week early. Tanner was born 2 weeks early. Jaydon was born 3 weeks early. Gavin and Tanner are 1 year and 9 months apart. Tanner and Jaydon are 2 years and 9 months apart. We didn't finish the pattern with having one 3 years and 9 months apart from Jaydon. Maybe we can finish it with having one 4 years and 9 months apart? We would have to get on that one pretty quickly. haha! I am weird sometimes with numbers. The funny things is, i stink at math. Maybe it's more about the patterns than the numbers that i like. 9/11 was a terrible day. 3/2011 was a terrible day for japan. 6/11 is my birthday and that was a terrible day for my mother. haha! Okay, im done. I know my husband will get on here and read this and give me a completely weird look. :)