End of Summer - Start of School

This has been the summer of collecting bugs.  Mostly grasshoppers but some other things too.  Never spiders, thankfully.  My boys have a healthy fear of spiders.  I've warned them that some can bite and are poisonous.

It's been really fun for me to watch them spend hours collecting and caring for their grasshoppers.  I hope they always remember those long summer days in the back yard.

We've also still had plenty of legos.  Trying to figure out a good place to play with them has been rough.  Nora likes to dump buckets and break creations.  But the boys are too loud in their bedroom and wake her when she is asleep.  So we are still trying to negotiate that.

I bought a baby swing for our swing set and Nora LOVES it.  She wants to be outside all the time and now that it's cooling off a little more I'm more okay with stying out there to watch her. 

And then this big boy started kindergarten!.  He loves it and it has been good for the whole family.  He goes in the morning so we are all getting on a much better morning routine.

I bought the boys some clearance kites and they spent all afternoon playing with them.  Truly, they came inside for bathroom, water and meals only.  It was well work the 3 dollar kites.

oh, more first day photos.

The end of summer...the beginning of school age children.  Strange.

New Mexico

We took the opportunity to extend our trip a little and visit some things in New Mexico.  We drove through the petrified national forest.  That was pretty cool.  Jacob has all those pictures on his phone so I'll have to get them some day.  We got to our hotel late and so we decided on the quickest, easiest dinner option possible, IHOP.  

Nora was getting a little restless towards the end of it all so she and I headed out to enjoy the nice evening. The sunset was beautiful.  I've always loved sunsets, and this photo doesn't do it justice.

Nora the explorer enjoyed peaking in the window.

The boys went swimming that night while I put Nora to bed.  And the next morning we went to a few museums in the area.  They were fun.  We saw planes.

And replicas of atomic bombs.

Pieces of the Berlin Wall.

Another A-Bomb replica

The delorian and flux capacitor (or at least a recreation of it all)

A funny board game.

We stopped for lunch at a retro diner on Route 66.

It was a delicious greasy spoon.

We took a quick stop for Nora to nap and the boys to swim again and then it was on to more museums.  This time it was a hands on children's science museum.

We went out to dinner that night and Panda Express and then the boys got to go swimming again while I put Nora for a nap.  

All in all it was a really fun trip.  I remember the peeing in the car, the sleepless hotel nights with a teething baby, and the many urgent roadside pit stops.  The boys remember all the fun.  It's good they do.  I hope it's a positive memory for them as they look back.  Isaac said he wanted to do the whole trip again "exactly the same" so I guess it was a win!  No, I know it was.  I remember all the good stuff too.  Love this family of mine.

Isn't it grand

The Grand Canyon was amazing.  The pictures really can't do it justice.  I want to go back and see more and do more.  Especially when the kids are older and we can hike a little more.  Amazing!

It was also really fun to be with all my family and get to know my neices and nephews a little more.  It was fun to help them all with little crafts.

The house we stayed at was fun for the kids with these porch swings.

These two were so cute.  Not exactly playing together because they are much to young for that but certainly finding eachother interesting.

And this is actually the rest stop at Bluff Utah.  Not sure how it ended up here and not on the previous post.  Oh well!

We checked out a couple of parks in Flagstaff.  This one was fun with the parent/child swing and the fire engine made of bars.

It was a fun couple of days.