Summing up Summer

(everyone’s allowed one of of these on their blog, right?)

I know you thought all we were doing was birthday-ing, traveling, losing our jobs and whining.  But you are wrong.  In between the birthdays, travels, job loss and whines, we did the following:

Emma got to spend a week with Grandma Dorrie.  Despite quite a few bumps and bruises (that Grandma can play rough!), Emma had a great time.

This was the Ryan Romney School of Swim.  Certain former-lifeguard/swimteachers are too cheap to pay for swim lessons, so every once in a while I threaten spending his hard earned money if he doesn’t teach the kids.  This was his answer.  What are these called?  Arm-ups?  Anyway…they did lots of them.

Emma and Gabe ended up taking lessons, but only because the local gym wouldn’t refund something else and would only transfer it to swim lessons.  They learned the 4 major strokes, in hopes of being good enough to start swim team this fall.

These are pictures from our town’s annual Fun Run.  Everyone but Seth and Faith participated, as well as half of our ward.  Emma and Ryan (ahem, 4 miles in 27 minutes) took second place in their age division.  Oh, and me?  Oh, how nice of you to ask—I ran it in 34 minutes (8.5 minute hilly miles—not that I want to brag.  Or anything).

These are pictures from my cousin Tyler’s visit.  I hope they prove to Aunt Stacy that we did do fun stuff with him…slave labor at the raspberry patch and finding junk in the local lake!

Faith got ridiculously small pigtails forced onto her head.

Also, I sat her down next to some pretty roses, to take her picture.  And she fell into the rose bush.  While I tried to pull her from the thorny depths, she thrashed around with her face and hands.  The results are the HORRIBLE scratches you see in this picture. 

Just wanted to include that awesome parenting move for posterity.

We had lots of fun trips out to local lakes and rivers (Liberty, Hayden, Priest), with generous uncles providing lots of fun tube rides.  Too bad I don’t have the picture of me and two other 35+ matrons doing some of our amazing tube tricks.  While you would have loved the tricks, the thighs might have put you off.

This is from one of trips to Riverfront park.  Our deal:  Ryan does the height rides (see above with Seth on the Ferris Wheel), and I gag my way through the spinning ones.  It’s a true testament to our deep love for our kids that we did this 4-5 times this summer.

Our kids slept like this EVERY night.  They DO have their own beds, but why sleep all alone, when 4 kids in a twin is available?

 

As a Finished-Mom’s-Tortuous-Summer-Learning-Schedule Reward, we took the family to the 3$ Movie Theatre and saw “Up”.  Since we are the last family in the world to see it, I don’t need to tell you how super super funny and entertaining it was, right?

 

And this is how Seth chose to take a few bike rides this summer.  Last year’s Halloween costume, this year’s birthday cape from Grandma Nut.  He said to Ryan: “Dose people were  looking at me.”  Ryan replied: “Really?  Were they looking at you like ‘that guy is so cool’?”  Seth:  “No.  They were looking at me like they thought I was REAL.” 

It was, in lots of ways, a summer filled with fun and lessons learned.  Hopefully that’s how we all remember it.