End of Summer & Start of School

We had a lot of fun at the end of the summer! I tried to squeeze in as much as possible such it had been a very different summer. Logan and Brooklyn both celebrated birthdays at the beginning of August. Logan turned 9 and Brooklyn turned 4. She is so proud she is a "big girl" now and tells everyone "I'm almost 5 now". Brooklyn has been obsessed with Elsa and Frozen, so many of her gifts were Frozen related. One of which was an Anna dress-up. She was so excited! She put it on and for the first time she exclaimed "I'm Anna, you be Elsa! My hair is the perfect color to be Anna!" She's had some major hair envy recently. She constantly will lament "I wish my hair was blond like Elsa!" But there's no way I was going to bleach a 3 year old's hair so wigs have been our placebo.

We also squeezed in my niece Rea's second sewing lesson. She wanted to make a skirt for her baby sister in the exact same pattern as hers, so we got to repeat that (hopefully) cementing those skills in place. For her next lesson she wants to do a pair of leggings. This will be more challenging because the material will be stretchy, but I'm sure she will do a great job.

The boys were so excited to go back to school a few weeks ago! They happily wear their masks to school if if means they get to see their friends. Brooklyn is so excited that she gets to do internet pre-school daily, although she is devastated that her brothers leave every day. If we run errands after dropping the boys off she will worriedly exclaim "Mom! I'm going to be late for internet pre-school!"

The Friday after school started we went on our late summer vacation with my parents. Dave's co-worker had a home outside of Flaming Gorge and he was kind enough to let us borrow it for a long weekend.

It was just the break we needed! The first day we explored the lake, paddled around, checked out some islands, talked to fishermen and just had a casual day of fun.

The second day we went river rafting. It was a BLAST! We wish we could have done it more than one day and decided we definitely need to do this again.

The temperature was perfect and the sky was overcast! We weren't too warm, and if we did get warm we just stuck a foot off the side of the raft. It was the perfect adventure! Not too rapid for the kids, but enough to keep us all excited.

If the water was "boring" for too long I would start bouncing up and down and exclaim "look out! rapids!" My mom christened those "White Girl Rapids". Eventually the kids caught on, but it was fun for them for a while.

Our roma and cherry tomatoes have been doing well this year. Brooklyn and Logan are tomato fiends and I will catch both of them sneaking tomatoes from the garden and chowing down. We love that they love fresh produce!