July 2015 - Swimming and More Swimming

July 26th

We had Karri's birthday celebration at Mana's house and got 

the traditional porch picture of Karri and the kids.

As part of my present to her, I had found the original 'Shala' doll 

from when we were kids and returned her to her rightful owner.

I caught this cute moment. Finley was 'reading' to Melody.

Melody had been eating a cheese and crackers packet before I gave her cake, so 

she ended up using the red stick from the pack to eat her cake!!  Such a funny girl.

July 27th

Melody loves to snuggle up and watch movies, and so does Mara.

She loves to wear necklaces and hats.

She also loves books and was so happy to have daddy read her a book before bed.

July 28th

I was sitting with Melody and she started to hand me all of her stuffed 

toys. I felt like Sara from Labyrinth, getting buried in a pile of old toys.

Melody is obsessed with eating Go-gurts right now. To make it easier on 

everyone, I squeeze them into a bowl so she can feed herself. She does 

pretty good with a spoon, but usually ends up using her hands at the end.

July 29th

We were able to go to Seven Peaks one evening with Karri and use her camera again!

Jaina loves to use the tubes, but can never stay in one for longer than a few minutes.

This is by far one of my most favorite pictures from this summer. Pat loves to take 

Melody under the waterfalls in the lazy river and I caught the perfect moment.

She was just watching the water in the kiddie pool and I loved her little shadow.

Xander and Mara just love Melody so much and want to play with her all the time.

We headed over to the wave pool to play around for a bit.

Melody is really loving the water finally and we even taught her 

to 'kick kick' in the water and she will kick her feet behind her. 

A sad attempt at a family picture.

I love to sit on the 'shore' of the wave pool and had fun with the camera while enjoying the waves.

Since we had Karri with us Pat and I went on a waterslide together. I really don't enjoy water slides 

because they are too fast and when I'm in a tube I'm worried that I'm going to tip out of them, so it 

makes me really nervous. Of course we went down the dark one, so I didn't know what was coming next, 

and going down with my husband that loves this sort of thing made me extra nervous. But I survived!

Back to the lazy river.

Thanks for hanging out with us Karri, we sure love having you with us.

July 30th

This girl loves her binkys and found both of them before her nap.

My friend that I've known the longest, Aileen Robins Naranjo was in town from Texas and we were able to get together with other friends from high school for a night out. It was so great to be able to catch up with Natalie, Jenna, Aileen & Dorothy. It even ended up that Aileen and I talked in the parking lot until midnight!! It was so fun to be with her again, to talk about our kids and our lives as mothers. I love you Aileen!

July 31st

Melody is starting to want to sit at the table for meals and 

not in her high chair. She's just getting too big too fast.

Pat and I were able to enjoy a morning at the Provo Temple while Roger and Tammy watched 

the kids. It's been a long time since we were able to go to the temple during the day.

That night we were able to go with Mana to her work party in Woodland Hills at her bosses house. We 

went last year, but Melody and I didn't swim, so I was excited to be able to enjoy the pool this year.

Here's Jaina after jumping off the diving board.

We put Melody in a little tube to see if she would float in it, 

but she hated it and was screaming until we took her out. 

These kids just love to have their picture taken under the water.

It was quite chilly when we got out of the pool so we wrapped Melody 

up in a few towels and she was quite content being bundled up.

July 2015 - Loveland Living Planet Aquarium

July 25th

To celebrate Karri's birthday, we went to the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium! We've wanted to go 

there since they opened awhile ago, so we were excited to finally see what it's all about.

These crazy girls were riding the whales!

And the boys were doing tricks.

The aquarium has some baby penguins, so we headed over to see them first. It was fun to see 

them swim around under the water, because the water level was visible through the water. 

Melody could only see under the water and thought they were funny.

These girls were in heaven watching the penguins.

There was a fun rope bridge that almost everyone crossed.

Jaina was all ready to go with Pat, but chickened out at the last second.

Jaina loved seeing all the different animals.

She was trying to see if these fish were bigger than her.

Apparently, the anaconda there is longer than Mara, Conli & Sawyer put together.

There was this really cool feature near the Electric Fish. If you put your hand on the metal 

nodes, you could feel the electric wave of what the fish produces. The employee there told 

us to have a person touch each node then touch noses to feel the shock. First Xander and 

Sawyer did it, then Xander and Mana. I have a video of their reactions. It made Mana giggle.

Alligator!!!!!

Ah!!!!

We were having fun with the shark teeth.

Melody saw the girls pretending to scream as I was getting her out of the stroller, she said "I wanna ah'

So we did!

Whenever she sees this picture she still says 'Ah!'

Jaina was telling Karri that the turtle was eating salad. I asked her if it was plain 

salad and she said that it was salad with ranch dressing.

There were some cool sting rays that you could touch. They said you have to use 2 fingers and 

just let them come to you, and not to touch their tails. As you can see, Jaina was a little 

too small to reach by herself, so it's a good thing she has Aunts willing to help her. 

There was a fun little glass bubble that you could go in to feel like you were 

in the aquarium with the fish, and these girls thought it was fantastic.

Melody was really loving all the fish, and this giant turtle.

Jaina was able to try on a turtle shell too.

These kids are so lucky to have an aunt like Karri. She is so loving, generous 

and these kids make her happy. They all love her to the moon and back.

Thank you Mana for this great experience and helping us make memories.

We finally let Melody out of the stroller so she could see the fish upclose.

It was adorable seeing her reaction to all of them.

When we were done we were having some fun in the gift shop.

Afterwards, we all had lunch at Subway. We were going to be seeing each other later that night, so Conli & Sawyer came to play at our house while Xander went to hang out with Max for the afternoon.

We all gathered together once more that day to attend JD's play: Tarzan.

It was a really fun play and we loved being able to go and support JD doing something that he loves.

He played a gorilla in the first half of the play, then after one scene from Act 2 

he changed costumes and became one of Clayton's henchmen.

I sure do love this brother of mine!