Things I've Skipped Over (June)

I didn't quite get my updates done before we left for our trip, but since it's going to be awhile before I get my vacation post done, here's the finished update for June.

Oliver has once again been busy with making Ironman suits. Out of paper. I think all the fun must be in making the suits, not wearing/using them. He'll spend about a week on one suit, with lots of fittings and displaying, and then it usually gets stashed in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten. Or broken after being tried out in battle.

He was nice enough to construct a different model for Tristan, too:

You can tell by the looks on Rachel and Lizza's faces that we take our battles around here pretty seriously:

Henry setting up all his Star Wars guys:

He still spends a lot of time being both Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker at the same time, so he often carries around both the red and the green lightsabers.  And the underwear on top of his diaper was just for fun.  We're not even close.

Doing his Darth Vader march:

Henry has also started drawing a lot with his older siblings.  He loves drawing a lot of scribbles on a paper and then making up big stories about it.  Real life example:  "Mom, guess what? (he starts most sentences with 'guess what').  I drawed three whales.  The whale got the fishy.  The fishy's cryin'.  The whale runned away."  Most of his masterpieces follow a similiar theme.  Also, we're pretty sure he's a lefty.

Lots more swimming in June:

Tristan got to attend a cubscout camp every evening for a week.  That's him in the bandana.  I can't believe he might make it all the way through the summer without asking for a buzz. 

Rachel roasting a fake marshallow over a fake fire that she built out of little toys.  I think she was practicing for the camping trip we did this month.  She has now perfected the chopstick method of roasting.

Henry playing outside in the rain.  I noticed that in lots of Henry's pictures this summer he is in various states of undress - I really do get him dressed every day, but he gets pretty sweaty in his naps, so sometimes I strip him down to a diaper and his clothes don't always make it back on.

He and Oliver were investigating one of the many toads that Oliver finds in our yard.

The older kids having some sort of secret meeting in the back corner of the yard.  We had some rainy days in June, and the kids discovered that those were the best days to get some outside play in, because it was so much cooler.

Playing bocce ball together.  We bought croquet, ladder toss, and bocce ball this summer, and it's been so fun - I love having yard games.  Bocce ball is especially easy for the kids to go out and play by themselves, because there is no set up and the rules are easy.

Elizabeth, on her fourth birthday, singing part of her favorite song.  She makes everyone laugh in Primary each week:

Tristan and Oliver get free tickets to Six Flags from school every year, and we never use them because it would still be pretty expensive to take the whole family.  This year we got another free ticket for Rachel from a cereal box, so we finally decided it was worth it to go if Daniel just bought a ticket and took the older three. They spent the whole day down in San Antonio, and had a ton of fun. I don't have any pictures from while they were there, but I do have a four-minute video clip of Rachel describing some of the fun. I know I could listen to this girl talk/use wild hand motions all day, but for the rest of you, feel free to skip it unless you could use four minutes of Rachel.  It was after 10:00 and everyone else was already in bed, but she was still full of excitement. My favorite part is around 1:40 because she says "The Scream was Tristan's first ride. . .like, literally, first ride."  I love when my kids say "literally."