A Big, Huge Thank You!!

We knew we didn't want to try an amusement park on a Saturday, so we went on a sparsely-attended Wednesday.   With Delia's birthday outing over and done, today, her actual birthday, has been one of hanging at home and playing non-stop with all the awesome new toys.  Tonight I'll make Delia the special birthday dinner she requested, but not too much else is on the schedule.

 Check out this enormous present pile!  Thank you friends and family who were once again SO generous to our birthday girl.  Delia was up bright and early, excited to start letting the paper fly!

"MERMAID BARBIE!!"  This gift was opened with huge enthusiasm.  Thanks, Auntie Kris and family!

Our porch had a package on it every single day this week! Ella read Delia all the sweet messages that came with them.

 You don't even know how perfect this Kaya bracelet weaving craft set is, Auntie Karen (and family)!  Just yesterday the girls were dressing up as Native Americans-- making feather headdresses and piling on the shell necklaces.

    

Grandma and Grandpa's gifts were hits too.  Thanks for the Lalaloopsy silly hair doll and clip-to-the-table chair for Kaya!  Both have already been played with all day.

 Ella picked out a few books she knew her sister would love.

 Auntie Heather, your gift was one of our favorites!  After experiencing the crazy carnivorous plants room with you at Frederick Meijer Gardens, we can't wait to try growing some of our own.  Delia is delighted by this gift and is trying to make a "creepy face" to match the meat-eating plants! :)

 Thank you Anna for sending two of our favorite books from the Art Institute's Caldecott exhibit!  We were sad to give these back to the library, but now we can read them whenever we want.  They really are fantastic stories-- a gift for the whole family!

 Love this girl and can't imagine life without her.  How have we only known her for six years?!

 It takes two hands to answer the question now!

Make a wish!

Life In Between the Outings

Based purely on my posts, you may think our summer has consisted of jumping from one high to the next.  While the front end of it was packed with all our vacations and we did try to plan at least one fun outing for each week, we've certainly had plenty of down time and opportunities to enjoy the small stuff too.

We went blueberry picking one day, which was awesome.  We took home several pounds that we froze and hope to use all year long.  Though there is a big stack of gallon bags full of blueberries in my freezer, they will probably only last a few months.  I didn't get any pictures on the day we picked, but Ella made this lovely artwork for me!

After our tiring week of VBS, we celebrated survival by going to see Monsters University.  We all loved it!

Some good friends from our seminary years were visiting their family here in CA, so we were able to meet up at a new shaved ice place to catch up and watch our 5 girls have a ball together.  Thanks for squeezing a visit with us in, Sarah (but, we missed you, Dave)!

Some other dear friends moved at the beginning of summer.  Though we can no longer walk to their house, they're not too far of a drive away.  Jeff and Amy invited us over for a Saturday afternoon of swimming at their new house.  My friend Teri says distance can be good for a relationship because it forces you to be intentional.  We'll miss having these friends so close, of course, but know that a few extra miles won't make that big of a difference.  If anything, it will encourage us to spend time together as a big group more often!  This was such a great day, we're already looking forward to our next visit! :)

Notice anything different about Ella?  In one week she lost 2 teeth!  And one of them was a big, noticeable front tooth, so, cue the lisp.  Also, she was finally able to change her earrings for the first time in 6 weeks.  She felt like a whole new person!

This week the girls were also invited by some friends to attend VBS at a different church.  I've never put my kids in VBS without having a major roll in it, so I learned something amazing that I'll pass on: VBS IS FREE CHILDCARE, Y'ALL!!!  While the girls were having a great time singing, making crafts, playing games and hearing Bible stories with their friends, I had almost every morning this week free to work in my classroom at school.  We got quite a bit done and the space we're creating for our little students is colorful, fun, engaging and organized.   I'm so excited and just love walking into this classroom already!  

Delia's Birthday Outing

As I've discussed before, we are big fans of the birthday outing because it gives our whole family the gift of exciting new experiences and memories to share together.  We gave Delia several choices for her birthday and, as we kinda figured she would, she quickly chose a day of rides and animals at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.  Like most other Six Flags parks, Discovery Kingdom has your big thrill rides, but it's unique in that it seems more geared at families with far more kid and mild rides and half the park dedicated to animal shows and experiences. We stayed the entire time it was open, walked onto every single ride without waiting, and only repeated favorites 3 times.  That shows what a huge variety of things there were to explore!  This was the perfect park for us and we had a phenomenal day.

   

 We watched a funny sea lion show, got up close to some penguins and a walrus, walked through a shark tunnel and petted sting rays in the Ocean Discovery section.

 In the Jungle Land section, we saw lions and tigers and elephants swimming.

We also fed giraffes!  For a couple bucks, the girls each got a whole load of leafy veggies, apples, yams and carrots to feed to friendly giraffes their looong tongues.

We made it to 3 shows and this one, Cirque Splashtastic, was our favorite.  It combined awe-inspiring circus acts with dolphin tricks.  Definitely one of the most unique dolphin shows we've ever seen!

One of the park's hidden gems was a glass butterfly house.  This place was crazy-packed with butterflies!  They were fluttering ALL around us and the girls were just desperate to get one to land on them.

And then there were the rides.  Though the animal stuff was super cool, we spent the most time running from one fun ride to the next.  The girls always love the 2-3 rides I buy them at the Boardwalk, so to have a whole day and 30 ride options and no restrictions was a great treat!

One of my favorite stories of the day was the swings.  This park had 4 sets of swings.  We labeled them S, M, L and XL.  The girls started small and worked their way up all day.

By afternoon they agreed to go on the Sky Screamer.  This is one the park's iconic rides-- swings that ascend 15 stories and fling you around at about 45 miles/hour.  I love roller coasters and don't shy away from a thrill, but one ride on this freaky thing was enough for me; I was shaking when I got off.  But, these fearless girls hopped on for a second ride with Dave!
 

 (Delia had to pick the #6 seats!)

I convinced Ella to ride one big roller coaster with me too because she loved the Sky Screamer so much, but Roar the wooden roller coaster was just a little too scary for her.  This was the one not-bright spot on an otherwise perfect day. I'm proud of her for trying, though.

 I keep thinking I'll have to be planning a birthday party one of these years.  But, if the kids continue to indulge us in outings then instead of stressful party planning we get to keep doing fun stuff like going on roller coasters and watching dolphin shows! :)

Happy Birthday, USA!

Since it was the perfect way to celebrate the 4th of July last year, this year we pretty much did the exact same thing.  Our birthday party for America once again included: swimming all day with good friends, eating watermelon, decorating flag cakes (and this year, singing the Star Spangled Banner while "presenting" them!), attending a BBQ at school, playing cards and frisbee while waiting for dusk, lighting sparklers, and oohing and aahing over fireworks.  The only change this 4th was adding a few more friends...and also Dave, who was not on a service trip with his youth group this year.

  

Go Cubs!

Last night we joined about 130 friends from our area to watch a Cubs vs. A's game in Oakland.  There are actually quite a few Cubs fans where we live, so this was a really fun time to get together and enjoy some good old fashioned rivalry!  As we walked through the parking lot into the stadium in our Cubbie Blue, we were jovially heckled: "You are cheering for the wrong team!" and "You guys know you're not in the Windy City, right?".

The girls have been to a few major league baseball games now and this one was by far the most fun.  Not because we really care about the A's at all and not because the Oakland Coliseum is exceptionally fun.  This night was a blast because they spent it dancing and running around our section with their friends!  The girls had at least 6 classmates in attendance as well as good friends Anika, Andrew and Kat.
 

Participating in The Wave, which traveled around the circular stadium 3 whole times, was a highlight, as was dancing to "2 Legit 2 Quit" in this big, open, low-traffic spot right by our seats.  Ella will tell you she's a Giants fan, but I think she really liked being different and cheering for the not-home team.  That is, until she realized that only the A's fans were getting picked to show off their dance moves on the big screen.  Then she paused her booty-shaking to toss her Chicago hat at me!  To bad WGN didn't show the game.  We would have made that broadcast! :)

The Cubs won!  And that made many in our group happy!  The whole stadium was then invited to come down onto the field to watch fireworks.  For me, this was the best part of the night.  I've never laid in the perfectly groomed grass of a major league baseball stadium before!

It got crowded quickly, but A's fans or Cubs fan, we were all there to cheer for America and everyone was in good spirits in the close quarters.  The fireworks were coordinated with great patriotic music and during the grand finale we sang "God Bless America" together.

After a super fun night like this, I just feel like cheering.  Yay for the area we live in and good friends!  Yay for the Cubs!  Yay for the USA!