Four of Seven

Basically I hadn't been done with school for a day before I missed having kids around so I promptly called up my sister and told her she needed to start shipping her kids up here.  

First came Morrissa and Kyndi.  Morrissa is 13 and Kyndi is 6.  They came up the night their parents got married.  Did I mention Stef and Kamron got married?  Well they did.  It was adorable.  So anyway, they came up and we basically swam for three days.  Morrissa got really good at doing some tricks.  She taught me how to do an underwater backflip and she even did it without plugging her nose.  I am not a swimmer and nearly always have to plug my nose.  Kyndi started out with a life jacket and not even daring to go passed the three foot mark, to jumping in with no life jacket and doing the breast stroke underwater, coming up for air and going back down.  The girl swims better than me.  

We spent half of one day shopping it up and being girly-like and visiting Dan at work, but other than that, we were seriously at the pool.  We spent the nights making stove s'mores, looking up funny youtube videos, learning songs on the piano, and watching movies.  One of the funnier moments was when Kyndi burst into our room in the wee hours of the morning due to a bad dream and made Dan scream in fear a tiny bit.

  Morrissa spent half her pool time like this.          

 This was before perfecting her breast stroke.        

They were looking right into the sun.

  Stove s'mores are the best because it's a lot easier to get the chocolate all melty.

 Dan serenaded us at our "campfire". 

 Dan taught Morrissa Heart and Soul and I taught Kyndi Mary Had A Little Lamb.

This week Tyson and Tate.  Tyson is 15 and Tate is 9.  They were, in a way, slightly harder to entertain.  15-year-olds bore easily and it was a struggle to get Tate off the computer.  We still swam quite a bit but they played lots of video games too.  (And by they, I mean Tate.)  The second night I had to go to Bountiful for a wedding so Dan took them rock climbing with our friend Jake Mabey.  From what I hear, Tate was hesitant and at times panicky while climbing but did pretty good for a nine-year-old.  Tyson, I am told, rocked it.  (No pun intended.)  They went on, I think four different climbs.  The first one was a super easy one but they ended up doing some that I would consider a bit tricky even for me.  Anyway, Jake is Tate's new best friend as he stayed at our house that night and played video games with Tate.  The  best though was the last day.  Nicole and I took them to The Fun Park where we played some serious skee ball amongst other things, but then we played laser tag.  Just the four of us.  And oh my, funniest thing of the summer.  Girlfriend and I would scream in terror every time one of the boys got us.  She ended up hiding out in the same spot for most of the time.  At one point Tyson scared me so bad that I fell over and couldn't get back up from laughing so hard and he just stood over me mocking me.  It was so much fun! (Tyson actually scared me into falling over a second time as well.)  Loved it.

 

Tate on one of the easier walls and then him climbing/hanging from another on.

 

 

 Tyson did awesome.

It's tradition to kiss the chains at the top.

Tyson sank every shot. Nicole and I declined his challenge.

Tate had about a million tickets.

 We were hardcore!

Indian Summer

So I have decided to be a cowgirl this summer.  It's not going so well.  Nicole, however, has been channeling her inner Indian child.  She has been doing amazing with this.  Oh and what is that you say?  An Indian and a cowgirl?  How can this friendship ever work?  Well it will be an unlikely friendship for sure.  (Nearly as unlikely as a whale and a little boy.)  I joined Girlfriend for her initial step to Indian conversion.  We searched the whole first month of summer for somewhere that would sell us feathers for our hair and finally found some cute ones on Etsy.  Then we waited impatiently for them to arrive. 

Nicole nearly wet herself with excitement when they arrived.

 These are my feathers.  Turquoise, pink, green, and purple.

Dan was real patient and took our pictures.

Get ready for some feather modeling...

 Because why wouldn't we pose with The Joker?

 

A More Saucy Look

 I don't remember what was so funny.

 More Sauciness

And our Indian dance. 

Since then girlfriend has continued down the path towards being a Native American.  Though, as our hunter/gatherer Navajo friend, Sonny, pointed out... "Red hair does not equal red man."  So he is helping her figure it all out.

CAS Part I

So girlfriend and I have been super crafty this summer.  We should probably do tutorials because we are that amazing.  We started slow making some aprons from a ready-made pattern.

This is when we discovered how they would ruffle

We were so domestic we were even watching Oprah.

We were really nervous to start the actual sewing.

My Amazing Stitching

And the Bootie Tooch.  It's been a while.

Now that they are complete, we do ALL things in our aprons.

Like pump gas and give decorating tips to Grizz and Grubby.

We embossed them with our crafty summer theme...

 

 Next came some Americana wreaths (if you will).  Dan hated both of them.

 A Bootie Tooch.

 Dan's close-up of girlfriend's bootie.

Nicole didn't wear her crafter's apron so my wreath obviously came out better.

 You all wish you were as crafty as me.

 Another good craft I am learning this summer is how to french braid.  I don't do hair.  I can do ponytails and brushed hair.  I'm really good at those.  But anything else, not so much.  My hair is the type that I can put all kinds of crap in it and curl it all day long but by the time I get to the other side of my head, the side I already curled is flat again.  Girlfriend mocks me and so she side-braided my hair (which by the way, took her about nine tries) and decided I must learn.

Here is a really sweet mother-daughter picture of us.  Upsetting?  Yes.

Another upsetting thing is that we have decided to become sister wives sans sharing a husband.  So we of course had to make some sister wife bracelets. 
The thread was in a mess so dumb things happened.

And of course we are keeping up a well-balanced diet of Firehouse Pizza, Coldstone, and Twizzle-Berry frozen yogurt.  You can wear yourself out crafting all day.

We're obviously real excited about our pizza.