Golden Hour

 I had gone outside to take some sewing pictures of Molly, and then the lighting on our back porch made Elliott glow, too!

The knowledge of golden hour in photography is one of those weird things that stuck with me from when I took French & Italian Cinema in college.  It was the tiniest sentence in a paragraph about lighting in my textbook but I've remembered it ever since.  Why doesn't my brain do this with useful things???

After School Snacks

Most days, we are running a million different directions after school gets out.  Molly has dance on Mondays and Thursdays, Molly and Elliott go to activities at the library on Tuesdays, Miles has violin and Young Men's on Wednesdays (plus Molly and Elliott have church activities once a month), and the kids have Grandma Day with my mom on Friday.  That's not even counting activities like hanging out with friends or any of the monthlong classes Molly and Elliott do sometimes at the Lindon Rec Center.

Sometimes, though, the stars align and no one needs to be anywhere right after school.  Miles had been asking to go to Fiiz for about a week, so we took one peaceful afternoon to have drinks and treats on their patio.

Tower of Stuffies

 Elliott was so proud of making a tower of stuffies that was even taller than he is!  When you're eight and a half, that's actually a pretty big tower!

Squeak and Greet

Our library got pet guinea pigs named Strawberry and Cream at the start of the summer.  The kids always run in to see them first thing when we get there.  They had an official Squeak and Greet event so we could finally pet them!

The librarian in charge of the guinea pigs read a cute guinea pig book and then taught us facts about the guinea pigs.

We were early so we were some of the first people to pet Cream.  After that, Molly and Elliott immediately ran to the scavenger hunt because the first person to find the necklace (based on the story) would win a candy necklace.  Elliott didn't find it immediately, but he found it when they re-hid it.

The big hit of the night was the plastic bounce balls out on the lawn.  Miles thinks we should get some now.

Molly made an adorable guinea pig craft with tiny squares of paper!

Brick Slopes

Gerrit was so excited about Brick Slopes after we heard about it at the Utah County Fair!  It was exceptionally crowded but we saw so many really impressive builds and got to hear several Lego Masters contestants talk and share some of their builds.

I was so impressed with this life size Dimanche Apres-Midi sur L'Isle de la Grande Jatte.

The Idaho Lego guild was commissioned by Disney to make this astonishing Pandora (from the Avatar movies).  It's huge!

This one reminds me so much of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

Tulip fields!

Someone made a keyboard with Lego, and Miles can confirm that it's a very nice keyboard.

Everyone loved this Lego aquarium with real fish until a crab on the bottom started eating one of the fish and then Molly started crying.

It's Candy Land!

Elliott was obsessed with this huge table-sized multi-build ball machine.  He kept asking us if it was time to see that table yet.

Someone made a Life Star (instead of a Death Star) with so much detail.  Elliott really loved the room full of venus fly traps.

Look at this amazing winter village!

So many cats!

It's Pemberley!

I was so impressed with all of the expression and emotion they captured in this scene from The Lord of The Rings.

Howl's Moving Castle!  You should imagine that there is a Lego build of pretty much anything people have fond feelings for from their childhood.

Lounging in the Pool

I was put in charge of the PTA outdoor family movie night.  There are a surprisingly large number of steps involved in school movie night! I was in charge of both the screen and the concessions, so I inflated our kiddie pool to keep drinks cold.

Elliott immediately claimed the pool as his personal hangout spot.

It turned out that the pool had a leak and I had to frantically drive to Walmart to buy tubs and more ice about an hour before the movie started.  What made it all the worse is that I found out a few days later that there were already tubs and two kiddie pools in the PTA shed. I hadn't been able to see earlier because someone had been standing in front of them when I went to look for popcorn bags.

However, that was really the only major hiccup and everything else went smoothly!  We had about 200 people show up to watch the new Mario movie and it was a fun night.  The only minor hiccup was that I accidentally bought way too much popcorn because the container looked very small before they filled it, so we ended up giving out popcorn to all our neighbors the next day.

Escape the Movies

Miles made us a fun movie-themed escape room! The premise is that a hapless teen employee has lost all of the movies for the theater's summer family movie program and now the family has to find them.

Figuring out the combination to open the lock to the bathroom

We had to solve some tricky word ladders!

The one was in the pantry!

We had to eat through popcorn to find the hidden letters.

This one waws in the dishwasher!

We found the final video!

Bedtime Stories, Year Two

Last year, I wrote about our family bedtime stories. I'm very happy to say that we've kept it up this year and read so many books we loved as a family!

The Last Mapmaker got the Newbery Honor after we read it.  It's a beautifully written adventure story but it also traumatized Molly with a scene related to whale hunting, so that's just maybe something to know if you or your kid is also an animal lover.

One of our city librarians recommended Dust and Grim as a fun Halloween read, so we read it in October.  A tween girl inherits the monster cemetary (and brother!) she never knew she had.  I always like doing monster voices and there are many opportunities for that in here.

City Spies: Golden Gate is part two of one we read last year.  My Australian accent did not improve, alas.  It was very fun for our family to have so much of the action take place in San Francisco!

Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini was hilarious!  It was  Beehive nominee about a boy trying to help his aunt make her book way less lame, so he had his friends are testing out scenarios to make it better.  

The Republic of Birds was also a Beehive nominee.  I adored this one, which is set in a magical alternate Russia full of yagas and a brave girl trying to save her sister from the kingdom of birds.

The Ogress and the Orphans was another librarian recommendation and probably the family favorite of the year. We have ongoing family jokes about pie being someone's only friend now. Perhaps someone should bake a pie! It's funny and touching and has the best crows ever.

City Spies: Forbidden City is the fastest I have ever read a City Spies book (low bar: the others took me 10 months and 3 months respectively). This one involves an international chess tournament, a boy band tour, and lots of evil Russians.

Glitch was also a Beehive nominee and Molly was convinced she was going to hate it.  She got the wrong idea about it from the picture.  It's actually action-packed and a fun way to do historical fiction meets science fiction.

Ella Enchanted is one of my childhood favorites and I maintain that it's perfectly suited for a read-aloud. It's not very long, has a lot of adventure, is utterly charming, and has just enough romance for Molly.

Children of the Fox is the longest read-aloud we've done, and would probably have taken forever if it weren't for the fact that I got this as an ebook that I couldn't renew. It's like City Spies meets Brandon Sanderson fantasy.

I don't have tons of specific plans for our future books, although I will look at this year's Beehive nominees, and I know I want to do Princess Academy and City Spies 4.

Happy Birthday, Kong!

The kids were waiting in line with me at the grocery store and one of the managers was bagging our groceries.  He told the kids that it was Kong's (the grocery store mascot) birthday that upcoming Saturday and we should come to the ice cream cone eating contest.  The kids were immediately ready to enter and spent the week deciding that Gerrit would probably win his division.

Molly and Elliott were both in the tween division and Gerrit and Miles were in the adult division.  I was in the "Eating that much ice cream sounds unappealing and I'm going to go grab some groceries" division.

SO many people showed up for the contest!  The first division was 7 and under, and it went to a final eat-off because there was a tie.  Molly hoped that wouldn't happen for her because she didn't think that looked fun.

Molly and Elliott started and there was one kid shoving it in dramatically with his hands.  At that point, I figured our chances were over.  They weren't even going to weigh Molly's cone but she insisted, and it turned out she was tied with the dramatic eater!  She had to go into the eat-off.  She ate that ice cream like a machine and ended up winning! She won a free ice cream cone every week for a year and and a t-shirt.

                                                 

For reference, it was so much ice cream that it literally took Elliott 30 minutes to eat his entire cone.  He didn't even try to race.  Molly ended up eating most of hers in 2 minutes.

Gerrit and Miles didn't even stand a chance.  Their cones were even bigger than Miles and Molly's but someone ended up eating the entire thing in 45 seconds.