Puzzling Achievements

We play a lot of the NY Times puzzles in our family, and the special badges make it extra-exciting some times1

Queen Bee means that you've found all the words in the spelling bee, and we've gotten 75!

1,000 Genius (set level of words) in the spelling bee.

50 Spangram first in the Strands!  It's actually pretty hard to get spangram first.

We worked SO HARD for this one.  It is legitimately hard to guess whether or not some of the categories are hypothetically harder than each other.

It makes sense to me that we have way more purple first, because we solve the entire puzzle before we start guessing and it's usually not the purple that's hard to identify at that point.

THE Wooble Wagon

Molly LOVES Woobles, and she was very excited to find out the Wooble Wagon was coming to Utah...at least until she realized that they were coming while she was still on trek.  Gerrit, Elliott, my mom, and I all went to the Wooble Wagon for her so she could get all the cute free Woobles (and the specialty Wooble my mom got her as a present) 

The line was very long but at least it was all in the shade!

    

The event was at a toy store, so each adult took a break to walk around with Elliott and see all the cute stuffies.:]

These are cute pics of the finished Millie Wille.

Here is what the wooble wagon looks like. 

My mom helped add stitches to their giant snake.

I love this crocheted Wooble Wagon!

Here are the tents where they host the games.

Only Child Week

When Miles and Molly went on trek, Elliott got to be an only child for the week.  I was worried that he would be lonely but he really enjoyed the chance to have the house and his parents to himself.  I liked getting the chance to spend some time with just him, too.  It was nice to take a walk with him and get to stop for climbing trees, or to boost him to see chickens, or to stop at different anthills.  It can be hard to get time with just one kid so this was nice.

Fighting Goliath

I was SO excited when it was the week for David and Goliath and I got to make a life-sized Goliath.  I made little slingshots out of cups, balloons, and pom-poms, and where we hit decided on what style we used to sing our songs.

Engineering State

Miles went up to Logan for an overnight engineering camp at Utah State!  The theme was a sustainable city of the future and his team had the challenge to create a flash flood warning and mitigation system. He had a ton of fun and it helped him get familiar with Utah State, which is one of the schools he's considering.

Camp ended with a presentation session for parents and family.  It was a lot of fun to see his group's presentation!

There was also an adorable dog, so you know Elliott was right there.

They had an information session and also an ice cream mixer.  They had a lot of extras so Elliott got three!  (He could not finish three, but he tried).

Elliott's other favorite activity was riding the elevator over and over and over.

A Stitch in Time

Molly made another adorable stuffy for a friend's birthday!  Her friend Chloe loves Stitch, so Molly took on the challenging task of figuring out how to turn him into an oval stuffy. The ears were particularly challenging.  I think she did an amazing job!

Strike a Pose

The kids and I were looking at some old pictures on the blog and noticing that many of their old poses were really silly, so they had to recreate them.

Stars, Stripes and Strawberries

We enjoyed several Strawberry Days activities this year!

We had a strawberry-themed dinner with a grilled jerk chicken with strawberry salsa and Molly made strawberry rhubarb crisp.

I also love the garden tour and two stops were right by our house!

We also stopped by a local flower farm that we drive past all the time on the way to the junior high.

They were selling shaved ice at that house and Elliott was so excited.

We took a family walk over to the chalk festival!

I want to eat that strawberry popsicle in real life!

We took a stop over at the art show and quilt show with my mom. Molly loved this crocheted flag and the patchwork hat!

After the quilt show, Grandma took us to try the new SubZero ice cream near the grocery store.

I made a fraisier cake and it didn't turn out exactly like I wanted but it was very yummy.

Beautiful mountain views!

That is QUITE the cattle in the parade.