Summer Miscellany, chock full o' pictures

Hail Storm

In the living room of the Orem house, shortly before we moved to the Summer House.

We spent lots of time reading this summer.
Scenes like these made my heart happy :-)

For a good portion of the summer, Eliza even insisted on sleeping with books.
Often, she wanted a few books packed into the Elmo bag Grammy gave her.

Here is Jack reading the book that the illustrator signed for us at the Orem Library.
He was so into this book, in which all of the characters are numbers,
that after a short time he had learned all 10 numbers.  Just from the book.
He LOVED this book, Zero the Hero, and we read it over and over again.
For about 2 weeks.  Until he tore out every single page from the book during quiet time in his room.
He then calmly explained, "but it wasn't me." Ummm... you were the only one in there....

So sad.  I haven't brought myself to throw it away yet.
I keep thinking I could make it into cool wall art or something.  Any ideas?

"Stop eating the butter, Jack."
I say that more often than I want to admit...

So, apparently, Cat is taller than Rapunzel.
But she has a ways to go if she wants to compete in the hair department.

During well check-ups, Cat had to cover one eye at a time for her eye exam.
Jack was next, and he didn't have to cover any eyes.  Which he didn't.

Cat received a Hello Kitty scrapbook kit as a birthday gift from a friend.
We went through our photos (quite a feat considering the sad state of my computer at the time)
and chose enough pictures to fill the album.  We printed them out and she was happily entertained
during quiet time for several days.  Love it.

When Ben was out of town one day I was dying to go to one of the twice-weekly free outdoor concerts at the Orem City Center Stage.  It was a performance of opera scenes at the end of a summer workshop led by none other than my college voice teacher, Isaac Hurtado (who happened to be sitting in front of us, right between Cat and Jack).
I thought the kids would enjoy the music, but just to be safe, we cashed in on some free ice cream cone gift certificates from McDonalds before we went to the park.  It helped... for about 10 minutes.  Then they went out to the area where other kids were playing tag and had a grand old time while I kept one eye on them and one eye on the stage.

ice cream + opera = winning combination

Cat was having a hard time keeping a good attitude and being obedient over the summer, so in exasperation one day I came up with a desperate solution.  We had "plus points" and "minus points." There was no set system for awarding points, but if Cat was cooperative, helpful, kind, or obedient, she would get plus points.  We tried to just award plus points generously and reserved minus points for occasions that called for real punishment.  She started out with the goal of an overall score of 15, and it increased gradually to about 22.  The only reward we promised was a vague "if you reach your goal, we'll do something fun tomorrow." No promises on how big or little the fun thing would be.  Unfortunately, we did have to cancel a few of our plans because Cat didn't reach her goal some days, but overall it seemed to be helpful.  Jack and Eliza even wanted to earn plus points, though for them, there was absolutely no reward at all.  They just liked being told, "you'll get a plus point!"  In the picture above, Cat is showing that she had a perfect day with 20 plus points and no minus points.  Yeah!

The afternoon that Ben was arriving from an out of town trip and I was supposed to pick him up at the airport in Salt Lake, and the timing was very sensitive because we also had a babysitter lined up and tickets to see a play that night, I got a flat tire.  Luckily, it happened just as we arrived at the house, but still.  There were a few guys around, working in their yards and such, but none of them offered to help.  Can you believe it?  So Jack and I did it ourselves.  Because, as my nephew said when he was about Jack's age, "we are strong men!"  (Side note: our Orem land lady happened to call during the whole ordeal and actually sent her husband down to Provo to change the tire for us, but since they are here for such a short time over the summer and have so many things to do and people to see, I felt bad letting him spend any time on something I could take care of myself, so I told her that he should just go home.  It worked out fine - Jack and I got it taken care of, we picked up Ben at the airport, although it was later than we would have liked, and we even got our sitter and got to our show on time.  Wow.  Long side note.)

Earlier that day Cat had written a welcome home message for Ben on the sidewalk... in crayon.
So as Jack and I worked on changing the tire, Cat scrubbed the crayon off of the sidewalk.

At the shop, getting the tire repaired, the kids enjoyed watching the guys at work.
And Jack and I walked all over the store looking for monster truck tires.
Alas, there were none.  Sad.

Eliza let me do a (not-so-great) French braid in her hair.
So fun!  I really need more practice, though.

And speaking of hair, I curled Cat's hair before Church one Sunday.
Eliza asked me to curl her hair too, and she let me do about 4 ringlets (I was using a curling iron) before she was done.

Who says an inner tube is only fun when you're in the water?

Jack had quiet time in his room every afternoon while Eliza napped.
He usually looked at books, and came out every 5 minutes to ask me how much time was left.
One day, he decided he was done with books and put himself to bed instead.

Picnic dinner in the living room while watching a movie from the library.

Preparing for the rodeo.

Provo Happy Hour = discounted ice cream at the gas station down the street
Not kidding.

The passes we bought in the spring get us into 2 water parks, one of which was within biking distance from our Summer House.  We only went a few times - Ben was never available during the day, and it was pretty tough to take care of the 3 kids by myself and still let them do the fun things they wanted to do, such as the water slides.  These are some of the only pictures I have from our 3 or so visits to Seven Peaks Provo, since we were in the water the whole time.

I took all three kids to the dentist at the end of the summer.
This was no ordinary dentist, though, it was a super nice pediatric dentist.
Can you see what Jack's doing while in the chair, in the upper right picture?
Playing a video game on a TV that's mounted to the ceiling.
Or, trying to, since he'd never done it before.
And after their appointments they received tokens to either get a prize or ride the pony.
Cat got an extra token for some reason and shared a pony ride with Jack.
Eliza had a hard time with the dentist.   She wailed during the cleaning.
The hygienist kept saying,  "oh, you're so cute!" until she was saying it so often that I was
pretty sure it was code for "this kid is driving me crazy."

Getting ready to leave the Summer House.

Before we knew it, it was time to move again!
Cat settled right in reading as soon as we were back in the Blue House in Orem.

And... guess what?  Only one more summer post, then we are officially beginning the school year here in blogland!  Goodness gracious.  It's taking forever, isn't it?
Stick with me.  I'll be caught up eventually.
Hopefully.