At a surprise swim party for our sweet friend Ed!
When you live in a place with 3-digit heat most of the summer, a nice getaway to cooler temps is AMAZING! We went to Cloudcroft for a mountain picnic. It was GLORIOUS!
A little tree climbing!
Hiking with Mommy!
It wouldn't be a day in our life if there wasn't some sort of ruckus to sort out. When we got home, the girls brought me this. This would be about 10 My Little Ponies shmooshed together with a handful of Bunchems. Do you know about Bunchems? Well, they are super fun and the girls really love them. HOWEVER, they usually only play with them under my supervision. Unfortunately, Ellie always finds a way. *sigh* Ken and I tried for about an hour to salvage what I could but in the end, we had to break the news. It was either throw away the bunch or cut the ponies' hair. Ellie hated both plans and Sophia, always reasonable, thought that cutting the hair would be the best choice.
I set out the ponies with their new dos in front of the girls and asked them to close their eyes. When they opened them, Sophia thought it was hilarious and Ellie went through all of the emotions before settling on hysterical crying because she didn't want "boy ponies." Teachable moment? Sure. We told her that MANY girls also have short hair. Finally, she decided that her Barbie, who had also been thrown in the mix, looked like Ellen, her favorite person :)
For the 4th, we started the day with a Patriotic breakfast and ended up not taking one other picture all day! That's a sign of a GREAT day! Having so much fun swimming, grilling, swimming, drinking, swimming, laughing, swimming, and lighting fireworks that you forget to look at your phone much less take pictures is a good sign of a great holiday :)
Daddy's last day off was pretty much rinse and repeat with the addition of a makeover session by sweet Sophia. Lookin' good, right?
Summer 2016 will forever be remembered as The Summer of the Watermelon for us. I'm a total watermelon snob. Seedless is the WORST. For some reason for the last several years, all I've seen at the stores here (yeah, we have like ZERO good markets here :( ) all I've found are seedless. Flavorless, dry, bleh. This year at Walmart they had a HUGE box of giant SEEDED watermelons! They were so yummy!!! The girls and I made our way through about 2/3 of the first one with our lunches. It was weird that I had to teach them how to spit out the seeds since they had never seen that before. Ellie thought it was awesome to spit on her plate. Sophia, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered with such things and asked if I would start taking out her seeds. Um, no. With the last 1/3, I threw it in the blender to make some juice for Watermelon Moscow Mules. Ahhhhhh-MAZING!! And that little bit of watermelon went a long way in the juice department!
Anyway, for the 4th weekend, we bought another one with intentions to juice a lot of it for watermelon margaritas (again, Ahhhhhh-MAZING!). We mentioned to some of our friends that this stash at Walmart was better than normal (apparently we've talked about watermelons and the lack of good ones in LC quite a bit). So they bought one, cubed it up, and brought it the 4th shindig. After the party, they left us with 2 large containers of cut watermelon plus we had more than half of our own plus the rest of the juice. Seriously, our entire fridge was filled with watermelon! A couple of days later, our same friends who were through Texas called to tell us they picked up ANOTHER watermelon so that we could try a true blue Texas watermelon which we've been told are amazing. We were super excited and grateful AND hysterically laughing because of our never ending flow of watermelons! Before they dropped it off, I hit the kitchen to figure out what in the world I was going to do with all of this! I pureed/juiced it all up and headed to Pinterest!
Did you know that if you throw cubed watermelon in the blender WITH the seeds, the seeds just move around and are not ground up into the juice? Bet not. I do.
That afternoon, our friends Sharon & Ed stopped buy to bring our watermelon. Ed carried it in, set it in the kitchen and said "Let me go get the other one." The other one? WATERMELON FOR LIFE!! Ha! It's a good thing watermelon is my favorite!
I feel like I'm somewhere between I Love Lucy and they just keep coming and coming and Ethel (Read: Ken) and I are trying figure out where to stash them, and Bubba. Watermelon Popsicles. Watermelon Sorbet. Watermelon Salad Dressing. Frozen Watermelon Cubes. Grilled Watermelon Salads...
Our own garden also took off in the last couple of weeks! I'm notoriously terrible at growing a garden but this year, I'm doing pretty well! Our zucchini was looking a little sad so I looked online to see if I could green up my thumb a little. Ours were pretty small and kept yellowing. Apparently this is due to under-pollination. Dang it! Bring back the bees! There were are few solutions but only two of them were really doable. 1) Plant some flowers that attract bees or 2) Hand-pollinate. Want to know how to hand-pollinate a zucchini plant? Well, here's what you have to do. Find the boy flowers (you know it's a boy because it's on the end of a long skinny stem), pick them off, pull back the petals, then stick the little nub that sticks out in to girl flower which can be found on the end of the stubby stems (actually the zucchinis). There is a round "hole" inside the girl flowers. I read this information to Camille as I found it and we were both busting up laughing like middle schoolers. She told me that after I'm done with my zucchini sex, I needed to come have zucchini sex at her house because she doesn't have the energy for it anymore. AHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!! But here's the deal - it WORKED! No more tiny yellow puny veggies, we've got big whoppers coming out EVERY DAY!!! I may have felt totally weird and SUPER awkward out in my garden, but it was worth it!
This was the final week of NMSU Swim School for us. It is AMAZING how much the girls have grown from these lessons! Sophia went from being timid about being in the pool without floaties to swimming laps (both freestyle and backstroke) with amazing form! She's so excited about it and she's GOOD! We went for two, three-week sessions and decided to take the 3rd session off but Sophia will be right back to it for the fall! She wants to compete and has decided that she's going to be in the Olympics. Keep an eye on this one ;)
For Fun Friday, we finished up our lessons about Freedom & Bravery. I wanted the girls to understand that it's not just in the past that brave people fight for our freedom and for our safety. I wanted them to know that bravery doesn't just mean fighting in wars. It's standing up for what we believe even when (or maybe ESPECIALLY when) the easy option is to go along with what others are doing. It's also doing jobs that protect people on a daily basis. I wanted them to know that freedom doesn't just mean that you aren't ruled by dictator or imprisoned. It also means that you have the ability to pursue your dreams. On Thursday, I posted on Facebook that I was looking for names and addresses of service people to send "thank you" notes. I noted that it could be military, police, firefighters, etc. We got several responses right away. The next morning, we woke up to find out about a tragic shooting in Dallas where police officers were specifically targeted. I reposted and specifically asked for names and addresses of police officers.
I created this simple card. Ellie colored the front of them and Sophia wrote inside each one. I wrote out the words for her and she filled them in including the specific names we were sent. As of today, we have sent out about 18 cards and we have about 15 more that we need to get out on Monday.
Our hearts go out to all families effected and we pray that our county can heal and find a way out of this that doesn't involve any more pain or fear.
Later that afternoon, we watched He Named Me Malala. I recorded it a long time ago and I was waiting for the right time to watch it with Sophia. I know some people might think that the content is too grownup for Sophia, but I trust her enough, I know how she thinks, and I want her to understand the real importance of freedom and bravery. We don't hide the truth of the world from her but we do soften it. She understands death and has faith in God and the promise of eternal life in Heaven for all that are saved. When she watched the video, she was very sad in parts, asked a lot of questions, and felt proud of Malala for being brave. She also immediately recognized immediately how unjust it is for girls anywhere to be denied an education. We talked about how education itself is a huge key to freedom. Sophia said "Girls should get everything that boys get. We both have skin and eyes and brains." Yep.
If you're not familiar, Malala is a girl from Pakistan. Her father is an advocate for education and she followed in her footsteps. She gained attention for speaking out for the education of girls and as a result, she was shot by the Taliban. It was a miracle that she survived much less recovered to the point where today she is a global advocate for girls' education and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
To end the night, we watched the U.S. Olympic Track & Field and Gymnastics trials and had a little girlie time doing our nails ;)
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