August 4

August Week 4

 Speaking of purging stuff from the house (last week's post). . .

The time came to go through Emily's artwork.

 She and I worked very hard during a couple days of Noah's nap time.

We took a picture of everything, and then chose several from each year to keep.

The rest were thrown away!

I uploaded the pictures of her art into a book, and now we have a small photo book instead of the massive piles of papers!

 (This is one of about 15 stacks!)

 Our front yard is (relatively) nice and cool in the late afternoon, so we have been hanging out there.

Em likes to read, color, or play games on my iPad and Noah loves to wander around, collecting sticks and stones.

Noah--where's your nose?

Where's your mouth?

 Where's Noah's tummy?

 Such a smart boy!

 At the park

The view at the park. . . palm trees, and the ocean.  :)

 Jamba Juice--yum!

A very poorly sliced pizza.  

 My new haircut.

I have bangs for the first time since 4th grade!

August 3

August Week 3

August 12th-August 18th

Closing Ceremonies

Pretend City in Irvine 

 This was a great day!

We went to the Irvine Spectrum--window shopped, ate lunch; then went to Pretend City, and finally to the beach!

Family beach day at Corona del Mar (same day as Pretend City) 

 i love you.

I used to love to stand like this too... feel the sand fall away from under your feet with the tide...

 :)

  I love watching her play in the ocean.  :)

 Back home later in the week...

trying to beat the heat in the shade of the front yard.

I have been on a major purge to get rid of stuff from our house.

Here are many bags of it getting donated to the Salvation Army on Saturday morning.

August 2

August Week 2

August 5-11

Sunday we were hanging out in Orange City.

Monday we drove Orange City-Denver.

Tuesday we drove Denver-home.

These pictures are just Wednesday-Saturday:

We're home!!

 We ordered a new bedroom set before we went to Iowa.

It arrived on Thursday or Friday.  Yay!

Emily took these photos (and many more) of some of her and Noah's favorite things now that we're back home.  :) 

 I'm trying to learn to french braid her hair.

This was Saturday morning's effort.  

 Saturday morning we went to the library across the street to turn in her summer reading packet.

She scored a ton of prizes!  Wow!

Apparently you're supposed to go and collect a prize every 5 days over the summer, but we just went today and she got a prize for 5 days, 10 days, 15, 20, 25, and a finishing prize too!

Afterwards we met Lenee and her mom at Chick-Fil-A for a yummy lunch and time to catch up about our summers (and enjoy the A/C).  Em played for an hour and Noah was amazingly content to just sit and hang out.  It was a nice way to spend our Saturday.  :)

More posts coming soon...

stay tuned!

The Road Home

Monday we left Orange City around 4am (I think) and drove to Denver, CO.

FYI: The AAA book has lots of interesting information on places you've never heard of, like Ogallala, Nebraska.  

Apparently there used to be lots of fighting among cow herders here. . .

Now, there's a nice little Pizza Hut where we stopped for lunch. . .

oh yeah-- but there were lots of flies! EW.

 Sunflowers on the side of the road.  :)

It was an easy (but long and boring) drive.

We got into Denver before dinner with plenty of time to swim and play at the park before having a picnic dinner, more play time and then finally bedtime.

Tuesday morning we left Denver at 5am and started driving into the mountains.

We had a rocky start (haha, get it?  "Rocky"?) because we hadn't even gone 2 hours (or was it 3?) when Emily began puking in the back seat.  I handed her ample buckets and bags to use, but she proceeded to douse the backseat before we had a chance to pull over near Vail. 

Ahh. . .  family vacation memories at their finest.

The picture above was to show how cold it was. (Only 48 degrees, and we had to clean her (and everything else) up and change her outside when she already felt sick!)

Anyway--I thought that photo would be more pleasant to recall than what Emily or our car looked like at the time.

 Back on the road.

A park in Grand Junction, CO near our hotel on the way to the midwest, that we returned to today.

We had a picnic lunch with Pita Pit.  Yum!

On the road again.

 These drowsy driver signs aren't meant to be funny. . . but I got a chuckle out of them.

 Gorgeous clouds.

Believe it or not, our kids were HAPPY in the car.

For almost the entire 20+ hours this day (and the 40+ hours preceding this!) 

 Again. . . with the clouds. . . amazing.

Notice the change in temp--and this was when it was finally starting to drop!

 9pm.  Still 100 degrees, somewhere near Vegas I think.

 See?!?  Happy!!! (And starting to get goofy leaning like that--this was just before bedtime.)

Blurry, awful picture, but it's the 605 freeway!

Our final freeway of our 4,000 + mile road trip!

(Would you believe we hit traffic after 1am on the 605?  There was an accident...)

We made it home!!

Thanks for following along with our blog posts!

Next blog: back to normal weekly life here in Long Beach.  :)

-Sarah