T-ball

Brayden had a lot of fun playing T-ball this summer. I was surprised at how much he improved in just 7 weeks. Here's Brooklyn watching her big brother. She did pretty good at all the games, as long as I had plenty of snacks for her to eat.
Waiting to hit:

Brayden would always get 3 pitches from the coach and usually hit it. Here he is after he missed the 3 pitches:

Standing by the coach and trying to be just like him:

Catching the ball:

So proud of getting his trophy:

Brayden and his coach:

Play-doh

We haven't gotten out our play-doh in a very long time. So one day we decided to break it out. Brooklyn is old enough now that she actually played with it for quite some time.

Swimming at Grandma's

We had a last minute showing of our house, so we decided to quickly grab swimsuits and head over to the Ericson's. I bought this pool two years ago to keep at their house, but Brayden was never a huge fan. This year, however, Brayden and Brooklyn can't get enough of it. It only took a few minutes to blow up, and of course Josh had to haul hot water inside in order for the kids to play in it.

The sun went down quickly and it was a little breezy, so the kids got cold towards the end. But of course that didn't stop them from playing and playing and playing!!!

July 4th

Because the 4th of July was on a Sunday, we didn't really do much. Of course the kids wore red, white, and blue to church but I forgot to take a picture. After naps we headed over to the care center where Josh's grandma is recovering from a stroke and had FHE with Josh's extended family. It was neat to spend the holiday with Josh's grandma. The kids did better than we expected, thanks to my last minute thinking to bring some games, crayons, and coloring books. Here's Brooklyn coloring:

Brayden enjoying the pie and icecream:

Our family:

After the care center we headed back to our with with Mike and Natalie to do some fireworks. We ate dinner then put Brooklyn to bed. Steve and Aaron came over and we started the fireworks. Here's Brayden not liking some of the loud ones:

We tried sparklers with Brayden last year, but he ended up grabbing the hot part after it went out so he didn't enjoy it too much. This year, however, was a different story. He was a little timid at first, but then LOVED them:

3rd of July

We didn't have much planned for the holiday weekend, so I started looking online for some fun things to do. We decided to sleep in and enjoy the morning. We went and visited Josh's grandma in the hospital, then stopped at the Ericson's for lunch and to pick up some sod. We then headed home for some good naps. After naptime we all got ready and headed down to Sandy City's parade. While everyone was sleeping I went and found a back way where we could park super close to the parade. Of course when we hopped in the car to go down there, a cop was sitting there blocking it off. He stopped us, but decided to let us go through anyway. So we got to park about 25 yards from the parade and found a sweet spot with the sun at our backs. Here's the kids before we left:

One of our last holidays as a family of 4:
Both kids LOVED the parade and sat through the entire thing. Here's Brayden waving at the floats:

Didn't take long to figure out that they throw candy. We had mostly adults around us so they let Brayden get ALL the candy thrown our way:

Waving the little flag he got:

I was surprised Brooklyn did so well. She loved the floats, but didn't like the loud cars and motorcycles as they passed by. Here she is waving to the princesses:

Getting candy. She was a little timid to run out and pick it up, so Brayden was very nice and always gave her some that he picked up:

With her American Flag:

This is how she spent about 50% of the parade. We had to continuously take her hands down and show her that the noise was gone, only to have it return minutes later. Everyone thought it was really cute:

After the parade we went to Litza's Pizza for dinner and visited with Josh's dad. We then headed back to Sandy, parked at our church, and walked to Jordan High School to watch the fireworks. The kids did ok, but not as well as when we are right under the fireworks like last year. But they loved throwing the snaps that I had brought and ran around and had fun:

Painting the Sidewalk

My mom sent me an email that had a bunch of fun summer things for the kids to do. One of them was painting the sidewalk with water. Since we've been outside swimming almost every other day, I thought it would be a perfect thing to do when they were done with the pool but I wasn't done mowing the lawn yet. So I gave them each a paintbrush and bucket of water. They LOVED it! I couldn't believe it kept them busy for almost an hour, painting everything in sight.

Random Pics/Buttons

After one of Brayden's t-ball games we stayed out front and played on the grass while I took pictures. Here are the kids playing:

I love this expressionm, especially with his ear folded under his hat:

Playing ring-around-the-rosies:

Later that night I was trying to kill time with the kids and was pretty exhausted, so I decided to give them a jar of my scrapbook buttons. It kept them occupied for over 45 min...well worth it even if it took us 10 min to find all the buttons.