So we tried going to a park, but it was closed. And after much deliberation, we decided to eat our picnic lunch early and do a quick photo scavenger hunt on Main Street. I won't bore you with the scavenger hunt pictures we took, but here are ones of people.
This one is labled. We were supposed to take a picture of something heavier than your shoe. Haha.
This was something smooth. We're in the window reflection.
We started a new routine for summer after Memorial Day and school was out. The kids have to get dressed, make their beds, brush their hair, eat breakfast, read for 20 minutes, go outside or exercise for 20 minutes, do something creative for 20 minutes, and do their chores for the day, before they can have any screen time.
Since Cecily is still a beginning reader, she often listens to books instead of reading them herself. She's been on a Stick Dog and Stick Cat kick, so they've done some fan art as their creative time. This was Mira's on the white board one day. I think she did an excellent job. The first picture is hers, the second is the art from the books.
That Saturday, I also did my first Facebook event for my book cover group. I was doing daily posts in different cover marketplaces and a lot of premades, so that kept me super busy. Plus I had to clean and ready my house, and since we were going to be in 95 degree weather in St. George, I needed to update my kids' wardrobes. I usually do a lot of thrift shopping at DI to cloth them for the summer, but DI is still closed. So we went to a bunch of stores at the mall and Walmart and Smiths. And I couldn't find enough shorts that were Emilia's size and not super duper short. I finally figured out that Savers in Orem was open, though it wasn't until we got there that we realized that we couldn't try anything on in the store. We ended up buying a few things, trying them on in our van, returning the ones that didn't fit, buying new ones, trying them on, etc. It was annoying. But we found a lot of great shorts/capris/exercise leggings for her at a really good price.
At the regular retail stores we did find a lot of fun t-shirts for Emilia. I'm kinda jealous of her summer wardrobe. :)
There was one night that it rained a lot before we left, but before that started, the sky was just gorgeous.
Once the Nelson's arrived Sunday afternoon, we enjoyed some time together at our house. Then Monday, we went to the Butterfly Biosphere and the Dinosaur Museum.
The Nelson's youngest, Eve, is almost as cute as Jules. ;) She's MUCH more petite. She's 9 months and actually wearing 9 month clothes instead of 18 month. Haha.
Tuesday we headed to St. George. Jules was a trooper for the (what turned out to be a) four+ hour drive.
This trip was super weird. It was like our trip karma had gone haywire. Mira lost her glasses. We forgot the baby's entire suitcase and had to buy her all new clothes. I forgot my swimsuit. My kids all got rashes from something. We got stuck in stop & go traffic before making it even 20 miles from our house on a Tuesday at 4pm. I lost my keys with our only copy of the key fob. We lost two bottles of hand sanitizer in 5 days. Mira packed all of her underwear in a different bag than her other clothes and then left that bag at home. And our bumper fell off because of the wind.
It's all worked out. We found my keys and Mira's glasses. We were able to pop the bumper back on (and made it all the way home without incident!). We bought all the stuff we forgot and found hand sanitizer we could purchase. But phew! It wasn't the kind of adventure we were expecting!
Plus, the kids all had an amazing time with their cousins, we all got out of the house for nearly a week, and we got plenty of sunshine and water and fun and games.
At this spillway, you could climb behind the waterfall and stand up.
Can you see all the cousins back there?
We arrived back home Sunday night. So Monday we tried to get back into a routine. This is Cecily and Jules doing yoga for her 20 minutes of exercise. Jules often does my workouts with me, too and i find it very endearing.
On Thursday, we went to see my mom. They'd gone to visit Terry and Linda in Nevada while we were in St. George. Hopefully none of us were sick and didn't know it because we were sharing lots of people's germs.
Jules loves wet rags. Nana gave her one, and this is her playing peekaboo with it.
Thursday evening, Nick and Wilda came up to stay with us. Joe and Cindy were supposed to come on Friday, but they had the sniffles and decided to stay home. They were all coming for the funeral of Steve's first-cousin-once-removed, Tiffany (I can't remember her last name). She passed away from complications of cancer while we were in St. George.
Grandma and Grandpa had never been to the Butterfly Biosphere, so we took them. They've gotten more butterflies and we went early enough that it wasn't a humid deathtrap in there (it was still HOT though), so it was kind of magical, even after having been there three times in the last month.
Jules was happy until I wanted her to stay so I could take a picture. She has an amazingly well-practiced glare.
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