Playing Dolls

Addison is a girly girl.  She has been since day 1, which is funny given that she has 2 big brothers and a momma who never was too girly.  Anyway, she's also always loved her dolls.  She played differently than the boys did with their stuffed animals.  She would hug them and kiss them.  Lately though, she's taking them around in the stroller, rocking them, having us rock them, feeding them bottles and juice (even from her own cups).  So today while I was sewing she puts her doll to bed.  She walked through the hallway rocking her baby, and told me "shhhh" then went and put the doll in bed.  A few minutes later she went and got her doll from bed.  She's hugging the doll and signs all done and night night.  So I asked her if her baby was all done sleeping and she says yes.  Then she walks in the living room, comes back and brings her doll to me and a diaper and signs change.  So I had to put a diaper on her doll for her.  Then she went to show Noah and Josh.  So funny!
We decided to build her a doll bed for her birthday, just this past week.  And oddly I was working on a little quilt for that bed when this all happened.  Think I may try and find some of those tutorials online for some diapers to go with her birthday present.

Carnival Fun

Friday evening, the housing office had a carnival for the residents.  We walked down and the kids had a great time.  It was small and inside (necessary with this heat! even inside it got really warm in there!) so there were four or five games for the kids to play.  After each game they got a ticket, you could exchange 4 tickets for a prize!  Of course this is perfect for preschoolers...play and get a prize, definitely win-win!  There was popcorn and juice as well, which of course was a treat.  There was also a balloon guy there, the boys both got balloon swords and Addy got a dog, which she adored.  It was a fun way to spend an hour and get out of the house.  There was also a book fair going on - but we didn't buy any books - we have lots of course and I'm waiting to get curriculum stuff for Noah and then we can buy some to support that or just some fun ones ourselves.

Addy on the Scooter

Addy took the scooter out for a run today!  She's getting to be so big.  While we've been sanding in the garage, she's been trying it out (and the little 12'' bike that doesn't have a chain too) and was starting to get the hang of it.  Tonight, we put on her helmet and let her try it out in the street with the boys.  She loved it and did a great job.

Sprayground #9

Friday night after dinner we all headed to the sprayground, our 9th for the summer.  It was great getting to go with all of us - Mike of course doesn't typically get to join us because he's at work.  On the way to a sprayground earlier this summer we drove down a road and I loved the view...it had the skyline framed so  nice.  I selfish wanted to go to park #9 because we had to go on the same road...if we went after dinner we could wait til the sunset and I could try and get a shot.  I'm really glad my family loves me, I'm sure it could be annoying otherwise.  I do try to make sure the kids get some fun out of our odd outings and sure enough they did!  It was so, so much fun.  I am loving our summer quest!  Addy still didn't get in the water (which is absolutely fine) but Noah and Josh ran in and out of the water and back and forth from the water to the playground.  We have 10 more spraygrounds on our list...we'll see what this week brings!
(oh and I did manage to get some beautiful shots...with a long exposure time, thanks to Mike reminding me to use the timer since I don't have a remote - otherwise pushing the shutter button was giving me shakiness...seriously I know that, but totally forgot about it!)

Catching Up: How we Spent Father's Day

We had an absolutely fabulous day on Father's Day.  We spent the morning and afternoon on Lake Mead with Kristin & Corby and their boys on the boat.  It was a nice treat getting to go out on the boat with them.  I love watching the "big boys" all play in the water and ride the tube.  Josh was a bit braver this year than he was last year, but still didn't get in the tube.  That's alright.  He reminds me of Chrystal when we were little and mom and dad had a boat.  Chrystal would get in the boat while it was on the trailer and refused to get out until it was on the trailer again and out of the water.  She was terrified of the water.  Me on the other hand tried to come up with every excuse I could to get in the lake and out of the boat.  Josh does get out of the boat though while we were beached on a little shore and had lots of fun playing in the sand.  Addy wasn't really sure of the water, but did okay as long as she was being held and not too far if she was on the sandy part.  She even got in the tube this time (Kincaid did too).   All 4 of the big boys cried when it was time to go home, a sure sign they were all having lots of fun.  I don't want to think about the end of the summer, because by the end of the summer we'll be losing Kristin and family...I'm not sure who is going to be more sad; me or the boys or Addy...we'll be losing our dearest friends.  That's the way it is though in the AF - thankfully it's a pretty small world in the AF though and we can  hope to be stationed with them again sometime in the future and am certain we'll meet up on travels and adventures.

Our Summer Quest

So last year I remember when we first got here thinking how surprising it was with the heat that there weren't more splash pads.  I mean really, it gets a bit hot here you know!  I only knew of one, the one that we experienced our first trip to the ER for if you remember.  The splash pad was part of a park, a nice park but one for bigger kids.  Not awful last year with Addy being pretty small...but I knew this summer it wouldn't be the ideal spot for us (the playground equipment is designed I think for the 7 or 8 year old and up).  Well...turns out I just hadn't looked  hard enough.  There are a wealth of them through the city and neighboring cities.  So this summer our quest is to go play at ALL of them.  Some of them are a drive (40 minutes or more) and some are much closer.  We have all summer though and it's a fun goal!  So far we've been to 8 out of 17 (unfortunately plans for going to one today were altered since I feel flu-ish).  I thought I'd share some pictures from our adventures so far though.  Addy gets super excited about the splash pads, but won't get in the water.  Noah loves the water (no surprise there) but also seems to play just as much on the playground equipment.  He also manages to make friends with whoever happens to be there at the same time, regardless if we know the kids or not.  I love that and honestly he's pushing me to be a bit more outgoing.  Josh seems to enjoy the splash pads more than the pool - he loves to run and jump and run and jump and "box" the water.  It's definitely a high light of our week, we've made a goal to go twice a week with one day being Thursday after Addy has speech in the morning.

Here's our list on the fridge, we've marked the ones we've been to and also rated them 1 - 5 (5 being super, duper fun)

Addy was checking out her shoes in the one picture above, she loves shoes and all things sparkly/glittery

Summer Fun

We spent a couple days this week at some spray grounds, another day at the pool with friends, and got to welcome home a friend from far-away-work!  What a great week!  We also got to end it with a family picnic for MOPS at the park. 
Addison isn't too sure yet about the water at the spray grounds, but she seems to enjoy being outside and is happy just the same.  The boys run around like wild men - no surprise there!  Here are just a few pictures of the kids having fun this week.  I think we are going to make a summer goal to try every splash ground in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson (or at least the ones that I found on the Park & Rec websites for each city).  It will give us something to get out and do every week (twice a week probably actually) and hopefully we'll have some friends come join us on occasion!

Saturday Evening at the Park

After church Saturday night we spent time at the park during sunset - such a pretty night!  The kids all enjoyed hanging on the monkey bars.

Town-Square

Bowling Fun

While Mike was in Alaska for work he had the chance to go bowling a couple of times; the boys love to bowl and so we thought it would be the perfect thing to do on a windy Saturday after he was home.  We headed to the base bowling alley, which was thankfully not busy at all, and spent part of our afternoon trying to knock down pins.  Even Addy got to try and bowl some today by helping me push the ball down the ramp (Josh decided after my second or third gutter ball that I should the ramp too!)  Mike won (no surprise there), then it was Josh, Noah and finally me in last place!  But we all had fun.

Discovering a New Park

This morning after picking up hard copies of Addison's MRI/CT scans, we went to a new park that was on the way.  Noah said it reminded of him of the park in Bellevue where he played with the Carrots and his friends.  He still misses his buddies so much!  It was a very beautiful day and there was another little boy there who was kind enough to share his sand toys (there was lots of sand...guess I should keep some in the van so they're handy!) and the boys shared the ball we brought.  Noah was brave and decided he could do the fireman pole all on his own!  Addison won't be out done of course had had to prove her bravery by going up to the biggest slide to go down by herself!

Going Manual

This morning we found our way to a park, the "cowboy" park Josh has dubbed it.  It is getting warm here, I am excited for the warmth but realized today that our days of spending mid afternoons in the park are short lived again - we'll be spending mornings and evenings at the park and staying out of the afternoon heat soon.  We had lots of fun though and it was good since our morning got rearranged a bit; we had hoped to make the MOPS egg hunt but Mike was longer than he planned taking care of registering the van - bummer we missed the egg hunt but yeah I don't have to do it alone with all 3 kids.  I challenged myself for the weekend to stick to fully manual on the camera (I've been doing apture or shutter speed control but leaving the autofocus on most of the time and sometimes the auto-ISO on, though sometimes not).  I was surprised I got as many good shots as we ended up with.
My heart has been pondering actually being more serious with photography, as in doing it for hire.  It's scary for me - the business aspects of it I have no idea on yet...of course I also question if I can hack it out there.  But I absolutely LOVE taking pictures though, I am loving the learning and trying to achieve better pictures each time.  I have had several people ask me about taking pictures, or suggesting I should try...Mike says it's not a coincidence anymore...we'll see how it goes.  But all that jibberish was to say, I'm challenging myself to be fully manual because if I do this for other people and get paid to do it - I want to make sure I'm constantly learning and getting better and improving.









 

Our Last Day with Mema & Pepa in Pictures

Thursday was the last day we had with Mema & Pepa before we had to take them to the airport on Friday morning.  Mike had to work, but the rest of us ventured out to a new park - which was really nice and lots of fun! Then it was lunch, home for naps and rest and then lots more playing for the evening!














 

Just a Few Pictures from this Morning

The kids and I spent the morning exploring the Spring Preserves again and I thought I'd share a few pictures from our adventures.  I took the new lens of course and had fun trying it on - Noah and Josh requested pictures be taken of flowers so we had lots of those pictures.

Valley of Fire with the Squadron

We spent another morning at the Valley of Fire...this time with Mike's squadron.  What a gorgeous day we had out there, so thankful after we had sleet/rain/snow yesterday (yes in Vegas in April!).  We grilled out, played football, talked, fed the chipmunks, and explored a bit.  It ended up I think being a great place for the various ages of families - and I'm pretty sure everyone had a really good time.  Our kids enjoyed trying to climb the rocks near the picnic location...there was also a little cover of sorts close that our boys and Kristin's boys went exploring.  It was great - they were fighting off the "bats & bears" (which of course there weren't really but shh...don't tell them that!) and climbing up; the location was great though because they couldn't climb up too high and there was a good slope that was much safer and it didn't go through to another side.  A great spot for 4 preschool boys to have adventures.  I think we got a few good shots of Noah for his 5 year pictures...we'll do them in parts I think and seriously how is he almost 5 already?
On the way home I told Mike I felt like we've won the lottery so far with squadrons.  We have been in such awesome squadrons that have had leaders who put family first and really look out for everyone.  What a blessing it has been! 

Another Morning at the Park

We are so very blessed!  Seriously, it can be a hard thing to move around any at all, it can seem even harder when you've been somewhere for 5 years and your 2 oldest children have friends they see several times a week, friends that are like family to them.  Yet, God is so faithful!  We spent another gorgeous morning - though seriously windy! - at the park with several friends.  I truly feel blessed that I have had the chance to meet such amazing women and mothers, they encourage and support me and are just a true blessing.  It is even more wonderful that we've been able to reconnect with "old" friends like Kristin.  Anyway, it was a fun morning and I hope we have many more mornings at the park!

As you can see Josh is still Batman ;-)

She is such a little dare devil - it won't be long til she's all the way up

Addison hanging on the  monkey bars.

She hung there quite a long time for such a little girl (shhhh...don't tell her she's little, I don't think she knows)

Notice there aren't many pictures of Noah...he was so busy running around playing with his friends.  He was so very excited to see several friends at the park today.

Morning at the Park with Friends

It was a beautiful, cool morning here and we were lucky enough to have the chance to spend the morning at the park with some great friends.  There were some "new friends" there too (some other kids we did not know, but Noah and Josh were happy to play with regardless).  It was definitely a good way to burn some energy off the kids before a couple of quick errands.  Just a few pictures from our morning.

Josh checking out some monkey bars

In the midst of bad guys & good guys...I'm not completely sure what the background story is

She love to be where the action is

Which of course includes on the slide (though she is not a fan of going down slides just yet)

Josh & Addy checking things out

So sweet, Braylen was making sure Addy was okay after they slid down the slide

The boys jumping on the bridge - this was everyone's favorite thing for a bit!

"How can you say no mommy??  How?"  I'm pretty sure that's what she was thinking  here