Summers' End

Our Disney passes are good again so I offered to take the kids to Disneyworld today - one thing though - Dale is with the Scouts on High Adventure so we could only ride the rides that Max could go on. They turned me down and begged to go down to the stream behind our house of all things.

I have to admit it looked inviting, but I had assumed that gators or snakes lived in it so we hadn't explored it before. It was kid heaven!
Here they are trudging up and down the stream while Max and I waited above.
Amy found little fish
And they also discovered a bank full of clay. Because I was bored I told them to grab a hunk and bring it home to make a sculpture. This is what Taylor made - a turtle. We're letting them dry outside except it's so humid right now, I don't think that will happen. We'll probably have to bring them inside.
Here is Max's new toy from grandma - the older kids push him around on it which he loves. Thanks Grandma!

Withlacoochee

Today we decided to take a little road trip to see a state park about 50 miles west of us called Withlacoochee State Forest. We went to a Deep South Barbecue first to eat lunch and had such morsels as boiled peanuts, fried okra, fried pickles, and of course pulled pork sandwiches. We found a cool hiking trail and set off.
Do you see the spider on Amy's shirt? It was the biggest spider I have ever seen in the wild. It's not really on her shirt, the kids just stood behind it so you could see it.
Here's a close up. As you could tell, I didn't want to get too close, but wanted you to see how humongous this creature was.
So we started on down the trail and to our utter dismay, there were huge spiders everywhere. The look on Amy's face explains our feelings.
So here we are marching back up the trail to the paved trail you see in the first picture which was spider free. Dale says he's bringing the boys back to bike the biking trail. It did look very fun, but I wouldn't want to run my head into one of those spider webs. So after having running races on the paved safe trail, we piled in the car and drove back home to go swimming. So much for our adventursome road trip.

Breaking Dawn and Max of course

So I went with some lady friends from my ward to the wait for the new Twilight book "Breaking Dawn" to come out at midnight last night. Go Edward!
Max loves to put everything in his gargantuon mouth. This poor soul of a toy is hanging on for dear life.
Max has developed a funny face afterall. He scrunches up his nose and makes a little snorting sound. You can almost hear it if you look at this picture.

Cocoa Beach

Dale's parents came to visit on their way around the country. We were lucky enough to have them babysit while we helped out for Youth Conference for 3 days. Max is hanging out with grandma at the beach.
Grandpa T is taking an afternoon siesta while the rest of us caught some waves before a storm blew in.

Gymnastics and Such

Kendall and Amy started gymnastics. Kendall has done gymnastics before and is in a class that is preparing him for a boys team in the fall - he's stoked. Amy loves gymnastics and counts down the hours until her next class.

I can't resist taking pictures of Max - especially when he is smiling at me like this.
Taylor, Kendall, and Amy have started back up into piano lessons at home and Taylor has been super at practicing.
I had to get a picture of this. Dale is so faithful at doing the dinner dishes. He has no idea how much I appreciate it.

Ugly Faces

We gave the kids our old camera and these are the kinds of pictures they take. We get a lot of Max and Shelby - probably because they're always "there".

This is nothing - I can make the ugliest faces ever.
Dale cannot make that ugly of faces.

Summer Fun

So we broke down and got a video gaming system - the Wii. These buggers are hard to find! Finally I just ordered it online at Toys R Us. Apparently if you want to buy one in the store, you have to stalk the ads and then be there first thing Sunday morning - that just wasn't going to work for us. The kids have enjoyed it immensely and I have to say, the sports games are pretty cool. Now if I can only find a Wii fit for me.
It was the first day of Summer so you know what that means - Summer's birthday. She turned five. She wanted to go bowling for her birthday because she likes to play it on the Wii. Little did she (and Amy) know how heavy the ball would be and that it is much different than a video game. We had fun though.