Living large in CO: Summer 2014 May and June

Wow, summer. What a time! Riley finished his first year of full day school, First Grade, and went out with a bang! A church in Windsor holds a Shaving Cream Fight on the last day of school every year, and our friends the Sandstrums always go and have a blast. So this year we decided to join them! And it was Fun!!

Riley was totally into it, until he got it in his face, then it was game over!

Jayce and Ryder were having a hard time getting the buttons pushed on their cans so they were as able to participate as they had hoped. So it was mostly just the big boys. But when it came down to it it was a fun time that I'm sure we will do again!

After school was out Riley turned 7! He wanted a Star Wars Themed party, so a Star Wars themed party he got! We only invited school friends this year, but we only had RSVPs from 2 friends, so at last minute I asked our neighbors if they wanted to join too. It made it a little more fun having a couple extra boys there. Mostly the theme was the food, but we also made light sabers as party favors and let the kids wail on some balloons (or Storm Troopers).

We gave Riley (and the other kiddos) a Trampoline this year for his birthday. It was a huge hit!! I was thinking we would need some way to burn extra energy this summer and thought now would be the perfect time to invest in one...and was it ever!!!

We also let him pick where he wanted to go for his birthday dinner. Of course he picked Red Robin! But we also made the wait staff sing to him for his dessert! He wasn't too fond of the singing, but he definitely liked the ice cream sundae!!

June was when the real summer activities started. I had made a list (a Summer Bucket List) of 50 things that we all wanted to do before school started again. So starting in June we did about 1, sometimes 2 things a day. I had also seen where you scheduled your week too, so we implemented that as well! We had "Make it Monday" - this day we did a craft, or cooked something special, "Time to Read Tuesday" - aka No TV day, "Watch it Wednesday" - our local movie theater does $1 movies on Wed in the summer for kids so we usually went to the movies (and took a couple friends!), "Thoughtful Thursday" - Another no tv day, we did something for someone else on this day, and "FUN Friday" - the day we got to go places that were super fun!

So we started right away taking trips to the splash park, the pool, the museums, playing in the slip n slide, having fires in the firepit and making smores, all that typical fun stuff that gets put off to the last minute in summer and you never have time to do. but we also signed the kids (Riley and Jayce mostly) up for a couple scheduled things. Riley got to do Rock Climbing Club at the Windsor Rec Center. He absolutely loved it! He was a little nervous to get too high, and took a few classes before he would reach the top, but he really liked bouldering, and is pretty good at it too.

He also got to do a painting class. The place I like to do my paintings with girlfriends always does a summer program for kids. Last year Jayce and Riley got to throw paint while learning about Polak the artist who did just that. This year they had fun kid-themed paintings. Riley choose to do a Panda Bear, and Jayce did some fireworks just before the Fourth of July. Both of them loved it! And of course Mommy loved doing it with them!

Riley also got to do a Lego Camp! It's a day camp for a few hours a day for a week during the summer that lets kid learn feats of engineering through playing with legos! It really was a great camp for him, and he absolutely loved it!

Another fun thing - Our Picnic Table!! Daddy finally built it for us! It's nice and big, so we can have lots of friends over to eat on it! Didn't he do a wonderful Job! Thanks Daddy!!

For our 13th Anniversary, Cameron planned something super special that I have been wanting to do for a very long time! We went on a hot air balloon ride!!!!! My friend Cathy was super nice to take care of the kiddos for us, since it would be such an early morning she let them spend the night. So we even got to go out to dinner the night before and to a movie. But it was up about 4:00 the next morning so we could be down to Boulder in time for our launch. Cam got to help air up the balloon, and it was really cool to see it fill up. Then we all squished in (there were about 12 of us plus the captain) to go up.

We had a nice relaxing long ride for about an hour and a half. It was just perfect! The weather was gorgeous! The view were even more so! Cam got to help "fly" us for a little while, controlling the burners.

But our Captain was aiming for a large field to land in and we overshot it because of the extra wind. so he had to lift us up again to clear some powerlines. That meant we would have to come down hard and fast on the other side to land in the teeny tiny field that was the only place available. It was a bumpy landing for sure! But it was still an awesome day to say the least! I loved it and can't wait to go again!

That's the majority of the "scheduled things" for us during the months of May and June, so I'll just leave you with a bunch of random photos from us playing with friends (the best part of summer - friends!)