July 2018

The girls get all kinds of crazy, completely impossible ideas of things they want to do from YouTube.  One that seemed more manageable was the Pancake Art Challenge so we decided to try it.  We put four different colors of pancake batter in squeeze bottles and we all designed whatever kinds of pancakes we wanted to.  It was a little more chaotic than I thought it would be, Brooklyn got burned on the griddle, and it was way harder to make them actually look decent than I thought!  But overall it was still fun and I'm sure we'll do it again now that we can learn from our mistakes!  Because it was a little intense I didn't get a ton of pictures but it was fun to see their creativity with what we tried to create.

We went to a friend's house for a 4th of July BBQ with a bunch of other people in the ward. We played a few games, the kids got to play in the water, and we had yummy food but it was crazy hot and humid!  Those are the days I really hate living here...  I didn't get any pictures except for capturing Kaylee and Maya covering themselves head to toe with shaving cream.  They definitely do not mind getting messy!  Brooklyn had a hard time adjusting to sleep after coming back from Utah so I just took her home for bed and Richard took the girls to fireworks at the park. 

Having to move this summer was more than just a little stressful.  The rental company would not budge an inch on the move out date even though we couldn't find another house to move into.  Six days before we had to move, we still had not signed a lease!  I'm not sure we've ever been so stressed!  Both Richard and I were having panic attacks and on Sunday we felt like we couldn't even breathe.  We decided we needed to get away from the house and try to relax so we went to one of our favorite places- the Scioto River to throw rocks and find seashells.  I'm not sure it helped us relax but it was nice to get away for a little bit.  

Even with all the stress, we still had to make it to Chick-Fil-A day for free food!  Kaylee was sick so we left her home and the rest of us got our spots on and went out to eat.  Chick-Fil-A is seriously the best!

We signed a lease for a new house just in the nick of time and got ready for a crazy move.  It was terrible timing because all of us got sick and Brooklyn had a double eye infection.  Moving day was one of the most exhausting days of my life!  Not only were we sick and had to do a ton of the moving ourselves (at least out of the old house, we did have a lot of people show up from our new ward), but the house was NOT ready for us and was DISGUSTING.  Everything was filthy, they had left tons and tons of garbage and the entire garage and front yard was littered with things they hadn't wanted to take with them.  It was such a disaster and took us forever to take care of their stuff before we could even bother with our stuff.  Not a moving experience I would wish on anyone!

One fun thing about the new house is the giant tub in the master bathroom.  The girls have loved playing in it and Brooklyn has asked me to take a bath every day.  Once we finally got things cleaned up, we are very happy with our new house and the girls are loving that they all get their own room here!

I love to see McKenna's creativity.  She has a really good way of bringing things to life that she envisions.  She wanted to put on a camp so she built a campfire out of paper, drew a sky with birds to put on the walls to make us feel like we were outside, and made us all sorts of games and activities for us campers to do.  It was so cute and creative! 

The conservatory has always been one of our favorite places in Ohio and they recently opened up a new children's garden/play area so we wanted to check it out.  They had a few water places to play in and lots of things to climb on and explore.  

I thought it was so sweet- we had only been to our new ward twice but one of the families was having a birthday party for their triplets who are Kaylee's age and they invited Kaylee to come so she could get to know the kids from her Primary class.  It was incredibly thoughtful of them to include her last minute and she had a blast at the party, especially because it was Harry Potter themed!

Harry Potter Party

Kristi and I had been dreaming of a day when we lived close by and could do an epic Harry Potter Halloween party. But since we don't know if that will ever happen, we decided we just needed to do it for no reason! It was a lot of work but was SO MUCH FUN.  

DECORATIONS: Kristi printed out and laminated a million signs that we hung up all over her main floor. I wrote with lipstick on the bathroom mirror, we had floating candles in the kitchen, we made potion bottles and magical textbooks, a giant spider on the ceiling, and Platform 9 3/4.

FOOD: We made chocolate frogs in a bunch of different flavors, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean, magic broomsticks, butterbeer, Ferrero Rocher balls with wings to look like Snitches, and butterbeer cupcakes with different colors of M&Ms inside. We used the cupcakes to sort everyone into their houses. 

CLASSES: We had so many activities to do that we didn't even do half of what we had planned. But we had a game for a bunch of different magical classes.  Shaping animals out of PlayDoh for Transfiguration, drawing something that scares us and then changing it to be something funny for Defense Against the Dark Arts, keeping balloons in the air with your wand for Charms, and for Divination we put a drop of food coloring in the bottom of a cup and filled it with ice.  Each person chose a cup and filled it with 7Up and whatever color it was, they chose a fortune that was written on paper the same color as their soda.

OTHER ACTIVITIES: We started off by letting everyone make a wand.  Julie out shined us all and made the coolest wand! We played a Jeopardy type trivia game, raced to see who could match each person to their Patronus the fastest, matched the spell to what they do, did a crossword and wordsearch, mazes, decode quotes from the books, and did a Scattegories type game where we tried to name something from HP for every letter of the alphabet but it had to be different than everyone else.  And then to end the night we had a photo shoot in front of Platform 9 3/4. 

We didn't get to do everything that we had planned so that was a little disappointing but it was amazing.  We will have to do another one soon so we can fix the little things that went wrong and do it at a time when we can fit in all the hours of fun things we have in mind :)