Getting Ready to GO!

We are leaving on a long road trip on Saturday morning. Our destination is Glacier National Park in Montana where we are meeting my family for a reunion. It will be our first time in Glacier and we are so excited to finally be able to go. I have been reading about hiking, being in the park with kids and weather information on the Glacier Chat Page .
The kids and I will be gone on this trip for about a month (this includes Glacier, Yellowstone, Idaho Falls, Salt Lake City and Mt. Rushmore) and Bryan will be with us most of the time though he will fly back to work for a week in there.



My concerns:

• I need to pack for this extremely long road trip and yet I am teaching a cooking class tonight on grilling pizza. I have been sauteing toppings and making dough all day.
  
• I have a card class here on Thursday night.
• The car needs to be serviced as it started blinking maintenance required today.
• It is our week to clean the church.
• ALL of my gardens need to be weeded in the worst way!
• I need to hire someone to water my pots and pick up the mail while we are gone.
• There is an ENORMOUS wildfire right outside Glacier as we speak which has now grown to over 16,000 acres. Read about the fire here.
  
• We are camping two of the nights and let's be honest here, I am not a camper.

I must go get my pizza dough out of the car (a fantastic place to let it rise in the summer!).

We're off to see the Wizard . . .

Saturday evening Susan and I took our eldest children to the community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz. As we walked up the the school some of the flying monkeys were calling down to us. Max, Sophie and I discussed how they got up there and we decided they must have flown.



This is the junior who played Dorothy - she was excellent and sounded just like Judy Garland when she spoke. (someone watched the movie much?) The production was truly amazing. There were over 100 munchkins in the most beautiful costumes. They had people flying all over the stage and even had pirotechnics! Community theatre here is the best I have ever seen. Last year, we saw Peter Pan with Laura Osnes who is opening on broadway this week as Sandy in Grease.


Max and Sophie were able to pet Toto after the show.


Sophie loved Glinda the very best though in my opinion, the wicked witch of the west stole the show!

Primary Activitiy

Saturday saw Max and Sophie at a Primary Activity at the church. When I arrived to pick them up they were enjoying root beer floats and climbing in the tree.

Carnival!

When we pulled into the cul-de-sac today we saw that our neighbor Lisa (I call her my overachieving neighbor) was having a carnival for all of the kids in the neighborhood. For $2.00 the kids could play games, win little prizes, make a sand art creation, drink lemonade and eat bags of popcorn. I ended up sitting under the tree with Lisa, Jen and Kristen while the kids played and nibbled on candy from the vending machine.




Sophie is in her pajamas because she was coming from a pajama party at her friend Brooke's house. She chose to wear her Christmas flannel pajamas even though it was 85 degrees today!

Camp Invention

This week Max has been involved in a camp called Camp Invention. Today was the parents showcase and Max had the chance to show off his creations.

This is Max's ride that he made that is not a roller coaster. You go down the black ramp and down the cardboard (not seen) and then the cardboard flips you up.



This is Max's car he made in "Spills and Chills". They worked for The Dominion Toy Co. improving their skateboard because people were not buying it because people kept falling off. They used a "crash dummy" (water balloon) to test their new models. For the Tech Trech Motor Co. they made a car with an egg as their crash test dummy and sent the cars down a ramp!


This is a tranquilizer gun/idea beamer. It beams ideas into people's heads! This is an invention Max thought this would be useful for people who had had brain surgery and needed ideas beamed into them.

This is a rollar coaster Max made with his group. They learned about Newton's Laws of Motion and then used a marble to test their ride!

Sticky, Hot Day at the Beach!

Another hot, sticky day and we are off to the beach! We met up with friends from playgroup and stayed for lots of fun in the sun and a picnic lunch.





Sophie trying out her front float. She will only do this in very shallow water!



Sophie LOVES bugs and let this bug crawl all over her neck!!


Natalie discovered the bug had landed on her and she did not like it!


But, she sooned warmed up to the idea!