Summer Fun (and not so fun)

We're only one week into summer vacation and already we've had lots of fun. (And a lot more coming too!)

But first let's get the not-so-fun out of the way. The last week of school Aubree had a really bad fever all week long. There were no other symptoms until the third day, when we noticed this rash around her ear. It was really hot to the touch and extremely sensitive. So, I took her to the doctor thinking we may have a case of Lyme Disease. (If I were to choose the number one thing - and possibly the only thing aside from being far away from family - I hate about New England, it would be ticks that carry Lyme Disease.) So, the doctor checks her out and gives her antibiotics for cellulitis (a bacterial skin infection) and the paperwork to get tested for Lyme.

 Here she is after the blood draw for the Lyme test - poor sweetie.

We still don't have the results for the Lyme test, but the antibiotics for cellulitis made all the difference and she is back to normal. (The first dose of antibiotics cost us a lot of sweat and tears and about 30 minutes, but she's gotten very brave at taking her medicine.)

Next not-so-fun item to get out of the way. Three days ago I slipped and fell down a few stairs at our house and I've injured my tailbone. You never realize how connected every part of our body is until a part of it is damaged - it hurts to push or pull with my arms, bend, cough, sneeze, and it especially hurts at night when I'm trying to sleep. I'm a little bit nervous about our trip out west that's coming up - a lot of sitting in planes and cars...
(Unfortunately I don't have a picture of my backside to illustrate this portion of the post.) ;)

Okay, now for the fun stuff.
Miss Mary is the cross-walk lady at the intersection closest to our house. She became my friend and I always looked forward to seeing her each day. On Friday she invited all her cross-walkers to come to her house and enjoy her pool. We had such a great time!

 Isabelle, Aubree, Miss Mary, Carly, Ellie, Samantha, and Simron

After Aubree learned to ride her two-wheeler, Miss Mary gave her these streamers for her bike handles.

We went to the Chorus of Westerly Summer Pops concert in the park last Saturday. There are about 25,000 people at the park for a wonderful concert. They did a sing-along with the audience to a medley of the Sound of Music songs. At the very end the whole audience sings the national anthem with fireworks going off and the Newport artillery firing. It brings out my American pride and gives me the chills!

Now that our mornings are a bit more relaxed, we actually have the time to really get our zones done each day and so the house has actually been cleaner since the girls have been out of school.

An evening at Misquamicut beach with the Garrett's and Jensen's.

Right now we are at our "vacation home" (the West's home) in Mystic. The girls absolutely LOVE being here. (Pictures coming up in a future blog post.)

Festival Farm

There is a cute little farm not too far away called Festival Farm. They have several farm animals, including two new baby pygmy goats that are to-die-for-adorable!!! We went there a couple weeks ago and the girls each got to take a pony ride:

And just to see how far these two girls have come, check out this post - Carly and Ellie horseback riding.

Here's a funny story that happened while at the farm (told in Aaron's voice):
While at the farm, Carly asked me (Aaron) to hold her hand and run as fast as I could. I said, that's probably not a good idea because I'll pull you over. Carly said that I wouldn't pull her over and that she would run right alongside me. I gave in and grabbed her hand to start running. We took off and I wasn't running very fast and she said to run faster so I sped up. Next thing I know, Carly tripped over my feet and tumbled to the ground. I quickly stopped and turned around to see if she was all right. I asked her if she was okay and she didn't answer me. I walked closer to her and she picked her head up and with a look of terror in her eyes just stared at me, not making a sound. I then asked her if she got the wind knocked out of her. Again, no verbal response - just a look of extreme horror. Then, out of nowhere, a low bugle/moan squeezed its way out of Carly's throat. I picked her up and she still couldn't speak - just moan. I cradled her on my lap telling her it would be okay and that soon she would be able to breath again. (I couldn't help but laugh a little as she made her groaning sounds.) Finally, she took in a big gulp of air but could only manage to continue groaning for a few more seconds. Eventually her breathing returned to normal and she started laughing. Poor little critter was terrified.
Here we are laughing like crazy as we retell the story to Mom, Ellie and Aubree:

Aubree Is a Two-wheeler Now

The Sisters took some Family Pictures

Road trip with the Sisters

 The Boston Temple (which is really in Belmont) was open on Memorial Day and the missionaries were given permission to go to the Temple. They were encouraged to get rides with members to keep their mileage down. Aaron and I were planning on going to the Temple some time that weekend, so we decided to go on Memorial Day and take Sister States and Sister Johnson along for a road trip. (We also brought Flat Stanley along. He is a visitor from Katie Parson's first grade classroom who we are hosting for a couple weeks.)

We sure love our Sister Missionaries! We're lucky that we get to see them a lot - dinners, using our internet, doing laundry, going out on visits, etc. - I think we saw them every single day last week. They are such positive examples for our girls.

Waiting for Aaron and the Sisters to come out of the Temple.

 This is our favorite park to visit when we go to the Temple - Robbins Farm Park in Arlington.

 This is our favorite swimming spot in the area (actually the only beach we've visited in the Boston area). But it's super cool because it's Walden Pond!!!! The ACTUAL Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau lived for two years. I absolutely love visiting historical sites. I feel like I'm going back in time or something - almost the same feeling as when I'm reading a good historical fiction - but I get to be there and see it in real life. Also, I feel like we're having an educational experience while having a ton of fun.

This is the very site where Thoreau built his cabin with his own hands and lived there for two years as an experiment in simple living. There was a wonderful talk giving in General Conference by Elder Perry about living more simply and he uses Thoreau's experience as an example. It's a wonderful talk, here's the link: Let Him Do It with Simplicity

Such a great day in Massachusetts. We're so glad to have shared it with our missionaries too.

Aubree

Unfortunately Aubree can now pronounce her "r" sound - kind of bitter sweet. But she still says and does some pretty cute stuff. For example:

"My hands are yum." or "My bum's yum." (instead of numb)
"I have headache in my arm."

 Aubree loves sticks. Whether we're hiking in the woods or just walking around the block she has an eye for finding good walking sticks and will generally find several.

 Beginnings of Spring at Wilcox Park. Spring time just makes me feel so good. Aubree is just my little girlfriend - we're pretty much always together. I'm not too excited about all day kindergarten next year. :(

The other night at bedtime I saw Aubree walk into Carly's room/fort with an umbrella, a suitcase (dr. kit), a bag and straw hat. I guess she needed that stuff to move into Carly's room.

Spring Break

 Way back in the fall Ellie found a bunch of misplaced bulbs and planted them in the backyard by our lilac bush. We kinda forgot all about it until the end of March when we started to see little green shoots coming out of the ground. So Ellie made a nice rock border and a few weeks later we had beautiful daffodils. What a wonderful Spring surprise! Ellie loves the outdoors and gardening.

 As always, we LOVED General Conference. I saw this idea on Pinterest for making a Conference board where you can keep track of the speakers and their topics (and some other stuff), so I spent a lot of time making it (and even bought a laminator). The girls liked it, but we really didn't use it much. The thing we all really enjoyed, aside from the talks, was the bag of candy assigned to each apostle that we would open at the beginning of their talk. :) We consumed so much sugar within those two days!

 We spent our spring break at the West's house... house-, dog- and hamster-sitting. As with every other time we've done this, it was super fun for the girls, but by the end of the week I was SO ready to be back in my own home (even if it is 1/5 the size and 100+ years older)!

Ellie + Mommy = LOVE

 We went to a beach in Niantic after spending some time at the Book Barns and a fabulous 50's candy shop (where we spent WAY too much money on junk).

 We had the missionaries over for dinner and our Sister States (not pictured) was on splits with her sister trainer, Sister Jones (pictured above). Aaron asked Sister Jones where she was from and she said Wyoming. She is from a tiny little town called Otto right by Burlington, WY (the town that my parents grew up in). I told her we were probably related (because I'm related to most people in that little area), and lo and behold WE ARE!!! It was so cool to meet my (distant) cousin out here in CT!

 Carly loved practicing back flips and back handsprings on the West's trampoline. She's such a good little gymnast.

 Sandy + Aubree = nervous love

(We love Aubree's glamour smiles)

 We went to Devil's Hopyard, a state park just 40 minutes away, and enjoyed the waterfall and other beautiful scenery of new spring.

 I love the vibrant green of the moss that grows on everything!

Aaron + Camile = LOVE!