Summer Fun and Fun in the Sun

My sister Amy came to visit with her kids Kaden and Emma for 5 days in June. Her husband had to go out of town to work so we took it as the perfect chance for her to come hang out in Boise. We had sooo much fun and the kids were comfortable right away. I think they would have stayed forever, in fact they did say they wanted to. Here's some of the fun stuff we did.

We went to the zoo and visited the nearby rose gardens. We also had a picnic lunch and the seagulls were being a little too bold for my taste.

We went on the paddle boats around this little stream and pond. Kaden and I were in a giant swan and Amy and Emma had a pelican. Kaden wanted to race everywhere, typical boy. It was funny to watch Em try to reach the pedals and help out.

We stayed at a hotel one night just for fun and to have access to a swimming pool! We swam once the first night and once the next morning before checkout. Our room was nice and seriously it was the most comfortable hotel bed I have ever slept on. Em's wore herself out and practically fell asleep sitting up that night.

We had such a good time and I'm grateful that she came and endured the endless husbandly comments about her spending money while he was making it! We loved it and I am hoping someone else will come see me soon, I'm getting lonely!!

Tyrel is 12!!

Tyrel turned 12 on June 10th. His dad and step-mom were kind enough to host a sleep over for him and his friends. I heard it was fun, if not incredibly loud and crazy. At least they were laughing and joking about things like robots and toys still and not about girls. Ty currently maintains that girls are gross (yeah right) so we'll see how long that lasts. This is the only picture I have of him during his week at my house. We all know how much he LOVES posing for pictures. We went bowling and he is really good! I was very impressed, he must have inherited the bowling gene from his dad. We went to the park so he could skip rocks and went swimming twice. Pretty much everywhere else we went he would get bored in 5 minutes and just want to go home to play video games. We also went to the new X-Men movie "Wolverine" with Trevor Coronado which I know he enjoyed. I think he had fun and even though we are officially at the beginning of the awkward stage I was glad he was here. Yes people, it is no longer cool to hang out with mom. Or to answer questions with more than one word. On June 14th I went to Shelley for his ordination. His dad got to officially make him a priesthood holder! He now passes the sacrament in church and got to MUTUAL...oh man when I made that connection I almost died. I am so glad that he has such a desire to do these good things. Check out how tall he is compared to Jakob, and yes he is by far taller than me. He is well on his way to "manhood", including his the awkward facial hair that is obvious but too fine to shave. On one of my visits home I was giving Bryce and shower and washed his face. He asked me why I was doing that and I said "You have a koolaid moustache" to which he replied "You don't make Ty get rid of his moustache". Oh gosh, they kill me! So if you see Tyrel somewhere and say hi, try not to stare at his upper lip, hope he remembered to put on deodorant, and don't feel bad if he acts like he doesn't know you.

Twinnerific!

A mere month later I am finally posting about the week I got to have Bryce and Brenon here with me. It was action packed so I will skim over it and put more pics up at a later date when I have caught up on it! So first we went bowling, it was interesting....for some reason the twins were taking turns being whiny and would be very frustrated if they didn't do "good" but then they cheered up and had fun (I think). This ball really isn't as heavy as Bryce is making it look! Good grief, you'd think it was a 15 pounder!

Brenon is quite the good bowler, even though he had bumpers he threw it straight many times. The funniest part (they both did this but Bren was more extreme) is that they would just run full speed to the lane and drop they ball, then run back. Oh man, you'd have thought they were throwing grenades!

Pojo's is a must for the boys and we had a lot of fun that night. This is them on the bumper cars, a family favorite. Bryce is pretty lucky with hitting the button on games at the right time to win tickets but Brenon was a ticket fiend, frantically trying to amass as many as possible. Thanks to Ramil, at the end of the night they both walked away with an armload of prizes!

This was our at home movie night. We got Spy Kids 3-D from the library and it had the glasses so we watched it but Bryce wasn't as into wearing them as Brenon (note the unenthusiastic thumbs up on the right).

It was a fun day at the park for mom and the boys. We had a picnic, then walked around on a nature hike looking for the items we put on our list. Brenon was loving putting leaves between the pages of the notebook and making a rubbing of it. Bryce was Mr. Safety keeping us informed of nearby dogs, getting too close to the water, or whatever else might spell trouble. I have a super funny story about the park but it will have to wait. I will post more pics and stories later. Sorry I got so behind. My computer is on it's last leg so at the latest I will be blogging up a storm in August when I get a new one!