HOT day

Another thing we marked off of our family fun list was going to Apollo Park.  We picked pretty much one of the hottest days of the year to go, but we still had a good time.  Apollo park is really big, with a walking trail, man-made lake, bridges, and several playgrounds.  It's a fun change of scenery from the desert we live in (although you can still see the desert when you look outside the park. ha!)

When you go over the bridge & look into the water you could see hundreds of little fish.  The boys thought that was pretty cool, of course!

Because it was so hot that day (and you are not allowed, nor would you want to, swim in the lake), we let the boys run & splash in puddles to their hearts' content.  It reminded me a lot of when we went here last fall (which I guess I didn't blog about, but it was unseasonably warm & we ended up letting the boys splash in puddles then too!).

We played on the playground for a little bit, but there was NO shade and it was over 100 degrees.  This little contraption was hilarious.  It would spin around, so Dathan thought he'd try his hand at walking on it... which resulted in him falling off every time.

After playing on the play ground we helped the boys cool off a little...... (if you look in the background you can see what I meant about still seeing the desert when you look out of the park)

There are LOTS of ducks and LOTS of geese at this park.  We forgot to bring bread but this really sweet young couple (with a baby) came up to us & said they had extra bread & asked if we wanted any.  So nice!  The boys were thrilled to feed the birds.  Nolan loved feeding them, but he loved chasing them more...

Although we had the best time, we (honestly) probably won't go back until this fall after the baby is born.  It was just too hot, and there's not a lot of shade or places to cool off.  So for our future park days, we'll stick to smaller ones in town that have shade. Ha!

take me out to the ballgame

Like I mentioned a couple days ago, we were able to go to a Jethawks baseball game with tickets that were given to us.  We had such a good time!  The boys did pretty good, considering they were bored somewhere around inning 6. Which, for their first baseball game, isn't too bad!

Some of our friends we went to the game with.  Actually, this was almost the whole group except for my friend Monique & I (go figure the moms didn't get in a picture).  The guy in the glasses is Ryan aka Swanny, but my kids call him Uncle Swanny (Nolan says "Uncle Fanny" haha). Next to Swanny is David (Monique's husband) & his two kids Noah (who Swanny is holding) and Danica.  Then of course my guys :)  I love that the guys are holding the kids!

I made one picture that night

I kept trying to get pictures of the boys, and they made me laugh so hard.  Sean did NOT want his picture taken, and he was getting so irritated with me.  Which, being the meanie that I am, made me giggle and try to take more. Ha!

Nolan, on the other hand, wanted me to take his picture (for once!) and then immediately would say "I wanna see!" He is so funny.

We'll be going to another Jethawks game on the 12th of this month.  They are doing a fundraiser for Royal Family Kids Camp and all proceeds from ticket sales will go to our camp. So awesome!  We get to have an info booth & other fundraisers go on at the same time too.  Exciting!  If you are local and want to go, let me know & I can let you know how to get tickets.

2011 Family Fun List

A couple weeks ago we had the idea to make a list of fun things we could do as a family.

We have realized that a lot of our family time wasn't filled with a lot of quality, and we want to fix that!

We want to be intentional with our time together, making memories & building strong bonds together.  Not just for the summer, but year round.

I wanted to share our list with everyone.  I have it typed up & printed out, with boxes next to each one to put a sticker for every time we do that activity.  Some of these we have already done this year, but we won't count it if it was before the list was made.  A lot of these activities can be done more than once, and some will probably only happen once.  But regardless, we are trying to make sure to do them all!

Within two weeks of making this list, we had done 4 things on it!  Some of the stories of how they happened are really cool...

Like going to a Jethawks game, for instance.  The Jethawks are our local minor league baseball team.  Sean went to a game with Dathan & my dad when he was 10 months old.  Nolan has never been to a game, and we have never gone as a family.  So this was something we thought would be fun to do.  Just a couple days after making our list (we hadn't shared it with anyone yet) our friends at church came up to us and said they were given 7 tickets to the Jethawks game that weekend & couldn't go, so they wanted to know if we wanted the tickets.  Sure!  So... we were able to mark something off our list, for free, & invite a couple other friends to join us.  What a blessing!  Here are the boys with the mascot, KaBoom!  They weren't too sure of him...

Apollo park is a really fun park just outside of town.  There's a big man made lake (that you can fish in), a huge walking trail, and several different playgrounds.  We took a Sunday off of church and just spent it as a family.  It was so wonderful.  We slept in, then spent several hours at Apollo Park.  It was HOT.  But we had a blast, and got to check off another fun outing from our list.

Later that same evening, after naps, we went to our friends to go swimming.  Nolan wore a Puddle Jumper for the first time and LOVED it.  He is fearless in the water and this allowed me to be relieved of a little stress while swimming with him.  He did so good and was so brave- he even jumped off the diving board!  He did so well I got on Amazon the next day and ordered him one!  Sean, of course, stuck to the shallow end but even he was getting brave & jumping in from the side.

And the last thing we have checked off our list (for now) is getting Fro-Yo (frozen yogurt) on the Blvd.  This picture isn't of us actually eating the yogurt (oops... I guess we'll have to go back! ha!) but it's from the evening that we did eat it.  The Blvd has been having a farmer's market every Thursday, and we decided to stop by.  We hadn't eaten dinner & the boys kept asking to eat ice cream.  I said we aren't going to buy dinner AND ice cream.  Then I realized it was summer & you only live once, so lets have ice cream FOR dinner.  Problem solved!  So we went and got our fro-yo with the toppings we wanted and we were four happy Stephens! :)

Can't wait to share all the fun memories we make, inspired by our list! :)