Family Reunion Fun

We went to the Foutz family reunion last weekend in Mesa, Arizona. We haven't gone in many years because it's mostly people that I don't know, and it's usually at a place that caters to a bunch of old people sitting around and talking all day with little effort in providing something for families with small children. This year was VASTLY DIFFERENT, the main part of the reunion was to spend the day at a place called "Amazing Jake's". It's an indoor fun-park. Lazer tag, go carts, bumper cars, kid rides, mini-golf, bowling, video games, redemption (ticket) games, air hockey, pool tables, and all you can eat buffet!! All under one roof and all for FREE for those attending the reunion this year!! That was worth a drive out to Arizona with the family.

PLUS, we could visit Kevin and Dawn and Family again, eat Culver's frozen custard, eat a Fontina burger and drink a date shake at Joe's Farm Grill, and eat at the Black Bear Diner!

Here are some (actually a lot) of pictures at Amazing Jake's...


The reunion members were allowed in an hour earlier than the public, but that also meant that some of the early "bugs" weren't yet worked out. We went to do some lazer tag, but the computer that runs all the guns and vests wasn't cooperating. We eventually ditched it and went elsewhere. But this is what we looked like while we waited for them to figure out why it wasn't working.


Duncan, Liam and Jennan got on this fast spinning ride.

There's Jennan.

Jennan and Tegan with mom on the tea cup ride. Anna was spinning that cup like crazy! Tegan could barely keep her head up.

There were a lot of rides Tegan couldn't go on because she was too small. But that meant she got to go on rides the other kids didn't get to go on, like this train ride.

The three older kids and I went on the bumper cars. They were unique vehicles, not really "cars" at all, but they were sure fun!

This ride is very similar to the jelly fish ride at California Adventure. It goes up and bounces it's way down, then back up, and bounces down. It does that about 4 times before it's over. Tegan really liked this ride, which is good, because she went on it a lot while waiting for the others to go on the other rides.

We chose to do some miniature golf. There were enough different colored golf balls that we could each have our own color.

Duncan had TWO hole in ones this session!

Jennan preferred to hit the ball as a righty, even though she's a lefty.

Tegan with the assist from daddy.

Liam also got a hole in one this day!! (fyi- So did I.)

After golf we hit up the buffet! Pizza, fruit, pizza, pizza, pasta, pizza, cookies, pizza, and ice cream. The pizza was surprisingly good. They had about 8 different types out, and replenished them quickly. There are many places to eat your pizza. We chose the movie room. They had three different movies playing at the same time. We were closest to "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". They were also playing "G-Force" and one of the Shrek movies. The volumes were REALLY low, so it was literally "watching" movies while you ate. The kids didn't care though.

Tegan with her chocolate ice cream mustache. Jennan watching the movie.

After lunch we went bowling. I know, I know, the kids already go bowling once a week, so why bowl?... Because Daddy wanted to, that's why. The kids like bowling, so they didn't care. Plus it gave us a chance to "compete" with the kids.

Tegan hasn't been signed up for bowling yet, so she was really excited to be able to bowl with everyone.

There she goes... (yep, we bowled with bumpers)

After we finished bowling, it was time to go. Amazing Jake's was closing early to accommodate a private party for the second half of the day. There were still a lot of things we didn't get to do that we wanted to do, but really, how could we complain? We got to do everything else for FREE! We still had a great time.

After Jake's, we went to the ward building where the reunion was, and had an auction. (The auction helps pay for the reunion.) After the auction they served dinner- chili verde burritos! They were SO good! Once dinner and dessert were done, we headed back to Kevin and Dawn's house.

Fun day! VERY fun trip!!

Garden update

The garden continues to do well for the most part. We are still harvesting zucchini, yellow squash, and broccoli. We also pick a few strawberries now and then, that we can actually eat. (Meaning that either the bugs only nibbled on it a little, or some even not at all.) The watermelon plant still remains the same size.

Here are some pictures of what I've picked the last couple of weeks...

Here's our corn I started from seed. It's a little hard to tell, the corn matured, but didn't get very big/tall. The tallest one is probably 4 feet tall? I have a feeling that I didn't loosen the soil as much as I thought I did, or didn't do it as much as I should have. I think the roots didn't have as much room to flourish as they needed. We'll see what happens. There are ears forming, so it will be interesting to see if the ears from these stalks are also smaller in size, or if they'll grow to a regular size. In the mean time, I continue to water and watch.

I almost forgot to mention, I have a couple of bell peppers growing. That's a relief, I was afraid the bugs chewing on it was going to keep it from fruiting. So yeah, it's all good. Pretty soon I'll need to clear some space for a pumpkin plant or two.

A mildly green thumbs up!

things and stuff

Here are some recent things and stuff...


Here's a picture of my Father's Day breakfast. SOOOO good! Two different kinds of sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese- perfect!


Anna made some chocolate frosted brownies. As you can see, Tegan enjoyed hers very much. Tegan has been potty-training the last couple weeks. She's doing pretty well. Staying drier each day, etc. It's going to be REALLY nice to be done with diapers!... Seriously, just as I finished typing those sentences... Tegan pees her pants *sigh*.

I needed to pick up some shirts in Fullerton on Tuesday, so since I would be going all the way down there, we made a small detour to Disneyland. The boys were at school, so Anna and I just had the girls with us. We stayed about two and a half hours. It was pretty busy. We're now officially blocked out till the end of August. Love this picture of the girls on the carousel.

Our last stop at Disneyland was the Tiki Room.

The boys' school had their awards assembly this morning. They have one of these each time they go off track and at the end of the school year. Liam got an award for his skills in math. He was promised an award by his teacher loooong ago. This was her making good on that promise. Still, he was very excited to get an award.

Some of the many things going on at our house these days. As busy as we seem to be, I'm sure that in a few years, we'll look back at these days and think we had it so easy back then.

Escape to Disneyland

On Monday, Anna and I were able to sneak away to Disneyland for the day. Well, maybe we didn't sneak, we had some help in making it possible (Thanks Bonnie!).

We've never gone to Disneyland together in the summer months before. We are usually able to go, just the two of us, in December, when we spend the day for our anniversary. But we took some liberties with our family schedule, and spent a warm day with Mickey and friends.

Anna took this shot for a specific reason. Can you figure it out? (it was a bit random)


One of the first things we did was get in line for tickets to see the new water show at Ca. Adventure. The line went through the Grizzly Bear rapids, where we found this sign... How could Anna resist?!

Our wind blown mugs on the Screamin' ride. Yes, I'm doing a rock and roll sneer.

Hello cleavage... Oh, and there we are in the back. Anna was blocked by a hand, and now I'm going with the rock and roll tongue and devil horns (which are hard to see, but they're there).

We didn't take a huge amount of pictures. We had a lot of fun walking around, going on rides together, and eating. We had lunch across the street at IHOP. We brought some coupons. We used one, and Anna passed some out to others sitting around us. I said she's the "Robin Hood of coupons". We had a big lunch so we didn't have to eat dinner inside the park. But we did have a treat here and there...

We found this 6 mini cupcake sampler pack at the sweets shop next to the Pooh ride. It looked soooo yummy...

But I have recently rededicated myself to losing weight, and watching what I eat. No cupcakes for me...

More for Anna!!

Actually, I did take a small nibble on each of them, and Anna suffered through eating the rest of each one... the poor thing.

We had a great time. It went by WAY too fast. But that's the joy of having passes... we can come back again (almost) when ever we want.

Good times.

Anna's on vacation

Since Anna's done with school, she's home now... which is great! Except that now I can't just go on the computer and bust out awesome blog posts when ever I have the time, because she's usually already on the computer "working" or doing something "important" (email/facebook).

Either that, or she's got that mental "honey-do" list that's never ending. She's got me- driving, fixing, cleaning, reading, cooking, making, changing, moving, finding... you get the idea. And guess when she remembers something she wants me to do? Yep, just as I'm settling in for some computer time. There must be some sort of silent alarm in the chair that only she can hear or something.

So, if my posts are sporadically entered and staggered through out the weeks, you'll know why. There will be some days and weeks when Anna will be working on some sort of project, and that will free up some screen and keyboard time now and then for me, but till those times it'll be hit and miss for updates on the blog.

How is it that I'm even able to type all this out right now, you ask? Well, it's 11pm, she's asleep.

Aaahhh... peace and quiet.

(Love you honey bunches of oats!)

Birthday dinner

We went to Red Robin for Tegan's birthday dinner. We always a good time there.


It's a little hard to tell, but Jennan and Tegan both have little tiara things in their hair. Actually you can't see Tegan's at all. Cutie faces!


Tegan with her birthday sundae, and Duncan very interested in helping her eat it.

Group shot!

I'd be really happy too, if I had just eaten a sundae like that.

Gotta make sure you don't waste any...

One funny thing about this trip to Red Robin, is Anna and I both chose non-burger entrees. Anna had the chicken and pasta with pesto, I had the fish and chips. Anna really liked hers. It was very basily. The fish and chips were OK, but they were pretty much what you would get anywhere. We also shared a bottom-less root beer float... SOOO good!

garden growing good

The garden continues to do well. Here are the pictures of what I've picked this week...


Check out the crazy long neck on that yellow squash on the left!


The yellow squash plant is doing REALLY well these days. I think I saw another 4 to 6 that should be ready soon.

In other "plant" news... The city of Highland took out a couple of the trees in our property the other day. They were both in pretty bad shape. One had no new growth from spring at all, and the other had very little. They are going to be replacing them with new trees. They gave us a list of ones to choose from. I'm leaning toward Purple Leaf Plum (non-fruiting). Here's the tree in the front.

Here's the tree on the side. Kind of a funny thing- I don't think the city meant for the tree in the front to be taken. The city guy in charge made a mistake in his description of the location of the tree. We wanted the city to take them both, so it worked out well for us. I talked to the city guy, and it sounds like he's willing to put more than two new trees in if we want them. He also seemed open to trees that aren't on the list he sent us, if we know what trees we want, and they fit the criteria.

That's what's happening with the greenery at our place. Check back next week for more greenery adventures!

Birthday Fun

Last Saturday there were some birthdays celebrated- Hunter's, Ethan's and Tegan's!

There was a TON of food! Super nachos, posole, fruit salad, drinks, 2 cakes and cupcakes, ice cream, and candy!

A big thank you to Kevin and Dawn for letting us squeeze Tegan into the birthday mix at the last minute, and to Kim and Luis for all their hard work in cooking food and cleaning the side yard.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the festivities...

Skyler being a good big cousin, and pushing Tegan in the car.


Presents!

Great reaction for the new Tinkerbell shirt.

Instant love for the manatee.

Great shot of Tegan with her birthday cupcake of Milli from Team Umizoomi. (The girls love that show.)

Jennan's post-cupcake face! Silly girl!

Hunter got a new DS XL and some new DS games. Concentration is excruciating.

Time for some pinata action! There were two of them. Here's Tegan unloading on the ninja turtle.

A great shot of Duncan unleashing his pinata-hitting fury on the obliterated turtle.

Duncan got some alone time with Hunter's new DS.

Then it was time for the huge slide! Here's Anna and Tegan at the top, ready to slide down. Tegan needed help in the beginning, to get to the top, but after a while, she was getting up mostly by herself.

Anna and Jennan ready to go.

We had a great time. Great food, and sweets! Lots of time to visit. Fun things to do. It was all good!