Recent Happenings

Life keeps going on. It has definitely been a different summer as we have been at home most of the time. Thankfully our air conditioners work really well and we have many activities we can do at home.

Sarah enjoys taking selfies.

Sarah and Me volunteer every week at the food bank. Matthew and Megan joined us in July.

Animal upon Animal sculpture.

We had an Egypt week where Megan and Matthew learned about Egypt and created Egyptian things.

Sphinx made out of sand.

Graham cracker pyramid.

Some of the many marshmallow creations.

Close up of the Great Pyramid.

Two views of one of the houses.

Water collector. The thing in the middle rotates to scoop water out of the river.

Dog

Cat

Matthew created a stand for the video camera.

This food is happy to see you!

Matthew practicing for his future as a shoulder angel.

Matthew and Megan created a box plane and helicopter.

Father's Day. We are blessed to have such a great dad!

U was super excited to get a piece of cardboard. He also liked the snacks for game nights.

Megan had a really loose tooth.

The tooth came out.

She ended up losing three teeth in three days. We had a very busy tooth fairy!

Megan shows the gaps in her mouth. She can fit a straw through it.

We had a glow stick party in a fort.

Matthew and Mom

Matthew showcases his nunchuck skills.

The girls has unicorn headbands. Megan is holding a glow stick ball.

Matthew's half birthday

He received The Dangerous Book for Boys which has lots of cool projects and good information.

We got some Belgian chocolate to sample including some white truffles for Me. Matthew and Megan's favorite was the milk chocolate caramel lion, Sarah's was the dark chocolate raspberry and U liked the milk chocolate sea shell and caramel lion.

Sarah has spent a lot of time working on her skateboard skills.

Sarah, Matthew and Megan at the skatepark. Megan and Matthew enjoy riding their scooters while Sarah works on her skateboarding skills and tricks.

We sampled some pastries from a local French bakery. Yum!

Megan and Matthew camped in our family room for a week.

We ate shaved ice. Mom won for the most colorful teeth.

And tongue.

We had another glow stick party, this one on Bastille Day (the French National Holiday). We also ate crepes in celebration.

Sarah had us toss rings onto her glow wand. This is a view from above.

A side view. Matthew is waving his wand on the left while Megan and Sarah hold theirs upright so people can toss glow necklaces and bracelets onto them.

Cute Megan quote: Can we stop by the library's high school?
(Most people would say the library is at the high school but from Megan's perspective, the high school is at the library.)

Other June happenings

We celebrated Matthew's half birthday. He received a snap circuits kit and is enjoying experimenting with different circuitry.

Sarah went to the temple to do baptisms. One of the Young Men baptized her.

One morning, Matthew got up early and did all his work so that he could go to work with daddy. At least that was Matthew's plan. That didn't work for U, but he arranged things so that Matthew could come have lunch with him, play a game and then help him with a few projects at work that afternoon. Matthew was so excited!

Matthew's drawing on U's whiteboard. It's the Millenium Falcon flying through an asteroid field being chased by TIE Fighters.

Megan wanted a turn at daddy's work, too, so she spent an afternoon there the following week.

U and Megan played Battleship at lunch. Megan placed all her ships in a row and U happened to hit one the very first guess. Pretty impressive to sink all her ships in 18 guesses. And Megan didn't do too bad, sinking two ships and working on a third in 18 guesses.

Picture Megan drew for U's coworker who loves unicorns.

Megan's drawing on U's board: Darth Vader, R2-D2, C3PO and Yoda.

We've been getting a lot of packages so Megan and Matthew got out the dolly to move them.

I'm partial to the green package myself....

Matthew and Megan made U LEGO ties for Father's Day. Yes, he wore them to church. Megan and Matthew are each pointing to the tie they made.

Close up of the ties.

Matthew opened a piece of junk mail we received and started reading it. Lots of practice sounding out long, unfamiliar words.

Megan enjoyed going to Menchies with the gift card she received from her class.

Megan and Matthew made a huge fort that took up the entire family room. After a few days, they scaled it back to this sleeping hut.

U got some game pieces to design games. Megan and Matthew enjoyed playing with the pieces. Matthew also designed his own game, although the rules are somewhat fluid.

Megan and Matthew have enjoyed building with block and dominoes. They especially like using the automatic filters on the camera to take lots of pictures. Matthew said, "When you take it on that setting, it takes photos from a bunch of different angles." (When on the filter setting, the camera takes about five photos with different filters and also zooms in on parts of the pictures).

Here are a few example of these photos as taken by the camera including a couple from the pool.