Our First Official Make It Monday of Summer 2013!

This summer I am sticking on my taxi driver sign and driving the big guys back and forth to a few day camps, thanks to Grandma Farmor surprising the kids. The two oldest boys are in basketball camp this week before they head off to scout camp next week. Then they are home for a week before they start up football camp. Then in August, the younger fellas will be going off to soccer camp. They are all pretty excited since we have never done any organized sports camps before. I am excited too...I just need to adjust my schedule and get used to playing cab driver! ;)

With the big guys off to camp, and G playing with a friend (did I mention we were still working out the kinks in this whole schedule thing?) I wanted to have our first Make It Monday involve something for my Mom. If she is anything like me, getting mail is a happy thing! So, we made hand print cards to send her in the mail. Although, they did take a tad longer than I anticipated, so they will be going out in the mail tomorrow. So, Mom, if you are reading this...and its not sometime after June 6th, you should stop reading now or your surprise will be considerably less surprising.

I didn't realize when my mother-in-law signed the boys up for Basketball camp, it included uniforms, but I returned to pick up E and JD and found them looking pretty spiffy...if I do say so, my darn self!

  

Meanwhile, back at the house...here is what we came up with for my sweet Mom! I love hand print art, and I just can't get enough of these little guys. Here are the cards we made for our 1st Make It Monday of the Summer of 2013!!! Drum-roll pleeease..... just kidding, they were really just simple little love notes for Gramma Jean. 

Von Bon cut out the hearts and wrote so good!

Cute glitter stickers made this card darling and simple!

2 hands + folded paper= an adorable little card!

Well, that is it for today. Look at me posting 2 updates in one day! Who knows how the rest of the summer will play out, hopefully I will keep up with the guys and we will have another Pinteresting Summer! 

That first week doesn't really count does it?

I am not quite on top of my game for all this summer stuff. I felt much more prepared last summer! I have all my ideas, and lists...it's just a matter of carrying it all out! The first week of summer has already passed us by; but since it was a holiday weekend, I am going to pretend it just didn't count as "actual summer days". Whose with me?

Memorial Day has always felt like a holiday to me, until my Dad passed away in April. This year was particularly unique since Monday was also my sweet Hubby's birthday. It was a quiet and low-key day, spent with just our little family. I wasn't quite ready to head back up to dad's grave yet, so we spent the day chatting about Grampa Jay and then celebrating our Daddy.

Our family tradition is to have the Birthday Boy pick their favorite meal which I make, and then decorate a cake for them. Our Daddy loves marinated BBQ chicken and summer sausage salad with lots of fresh veggies chopped up in it. That was all pretty easy. But if you know me, you know that cakes are kind of a big deal to me...so, when you see the picture of the hideous blob he requested, you'll understand my hesitation to even show it! ;) While it tasted divine, it is as ugly as dirt...in fact, it rather resembles dirt. See for yourself:

Looks like the perfect little mound of dirt, doesn't it? I guess it was nice to have an easy request, but like I said...cakes are kind of my "thing". This is a yellow cake with raspberry jam slathered between the two layers and topped with chocolate pudding, whip cream frosting with a bit more jam; refrigerated until nice and cold. So very yummy, and did I mention ugly? :)

Moving on.

This past weekend I did attempt to kick off our summer with some organized fun. While the 2 oldest fellas were away with the Young Men on a retreat up the canyon, I had some fun with the younger members of our crew.

First we set a new record for play time at a park and managed to enjoy over 3 hours at a local playground with some cute friends. Then, since Daddy was working late...we picked a movie on netflix and set to work making some yummy treats. The original plan was to make s'mores pops. (Marshmallows on a stick, dipped in melted chocolate and sprinkled with crushed graham crackers.) However, as we got going, I found some red candy melts and some fun sprinkles so we ended up with a variety of mallows. My favorite remains the s'mores kind though.

Here is a look at some of our combinations:

All set up and ready to dip!

Red candy melt with green sugar crystals

Dipping his s'mores pop

The finished product...no fire necessary!

This takes great concentration...obviously!

All hardened up in the fridge and ready to enjoy!

We enjoyed our mallows while we ALL sat on the lovesac together and watched Your, Mine, and Ours; the newer on with Dennis Quaid. :) It was a fun night and got me in the mood to be ready for the rest of our summer fun!

It's June Already? Welcome back summer...you have been missed!

Here we are again, facing the 100+ days of summer vacation with the age-old question "What are we going to do today?" Well, around our house, summer will look a lot like last time; just with new projects and recipes. I love the Make it Monday, Time to Read Tuesday, What's Cookin' Wednesday, Be Thoughtful Thursday, and Field trip Friday schedule from last summer. 

So, I think we will stick to that same outline. So far the weather has been very mild and pleasant so there has been a lot of playing outside; I know that will change in the not-so-distant future though, and we'll need a good plan to survive each other and the heat. 

This summer some of the boys will be attending some day camps thanks to their Grandma, so that will be an extra treat. With the same schedule in place, all I had to do was scour over pinterest for things to do that fall into our daily category. I think we are all set! Bring on the Summer!

The Lost Tooth July 20, 2012

Our little Von Bon lost his first tooth! He has been wiggling that thing for weeks. Every day he'd have me wiggle it a bit to see if it was ready. It would move quite a bit, but I was very surprised when he announced in the car while driving through the Sam's Club parking lot that his tooth was out. It must have been more ready than I thought. It didn't even bleed! He was one happy camper, and couldn't wait to get home and put it under his pillow. He also made us promise not to tell little E when we went up to the parents dinner at scout camp. He wanted to show him in person when camp was over. Too funny!

Gentry's Scout Day Camp (Day #54) 7/20/12

Cub Scouts in our ward have been a little hit and miss as of late. So, I was very excited when the Primary President took me up on my offer to help chaperone the boys up at day camp. It was an early start to the day, we met at the church at 7:00 a.m. with sack lunches and bottled water in hand. We have a fun group of boys in our ward and the day was lots of fun. The boys got to learn a wide variety of things and do some pretty fun activities. They learned how to hold and shoot and bow and arrow, they pulled a hand cart wagon, shot bb guns, built a mini tee pee, and even panned for some gold. My job was pretty simple, just keep the boys in a group and help out as needed. On the river pond boat, I helped facilitate a little race between our group and the group on the other raft. Our boys won, no problem. I was impressed with how they worked as a team and got in a really good rhythm paddling. We enjoyed lunch on a grassy spot under the shade of a big tree; and I had a wonderful time watching G try new things and interact with his scout buddies. I am go glad I got to go! What a fun day!

Glow sticks and the water park Day #53

Before I get too far into this post, I should mention that although today's date is actually August 27, 2012, this post is being written about July 19th. It would appear that I blog, much like I journal....really great and consistent for several weeks, then a month passes by without a word. So, for posterity sake, now I will know the actual day this occurred on, since I can't figure out how to get blogger to let me change the date.

Oh what do you do in the summer time, when every day is HOT!?! Well, you head over to the splash pad, again, even if you've been a hundred times, because that is where the cool/free water is! :)

Later that day....

While cleaning out a drawer in the kitchen, Mr. Gentry found several packs of glow sticks. We decided to open one, and were very disappointed to discover they were so old, they no longer cracked and glowed. So, of course, we had to open ALL the other packages...to find out if they had survived. After some more disappointments, we found several that still worked, and I thought it would be fun to take some pictures of them in the dark to see how they would turn out. We were all pretty fascinated with the results.

National Gentry Day (Day #52)

With JayDee's make a cake with mom day being such a big success, Gentry was very excited to dive right into a day of his own. He was having trouble deciding what to do, craft or baking? Fieldtrip or hang at home. I told him that perhaps we could have a duo-purpose with our day. As part of his cub scouting, there are certain tasks he is supposed to complete with his parents at home. One of which includes planning a meal and making it. He like the sound of that, so we pulled up my "food things I want to make" board on Pinterest, and hauled out some cook books, and got to work. He loves baked spaghetti, so the main meal was easy. For a bread side, he found a parmesan garlic pull-apart bread on my board and dessert caught his eye quickly; chocolate cupcakes with green mint frosting and an Andes mint stuck in each on. (He's just like me, sold on a good photograph...every time!)
We got right to work with the cupcakes so they could cool. Then we moved onto the spaghetti. I taught him to add salt to boiling water, and showed him how to grate cheese...without loosing any skin off his knuckles! ;) We had a delightful time together. When it was about an hour before dinner, we put the spaghetti pan in the oven and started on the pull-apart bread. While that rose, we iced the cupcakes and topped them with the candy bars. We had a great time, and he just keeps me laughing. He always has interesting questions and notices things that I would normally just skim over. I cannot emphasize enough how glad I am we decided to do this. Certainly one of the best ideas my guys have ever had! I am one blessed momma!
Here are some photos of his big day:

using the mixer...without any help!

grating up the cheese

pull-apart bread, ready to rise

risen, baked, and ready to eat!

LOVE that face!

mint chocolate cupcakes!

Baked spaghetti...his fav!