This Side of Sunny

Legoland Trip

We went with my brother's family to Legoland about a week before we went to Missouri. I'm just now getting all the photos organized. We rented a condo on the beach and it was the best thing with five kiddos. They were able to have some space and we were able to cook a little and play some games!

This slideshow is a little over 80 photos, so sit back and soak in some summertime fun (even though it was not sunny out and quite cold, hence all the jackets!). I know my summer is fleeting.

Make your own free slideshow

scenes from summer

Haven't been in this space as much, instead been spending a lot of time doing things like...

making fruit pizza...

water time at the splash pad...

building Lego creations...

finding (and buying) princess shoes...

watching new fishies...

enjoying the sunset...

{this moment}

SouleMama‘s {this moment} – A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

It's time for football!

A couple of weekends ago, we escaped the oven and went up to Flagstaff with about 13,000 other people to see the Cardinals practice and try to get an autograph of the Fitz. He happens to be Coleman's favorite player.

The wait to get on the field to wait some more.

The huddle on the field- Coleman, Carter and Hunter.

The line- they stopped garanteeing an autograph at 75, we were #76-79. We took the risk.

At least there was good company. Jake and I:

My brother and I:

Love this shot of the dudes:

Finally! We had arrived at the front of the line.

 

Love this one with the three boys, Coleman, Carter and Hunter:

Look at Fitz's face...

He autographed 'Larry #11'.

In awe...

Future Cardinal QB? The kid has an arm!

 

Christmas in August

The other day I caught a major deal at the Metrocenter Toys 'R Us in Phoenix- they were having 40-60% off of everything in the store (thanks Dad for the tip)! The store is relocating and apparantly it was cheaper to sell it off at a major discount than to move all the stuff, which meant major savings for me.

I was able to purchase:

• 3 birthday presents
• a temporal thermometer at half price
• Amelia's fav food at 30% off
• a few school supplies to donate in the boys' classrooms
• the best part of all- Christmas is done for our three kids, stockings included!

Since I work up until December 23rd this year, this is a huge time saver! Kind of hard to spend the money right now but I'll be loving it in a few months. Maybe now I'll have some time to bake instead of shopping in long lines trying to get good deals this year. I'll be making my rockin' rum cake!

Beat the Heat :: Jumpstreet, Indoor Trampoline Park

Jumpstreet- Indoor Trampoline Park

Who: kids of all ages (even big ones like Jake and I)

What: Earthquake area for 7 years old and younger, vinyl maze, obstacle course

When: any day

Why: to tire out rambunctious boys of course!

Time: an hour (was good enough for my two, ages 6 and 4)

Cost: $10 per hour, but there's special pricing for certain days

On the trampoline...

In action...

 

The gigantic alligator slide. Roar!

The racing obstacle course.

The good: an hour (or two) in a nice air conditioned play space for the kids to burn off some energy

Something to try: the area for the older kids if you want a workout, I hear you can burn 1000 calories jumping for an hour! That is, if you can last that long. I got tired of just watching the boys.

 

Beat the Heat :: Cerreta's Candy Company

Cerreta's Candy Company

Who: chocolate lovers, little kids

What: The Chocolate Pizza Tour

When: Summer, Mon-Fri, various times

Why: to make a chocolate pizza and taste samples!

Time: an hour

Cost: $7.50 (online price) per person that want to make pizza, tours are free

Love the hand painted pictures on the wall.

Workers leveling the chocolate in the trays.

Weighing white chocolate pretzels, absolutely love the I Love Lucy picture in the background. My mom loved watching her shows, the chocolate factory had to be one of my all-time favorites.

The biggest chocolate football ever!

Carter is making the pizza.

Adding the white chocolate pizza sauce.

Yum-o!

The good: yummy chocolate, the boys liked seeing the machines, the giant confections

The okay: during our tour, the machines were loud so it was difficult to hear the lady talking about the chocolate. Not that it mattered to the kids though, they just wanted to make their pizzas.

Extend the experience:

•  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roahl Dahl or Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (I like the old one the best)
• Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith
• The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling
• The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar Fractions Book

Just for laughs (and a little nod to my mama):

 

Beat the Heat!

We live in the Arizona desert. A desert so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalk, although I have never tried. Who wants to be outside when it's that hot to fry an egg? Maybe on Saturday, when it hits 117 degrees, our 'heat wave' as the weather people call it, I'll fry that proverbial egg.

As a mama of three, finding ways to beat the heat is my number one priority. You would think all the electronic options would keep them busy but what I've found is they can only handle it best in small increments. So playing Wii all day is out, now what?

I'm starting the Beat the Heat series on my blog. My goal is to share kid-friendly places to get out of the heat. You can upload photos on the Beat the Heat! Flickr group- just click on my album to the right and share away.

 

Smart Summer Challenge :: Week 2

This week we went to the library to check out some books for what the boys wanted to learn about: animals in the ocean.

There they are filling out their reading goal sheets from the summer reading library program.

They enjoyed dying the rice for our ocean sensory bins.

I dumped rice in a large Ziploc, then squeezed gel food coloring. Tip: let the rice dry before you mix the colors together! Duh.

 

I had the kids gather things around the house that have to do with ocean or the same colors of the ocean, blue and green.

Here are the bins:

Notice the Lego dudes in the boat! Made me laugh. Doing this activity reinforced the fact that sometimes the process is more important than the product- the boys got all excited about the making the rice, searching for items, but when the sensory bins were completed, they didn't play with them. That's okay, less rice for me to clean up.

Learning by accident: Amelia was starting to color on my walls, her new thing is to carry around markers everywhere. Why fight it? I put up a piece of paper and showed her what to do.

 

Coleman sums it up