Summer Fun: Fondue Night

We did it - we finished our last thing on our Summer Fun list - Fondue Night. It tasted great. We went over to Nate and Miriam's house and had a great end of the summer celebration. 

 My favorite fondue- Chocolate. We had chocolate with marshmallow cream and as you can see all sorts of yummy foods. I love the rice krispies, strawberries and the cinn bears. 

 Nate and Miriam made the cheese dip in the crock pot. It's so good, and they fried up the squash and made some alfredo dip out of Cauliflower. Wow!  I loved dipping it in bread. I ate so much. 

Miriam and Violet 

 Tanner and Ally

 Rach and Dan

 Eating the first dipped strawberry

 Violet and Tanner loved dipping their own things

 Yum! 

So We did it. We finished everything on our bucket list. We had fun, we took lots of pictures, we laughed and I think we enjoyed everything. Sometimes the days and weeks were really busy but we made memories. Several times during the summer Tanner would even look at the list and ask "What are we going to do today." 

A great Summer!  

Summer Fun: Staying at a Hotel

Tanner loves staying in Hotels. For the last year since we got back from Colorado Tanner has talked about going to a Hotel. He loves staying in them and he really wishes we could go to one that has a hot tub in the room. He loved that. But we stayed at The Springhill Suites in Lehi. It wasn't far but it's a perfect vacation - close and we had fun. 

 Violet and Tanner watching TV while we waited for Dan to get off work so we could go to dinner

 Relaxing in the bed

 Eating JCW's for dinner. We ended up eating in the dark since the power went out. It only stayed off  for 45 minutes or so. They have the best shakes. I'd forgotten how big they were. 

 Tanner, Racheal and Violet-  They love being in the water. Tanner kept practicing his swimming and jumping in the pool. Violet jumped in a couple of times too. Dan and Tanner even went swimming Saturday after breakfast. 

 Bedtime snack of Popcorn and watching the Disney Channel.

 Bedtime - we were a ll tired. It really has been a long week. 

We did get to eat a great breakfast though- I love not having to cook something for our family. It really does give us a break. We could choose from scrambled eggs, ham, cereal, juice, milk, waffles and all sorts of different donuts and breads. It was awesome. 

Another fun family adventure. 

Summer Fun: Horse Rides at Thanksgiving Point

So it took us all summer and we finally made it to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. We were able to go on Thursday morning and I even got the kids to ride on the horses. Other times when we went Tanner didn't want to ride them. I am glad they both liked it and Violet wasn't afraid at all. 

 Violet climbing around in the worm tunnel 

 I don't know why Tanner is giving a stinky face but he wanted to take the wagon ride. The lady even went in the big parking lot and drove really fast and turned around a lot. Tanner & Violet loved it. 

 They had a little melody time program it was kind of crowded and Tanner didn't want to do it very long but the kids got to dance to some music. 

 Violet really liked the rabbits and kept going back. 

 She also fed the goats. She found some of the food on the ground and stuck it up to the fence. She's very brave. 

Playing with the wooden cars in the Dairy area. 

It doesn't take very long to go to through Farm Country. It's not my favorite place but the kids seemed to have fun. 

Summer Fun: Swimming at Scott and Signe's Pool

One of the things that we were suppose to do is go to Thanksgiving Point and play in the water by the Noah's ark boat but when we got there a couple of weeks ago it was gone. I guess it's been gone a while and I never noticed so instead we went swimming at my Aunt and Uncle's pool. It's so fun to swim and not have everyone else in the world there to see you in your suit and just have fun and goof off. Tanner and Violet love the water. We also invited my Mom and Logan  and Nate, Miriam and Ally. 

 Tanner and Logan

 Dan and Violet - Violet wasn't afraid of the water. A couple of times when she wanted to get out she walked around to the edge and was trying to get in the pool by herself. She made me nervous. She just isn't afraid. 

 Ally and Miriam

 Swimming together as a family

 Tanner loves to swim. We just need him to keep practicing. He's practicing his ice cream scoops.

 Miriam, Nate and Ally - Ally was trying to jump in the pool. She was also getting braver.

 Tanner loved jumping off the diving board. Logan and Dan took turns helping him if he needed it. 

Violet wanted to be with her Grandma Jan the whole time. She loves her Grandma

Violet, Racheal and Logan

Another great evening of Family fun

Lightning Bugs

Last week we learned about our last bug- Fireflies/Lightning bugs. I am really glad to be done and moving on to something else. Tanner and Violet had a lot of fun making crafts, eating bugs type foods and reading lots of books, watching You tube clips and different cartoon shows that taught about bugs. It was fun and a lot of work. 

There really wasn't a lot of different information on Fireflies. We have a few of them down in Sanpete but not very many. Most of them are back East. They like the hummid areas. And since we don't have any in American Fork we made our own out of Easter eggs and craft stuff. They turned out cute and each bug got a battery powered light put in them so their butts would glow. 

 After it got dark Dan and I took turns hiding them for Tanner to find. Violet didn't get to find any because she was a sleep. 

Ally came over to help us find them too. After we had a great game of Flashlight Tag- you can see the other post for those pictures. 

Lightning bugs don't live very long. The eggs are laid on a twig or a log or a leave or something by the water. The eggs aren't very big either about the size as this period .  They hatch and drink the water and eat a bit, but as an adult Scientist haven't figured out what or if they even eat anything besides the water they drink. The worms that they are at the beginning of life produce a glow on each end as well. They are called glow worms. When they are adults it's just the back end that glows when the air mixes with the chemicals inside them - Bioluminescence.  It's a kind of cool and produces a cool type of light not a hot type like a light bulb. Fireflies are interesting and were fun to learn about.