Hanging With You is my Favorite Thing to Do

Being home in the summer means one thing: the kids and I get to hang out all day everyday.  We have a lot of fun together and sometimes we (the kids) drive each other (mommy) crazy. Everyday we try to do something to get us out of the house. Sometimes its big things and sometimes it's small things like going for a walk to the store. Here's some of our adventures this month: 

One day I was feeling really productive. I was up at 5 and ran, then I came home and showered and cleaned the house all by 8 am. I thought we would go to the mall and play, so I packed up the kids and we were at the mall by 9:00. Guess what? The mall doesn't open until 10:00. (You would think someone like me who loves to shop would know what time the mall opens... anyway). We had an hour to kill, so what did we do? We went to the park.

The kids had fun swinging on the swings and Makayla met some new friends. 

 Then it was time to go to the mall. We went on the Merry-Go-Round

 Which Caden hated!

Then we went to play in Dino Towne

 Makayla had a great time, but Caden didn't want to play and opted to eat his lunch while watching Makayla play.

 I have been looking for fun things for toddlers to do and I came across this idea: painting the sidewalks with water. It sounded like a great idea (and less messy than paint or chalk). But it didn't turn out that way. The kids were great for about 10 mintues. Then they started to fight over the water container (even though they each had their own), then Caden fell down the window well, yup, you heard me right. He was fine, but I was pretty shaken up, so we ended "painting the sidewalks with water" activity.

We've had a lot of Otter Pops on the porch. 

 P.S. Makayla is really independent these days. She likes to dress herself hence the shirt that is too small (even though it is a 3T), with pants that don't match and are on backwards, and shoes on the wrong feet. We've made progress though. We taught Makayla that the "bow goes in the front and the tag in the back" so she can usually put her pants on right now.

Parks are my go to solution when we need to get out of the house. We've been to almost every park in South Jordan. Here we are at Skye park.

Makayla likes to play beauty parlor. Caden was being a really good sport and letting Makayla style his hair. 

This little guy in really into making messes this month. Seriously, I left the room for maybe 5 minutes and came back to find this. 

Don't let that cute little face fool you. 

Awww, who am I kidding. He could make any mess he wanted and look at me with those cute big eyes and my heart will just melt. 

 Oh, and have I told you why my in-laws are awesome? Because when we head up to the Taylor cabin, everyone joins in to play Hokey Pokey

 And Ring around the Rosie.

 And Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

 Seriously, what other family will you find an 80 year old Grandpa, kids, and everyone in between dancing and singing around the campfire? ;)

Daddy has had to travel quite a bit this month, but when he's home we love to hang out with him and listen to him playing the piano.

 Makayla really loves the piano lately. She loves to sing every song she knows while "playing" the piano. We have a video of her singing the birdie song that is just too adorable!

 And just because this is too cute, here's the kids hanging out with Grandpa pretending to eat their picnic lunch.

As far as spotlights go: 

Some highlights for Caden at almost 16 months: 

-He can say "ma-ma", "da-da", "uh-oh", "woof, woof" and sounds like a horse when you ask him what a horsie says. 

-Loves his books. 

-Can do summer salts better than Makayla

-Caden is officially off the bottle. He just got to a point where he wouldn't drink milk out of the bottle, but he would drink out of the sippy cup. I love not having to wash bottles anymore!

-He is still such a picky eater. 

-Caden loves to brush his teeth. That is good news because two more teeth poked through this month!

-Caden is definitely getting a mind of his own. He knows what he wants and points and grunts until he gets it or falls on the floor and cries when he doesn't get what he wants. 

Some highlights for Makayla this month at 2 1/2: 

-She's says "mom" at the end of everything she says, like "what, mom?", "Okay, mom", and "yes, mom" (imagine a cute little lisp when she says yes). 

-When we are out of something she tells us, "We need to go to the store to get more _____". She really loves the store. 

-Today she told me out of nowhere, "oh no, I've lost my glass slipper". We all have problems, just not as tragic as Makayla's. 

-Her favorite movie is "Nice Monsters" (Monsters, Inc). She even has a lot of the lines memorized like, "Harry Howsins" and "Sushi... you think this is about sushi?!". 

-She walks around the house singing the most random songs. 

-She learned how to do summer salts, but just goes on her head, then falls over sideways

-Makayla loves to make us "lunch". She is very attentive to us when she serves. She'll always ask us, "you need a fork?" or "you need water?" then when we tell her yes, she puts her little finger up and says, "okay guys, I'll be right back". 

So the moral of this month is that I am pretty lucky to be able to hang out with my kids all summer long! We have fun together and they keep me laughing!