The Cousins Visit the Farm

 Would you believe I cut out more than half of the good pictures?  We had a great morning at the farm and then a fun afternoon at the ward picnic.  Plenty of leftovers for dinner and now it's time to chill!

Party Day

We have been talking about going to this water park for several days now... so we just had to make it happen!  It's just a small one with a couple of waterslides, a kiddie area and a big pool.

The part everyone wanted to do was this log/lily pad crossing area we saw pictures of online.  Here it looks like we had a great time doing that.  In reality just as I took this picture the lifeguard said, "name and password?"  What?  They all had to pass a swimming test and get a secret password to go across these things.  Only Sarah passed.  You had to have really good form to pass the swim test.  My boys swim just fine... but not with form!  They were so disappointed.  Lincoln was almost in tears.

We were still allowed to go on the waterslides though.  So we did that for a while.

Lincoln got cold and wanted to stay dry.  He got out of the pools and found his own thing to do (surprise!).  He started collecting pine cones.  He was told that he couldn't go behind the rope, but I saw a life guard go back there and pick some up for him.  The rest he got by reaching as far as he could through the rope.

Jackson and Sarah just rode the slides over and over.

Eventually he had 100 pinecones.  I told him we were not bringing them home, but we would take a picture to remember.  Sarah had the idea to arrange them into the 100. 

Afterward we took our lunch to the park.

I had a request for pictures of me on my blog.  Here I am in all of my post swimming hair glory.

We ended up at another park after we picked up Harrison and then took the kids to Organ Piper Pizza for dinner, followed by ice cream at the McDonald's playplace.  After all of this fun day (and lots of smiling pictures to prove it) Jackson still says it was a terrible day and he's had the worst week.  It is interesting how his perspective changes as he gets more and more tired. 

Slip Slidin' Away

We started off with the old store bough slip n slide... 

 and tried to invent new ways to have fun with it

but ended up with a giant home made one 

 that rocked the entire hill

 whoosh...

 cheese!

Oklahomans in Wisconsin

We are thrilled to have Granny, Sarah and Jeffrey here with us!  We took them straight from the airport to Lake Michigan for a picnic and a swim.  We all thought it would be too cold to swim so the kids didn't change into their suits.  It turned out to be perfect and their clothes became their suits! 

Lincoln, of course spent his time in the sand as usual.

Sarah's crazy rock find!