My friend Jane served her mission in Ecuador and was super excited to share with us so many things she learned there! She was more than happy to help us experience the food and the culture and shared with us so many cool things. Before going to the Stingels we learned about the Galapagos Islands, listened to native music and played soccer.
These are some of the cool things she brought home with her. Everything was in such bright colors.
This food was AMAZING!!! She made carne asada, menestra, rice, a special sauce, mangos and platains. The kids were really good about trying everything and enjoyed the mango, the meat and they ate the lentils too. The plantains were not as good as Jane was hoping, but we don't get the best plantains here!
The kids have been talking about these 'popsicles' ever since we ate them. They don't typically have ovens in Ecuador so frozen treats were what she often remembered.
Some of the members of the church made this blanket of Heleman with the Stripling Warriors.
This flute was fun to play. Athena was showing us how to use it.
The kids have asked several times to buy these creamy frozen treats since our visit!
The end of June brought cousins and everyday things to keep us busy. We visited 3 countries and started to get ready for our trip to Mexico and California. We were all anxious to go to the beach and have some fun!!
I had no idea my boys liked babies so much until Tamra had her twin girls in Childress. They all loved holding them.
Sweet baby Grayson
Mackenzie wanted a turn to hold Grayson too!
Everyone was holding babies. Thank goodness we belong to the Keys family and always have babies around!
The goggles, the sunglasses, the pose... Wow this girl has some personality!
Papa Dude's garden was IMPRESSIVE! Everyone around town noticed too!
Even his herbs looked so so good!
Damon, with the help of Kenney and I finished a 2,000 piece puzzle!
If you're ever going somewhere with Mackenzie, you will be prepared! She made sure her suitcase was full and that she had all her bases covered if unexpected weather popped up. She offered to help me, but I politely declined, haha!
As much as the kids complain that there is never anything to do in the summer unless we are going places, there always seems to be something happening. The library, a doctors visit, the trampoline and so much more kept all of us occupied!
Radley turned 9 this month! He requested a Texas Rangers baseball cake. I did my best, and he was happy with it!
Such a cute kid!
Princess sisters
Elsa & Anna
A balloon guy came to the library
Check up at the cardiologist.
Everything looked good!
Kyler's changing
Damon made this to hang in his room
Kenney caught a swarm! It was fascinating to watch them go into the hive.
It was just Mackenzie and I one evening and she wanted to play on the trampoline so we did!
She definitely got into it, haha!
The long awaited PT facility is finally completed!! It looks amazing! Kenney loves it and should feel very proud of it! He is one of the main reasons it is even there. They had an open house for the community that the whole family attended which was also really nice.
These spoiled kids got a package from Aunt Linda in Utah. She sent all kinds of things!
Damon's dog watching business somehow ended up with a dog staying in our house. However, everyone loved Dempsey. He was so tiny and fun.
The boys decided to do the mentos explosion challenge they have seen online with the Mentos that Linda sent them.
It didn't really work out so well, see the videos, so they decided to just drink the contents instead!
Bentley treated Dempsey like a real-life baby doll.
Kenney got a record player for Father's Day that he seemed to really enjoy.
The rain really helped to green up the grass and help the crepe myrtles to look so good!
Radley spent a lot of time on the lily pads, and was almost always able to get across without falling.
She was very serious about her water spraying
YouTube took down some of the videos from her dancing with the hose, but here is another one.
We tried to catch her explaining duck, duck, goose, but we missed most of it.
One day Mackenzie got hit in the face with a ball. He didn't think he hit her and that she was being dramatic, but once she moved her hands there was blood everywhere. Needless to say, he felt awful, but she was fine. Here she is explaining it to me, kind of.
Kenney was able to successfully catch and transfer a bee swarm. It's amazing watching it all unfold.
Watching the bees is mesmerizing.
It was an epic fail, haha! For one we didn't have diet coke, and two they used fruity mentos. I'm sure both of those things played a factor in the failure, but it was hilarious how bad it failed!!
Kyler saved up his money and bought a Nintendo Switch and a few games. Although this doesn't look like a lot of excitement, this is as much emotion as you will see out of this kid, haha!! He was super excited!
The kids had a good time at the library with the balloon guy. He made an octopus for Damon.
After Greece we traveled to Germany. Oma, Papa Dude and Nanny helped with this day. We decorated a Christmas tree since the tradition started there, raced fast cars and looked for as many German cars as we could in our collection, listened to Beethoven, Bach, and Handel. Oma made use dinner of schnitzel, potato salad, cabbage and egg noodles. It was all so good. For dessert I made kaiserschmarrn. Nanny talked to us during dinner about her ancestors, many of whom came from Germany to Texas. It was fun listening to her stories. We finished the night watching Maleficent because many fairytales came from Germany and this was the closest to a fairytale the boys would watch.
Dinner was really, really good!
Thankfully Zadi had given us this little tree that had a few ornaments so I didn't have to get out a bigger tree.
We have gathered quite the collection of cars. It was fun finding all the German brands and then racing them.
Seriously so good!
Not the best dessert, but it was eaten!
Kenney's attempt at a selfie to get all of us in it.
We started off our summer 'travels' by going to Greece! We started the day by learning about the origin of the Olympic games and then headed to the track to try out some of the events beginning with the 200m run since it was the first event ever ran. They also tried hurdles and some jumping events too. I tried to convince them to do it naked, but no one would do it, haha! We then headed to the tennis courts to try out our limited skills with 4 tennis balls. We made some gyros with tzatziki and french fries. We showed the kids pictures from our trip and talked about all the things we saw and did while we were there. We finished the night by watching the movie Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Bentley drew the Greek flag
These were actually so good, not nearly as good at the food we had in Greece, but not too shabby!
After playing tennis the first day the kids wanted to come back. Mackenzie brought her dress and bunny ears along. Oh man, she's a character.
Hurdles
We all took turns running the hurdles. I even took a turn, for the first time in about 20 years, eek! Some had different strategies than others.
200M Run
Kyler lost his shoe in this one, but we tried again and everyone made it, with all their shoes.
