Weekend Report: Zane's Birthday

Zane turned 17 on Friday. We had an all day celebration.

It started with presents and IHOP for breakfast. I decided we needed to see how many people we could get to sing to Zane on his birthday. Here's the IHOP crew singing.

We then headed up to Ogden to iFly. It's a sky diving simulator (giant vertical wind tunnel). Here's the staff  singing to Zane.

We're all geared up. This is after we finished. If you look closely, you can see hair sticking up through our helmets. That was some strong wind! That's the wind tunnel to the right behind us. It was a lot of fun. Everyone had two turns. Isaac did exceptionally well and learned how to control his movements and height. We couldn't take cameras in with us, but we did get a video of the experience. You can come over and watch it sometime. :)

We kept the party going by heading to see a matinee of the new Wolverine movie. It was a fun movie (review in sidebar). Unfortunately, we got there just as the previews were starting. I had grand plans to get the theater to sing to Zane for his birthday.

After the movie, we bought pizza to take home. Here are the pizza workers singing to Zane.

We also stopped and bought an ice cream cake (love those things!). They also obliged and sang to Zane.

Then it was the family's turn to sing.

We were babysitting my two nephews for the night, so we all decided to take a trip to the park after dinner. Isaac - Ninja tennis player.

We found some neighborhood girls hanging at the park so I had them sing to Zane.

My nephews really really really wanted to sleep in the backyard, but they couldn't convince any of us to sleep out there with them. We compromised by pitching the tent in the living room. This worked out well as they could watch Shrek (Trick, as Mason calls it) through the open tent door.

I couldn't believe how hard it was to get them to smile for the picture. I have about 8 pics like this, none of which has two smiling kids!

It was such a fun day. The remainder of the weekend consisted of lots of yard work, errands, and a little downtime.

Summer So Far

Wow, I'm way behind in blogging. Here's a quick update with several photos of what's we've been doing so far this summer....

My summer glitter toes:

We had an amazing Youth Conference with our church. I should have taken more photos. We started by hosting a Special Needs Olympics. Leaders ran a lot of the events and our youth were "buddies" to the special needs athletes.  What a great experience for all of us. We had a full spectrum of abilities in our athletes. Some were very high-functioning others not so much. One kid I talked to during the day was buddied with a guy who just wanted to walk around. He didn't talk much. So this kid just followed him around the facility for hours. Another kid had a buddy who just wanted to sit. Ages ranges from 14-70ish. None of our kids complained, and they all talked about what a life-changing experience it was for them. I ran the broom hockey event. It was so much fun. We had several athletes come back to play a second time. Success.  Just a note - dollar store brooms break easily. :)

Day 2 of Youth Conference we all went to the Olympic Oval for several hours. The kids had free reign of the place and they had about 10 activities to choose from, like ice skating and dodge ball. Here's a picture of Isaac learning to curl.

I really should have taken more photos! After playing at the Oval, we headed up to Camp Heber. What a nice facility! We stayed in cabins, had a wonderful fireside with all youth speakers, did the ropes/challenge course, and slept (a little).

Saturday morning we headed to Provo Canyon to run the river. I enjoyed this (leaders finally got to participate). The river is pretty mellow, but we had some water fights and nice chats as we floated down.

The weekend ended with everyone returning to the church for a dance with the Special Needs youth. Those kids are very uninhibited which got everyone dancing and having fun. I even got Isaac to join the conga line for a few minutes.

Moving on to July 4. Both Rick and I have standing family reunions that day so we rotate which we attend. This year was Rick's family and we were in charge. Again, I failed on photos. Joanna and I supplied water games for the kiddos while our husbands chatted with cousins.

We stopped by my parents to catch the tail end of my family party. Due to the accident last year with the homemade water slide, dad rented a slide this year.

I love Mason' face in this pic

We did not have swim suits, but I made my sisters (and Rick and Isaac) go down the slide a few times in clothes.

So much fun. Love my sisters.

This past week was girl's camp. Here are a few highlights.

Canoe games (I love this pic because of the girls in the overturned canoe in the background)

Winners of the canoe relay.

Lots of crafts. Body glitter and bracelets.

We had a sports theme so each ward picked a team name and mascot. Our group was Team Sisterhood and our mascot was a tiger. We made tiger tails for the "pep rallys".

Amber turned 16 so we gave her a crown, boa, and sash to wear all day. Here she is getting birthday love from the girls.

We also got some time for archery and air soft guns. The leaders got in on the action.

The whole group!

YCLs (youth leaders) leading girls in silly camp songs. (The stupid jellyfish song has been stuck in my head ever since.)

So far, a busy and fun summer. One more major event then some down time for a few weeks.