Oh, what did we do in the summertime?

My last semester of school starts tomorrow. I'm a little bit in denial, because A) it seems to be good to be true that I am almost a college graduate and B) I don't want to face the fact that the next sixteen weeks of my life will be spent doing schoolwork. Yuck. So instead I'm going to re-live some of the fun summer moments and activities that have yet to make it on the blog:

* Art projects! Will has finally learned to color with crayons (as opposed to just eating them, which he still does on occasion) and we even broke out the paint a few times. Our recent endeavors were cards for the August birthday kids in our extended family: Terri, George, Grandma Pam, and Sam.

* Sunday evening visitors! My dad and my brother Cody ventured over for a fun visit; the little boys played and wrestled and watched shows on Hulu with Uncle Cody and after finding out that my dad had never seen any of my scrapbooks I quickly sought to remedy the situation by making him look through all of them!

* Clyde went to the dentist for the first time! Luckily Chuck had prepared him thoroughly and we watched an Elmo's World episode about the dentist that morning for good measure. We love our dentist's office (Dr. Widdison in Boise) and Clyde did really well and was more excited about his goody bag with a new toothbrush, sugar free gum and a travel sized toothpaste than I've seen him in a while :)

* Several afternoons were spent at Eagle Island. Once you get over the fact that it's not 'clean', chlorinated pool water and remind yourself that everyone can bathe when you get home, it's really fun! Clyde loved wading out as far as he could into the water; luckily Chuck was always right there to turn him around when it got too deep. Will was content to sit with me and throw rocks into the water :)

* Beating the heat - I decided to drag the boys' slide inside to the currently empty bonus room for midday entertainment when it's too hot to play outside. And yes, Will likes to carry around a medicine dropper.

* Lots o' bike rides! On the way home one day we came across a seriously flooded street; water was rapidly gurgling out of several spots by the sidewalk and in someone's yard. A neighbor was trying to get ahold of the water company, but I opted to call 911 instead and let them contact the water company. Within the few minutes it took the police officers/water guy to arrive, the poor yard was completely submerged. It was especially sad since I guess the elderly couple who live there put a lot of time and effort into their yard and gardens. I haven't been back to check out how everything dried out; I hope the damage wasn't too bad!

* Dinosaur run-ins: we had some time to burn in Boise one evening so we met Grandma Pam at the library and played in the children's section for a bit, where Grandma introduced Will to the dinosaurs, which he obviously loved :)

* More lazy Sunday evenings - the boys were driving me a little crazy one night while Chuck was at a church meeting so we went outside to wait him out. Clyde LOVES playing in the car, so I wasn't too surprised when he brought out his stool and climbed in. Naturally Will wanted in too, so I gave him a boost and enjoyed the glimpse into the future of when they're old enough to borrow the car; good luck picking up chicks in the station wagon, boys!

* My mom turned 55 (Jump and Jive at 55!) on August 13th, yay! I told her that I was taking her out for lunch the day before and then I sneakily arranged for some of her friends to meet us there too! I know, I'm good :). A few ladies couldn't make it, but we ended up with a respectable group of six of us: Bonnie, Mom, Jeanette, Leslie, me, and Janna (not pictured). On her actual birthday we 'hung out' at the park - notice the three swinging boys - and went swimming at the Natatorium with Mom's ward.

So now I guess I have no choice but to be ready for school to start again. Less than four months until I'm done - graduation is Friday, December 18th!

Indulge me.

As a mom, I'm naturally incredibly impressed by everything my sons do. I think we've all seen how many pictures I feel compelled to take of them, often doing everyday tasks such as eating cereal or sitting in a stroller. I've made a conscious effort not to turn this blog into an ever-gushing highlight reel of each and every accomplishment (believe me, I could . . . and I still might) but I thought that this warranted a post.

This past Saturday Chuck and I were providing a nursery during a funeral service and had handed out papers and crayons to the twelve or so little kids sitting around the table. I reminded everyone to write their names on their papers and offered assistance to those who needed it when Clyde suddenly waved his paper in the air:
Yep, my two-year-old (okay, he's almost three) wrote his own name! And if the paper's edge had extended a little bit more on the right, the letters would have been in order. Finding himself out of room after the 'D', however, Clyde chose to relocate the 'E' to a spot above.

Pretty awesome, eh?

The day I had six kids at the zoo (hmm, that doesn't sound quite right . . . )

My wonderful friend Megan and her darling baby Johnathan are in town for a couple weeks, so we set up a little trip to the zoo last week. Another friend, Suzi (who also happens to be Meg's sister-in-law) and her super cute two-year-old daughter Melia joined us, as did my nieces and nephew. Melissa was in town to work on the house a bit, and I figured painting would be easier sans kids so I took them off her hands. It was definitely good practice to try to look after six kids; luckily it was only for a couple of hours and two of them were strapped in a double stroller for a majority of that time :).

Now onto the millions of pictures:

Megan and Johnathan and me and Clyde
Our first stop was the giraffes; here's Clyde with the little statue.

And here he is checking out the real ones!

The new African exhibit has all sorts of cool features, including this Jeep for kids to climb and play in.

Ah, the moments that moms live for: Clyde hopped out of the Jeep and (on his own, without any prompting) gave Will a huge hug. Love it.

Somehow we've never noticed it before, but there's a super cool elephant that squirts water; it was pretty hot that day so the kids LOVED it!

Nice and refreshed!

Of course we made a stop at the big giraffe slide. Clyde braved it alone . . .

as did George, but the rest of us doubled up.

Mallory took Lily down a couple times,

while Courtney helped out with her "new best friend" Melia,

and poor Will got stuck with me. I'm not a huge fan of slides, especially as an adult attempting slides made for children. I was apparently quite confused/worried/unexcited about going down.

We made a quick stop to climb on some of the animal statues: George is a monkey, of course!

Mallory and Lily opted to hang out with an elephant.

We tried to see the tigers, but like the lions they were taking a midday nap (we ran into a lot of this while we were there!)

So we posed on the little tiger cub instead! (Honestly, I don't know why the zoo even keeps any live animals; the good photo ops are all with fake ones!)

Clyde's favorite way of waking people up is roaring like a tiger :)

George and the tiger.

A very giggly Courtney :)

Mallory and the tiger.

I thought the babies in the nest would be cute, but they were less than cooperative. You'd think that they would be smiling since it was one of the few times I dared get them out of the stroller!

It was at around then that Meg, Johnathan, Suzi and Melia decided to wrap up their day at the zoo - completely understandable since it was getting really hot and Suzi's four months pregnant. I was a little nervous to see the adult-to-child ratio change from 3:8 to 1:6, but we did pretty well :)

The big kids got to ride the merry-go-round, here's Court.

And George!

Clyde and Mallory :)

We saved the penguin exhibit for last; the penguins sensed our need to actually see animals move around and they obliged by diving into the water and swimming around quite a bit.

Then Clyde and Will got up and close and personal with some of the penguins outside the exhibit, goofy kids!

And that was our Zoo Boise adventure! We all survived and had lots of fun, thanks to obedient kids, the double stroller, labeled water bottles, and plenty of fruit snacks and graham crackers.

And I'm now completely convinced of my ability to mother more than two kids at once - I can handle up to six! (Again, only for a two or three hour stretch!)