The Beach -- continued

By Saturday night we were all lucky enough to be sitting around eating pizza while the kids ran back and forth from the beach to the pool.

When we first saw the pool, I think we were all slightly disappointed. In the pictures it looked small, but in real life it was miniature. Good bye cannon ball contest. Good bye pool races. In the end it turned out to be the best pool EVER! The little girls could walk across the entire thing, it was always warm and perfect for jumping into. Luke literally demanded people catch him by shouting, "JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!" repeatedly. Livy loved watching the show and so her parents sweetly obliged by catching Luke literally hundreds of times in a row. Kathleen came home with biceps of steel from lifting Luke out of the pool while the rest of us figured out he could climb out himself.

And when we weren't in the pool or hot tub, we were probably at the beach. The big kids loved being thrown into the waves and boogie boarding. Unfortunately after 2 days straight, their stomachs were rubbed raw and we had to run out and by them all new rash guards.
Nate also graduated to the stage where you were underarmour under your bathing suit too, so no more cute butt crack shots.
Sadie was jealous of all the big kids boogie boarding, so she invented her own method. She would take the board and lie down in the water and let the waves take her in and out.

Luke loved the sand more than anything. He loved to lay in it. He loved to roll in it. He loved to eat it.SO he was pretty much covered in sand the entire time we were there. Finally, the last two days we were there, he warmed up to the waves. Unlike his cousin, Livy, who loved the waves. The bigger the wave and the colder the water, the better.I'm actually glad Luke didn't like the ocean until the last few days, because once he discovered how fun it was I had to be on guard the entire time.

One day we thought it would be fun to get the kids surf lessons. You had to be 8, so poor Nate was bitterly disappointed to be left out, but little did he know how lucky he was. It was a hot and sticky day with the temperatures nearing 100 and yet the water was ice cold. I think the lifeguard said the water temperature was 58 degrees. BRRR!

Ellie popped up on her first turn and rode the wave in like a pro.
And then a few turns later, she lost her balance, fell in and she was *cold*. She is just like her mama -- once she was cold, she was done. Nate was such a sweet kid that he actually took off his rash guard and gave it to her so she could warm up and she headed out for a few more turns.

Other beach entertainment included digging a giant hole (that we waited inside of all day for the tide to come in and destroy)
copying our neighbors and building a sand couchburying the little girls in sand and making them into mermaids, Red Rover in the surf, Duck Duck Goose and lots of other fun games.

If we weren't near the water, we were probably eating. Dustin found a new love-- Rita's Water Ice so we went there every single night. My kids got ice cream from an ice cream truck for the first time in their lives. I discovered the cake shop in Sandbridge sells the most delicious giant soft chewy cookies ever.We made brownies and we also ate ourselves silly the night of the FOOD FEUD.

My sister and I assigned out team colors and each team had to come up with a menu based on their color. Quick run down:
RED TEAM! WOO HOO! We won the TRUE COLORS award (for having the most food of our teams color). Our menu was cherry lime soda, fruit salad, sweet and sour meatballs & red velvet cupcakes. I had my dad on my team, who wanted to literally buy everything pre-made, but we still had fun.
GREEN TEAM won the JAZZ HANDS (most team spirit) award for sherbert and sprite, pesto ravioli, & mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches. They had a cheer and everything.
The ORANGE TEAM won the THERE'S A PARTY IN MY TUMMY award (for yummiest main course). The served a blood orange drink, orange glazed salmon, and peach cobbler with hand whipped orange cream. Kyle literally hand whipped that whipped cream and it was delicious.
And the YELLOW TEAM! They ended up with the FANCY NANCY award for being so dang gourmet. We had hand juiced mango lemonade, crab cakes with hollandaise sauce, and pineapple and mango granola with caramel sauce. Everyone else was sharing their menus, but those little girls were trash talking everyone so they were the team everyone was feeling competitive with. I had Ellie sort through the toothpicks to get all the red ones for our team to use and I walked into my room to find "YELLOW TEAM STINS" in all the leftover yellow tooth picks.

We also played lots of games like Sardines, Saboteur, Maui Maui, Just Dance for kids
and my sister had a whole night of Minute to Win It games.The other big hit was Ooga Booga, a long honored family initiation. I cannot show you any pictures or give you any details because it is an absolute secret.

Harry Potter part 2 came out while we were at the beach house so my sister went on-line and bought us all tickets to go see it. We were trying to decide how early we needed to be there to get seats together and we decided to head out about 2 hours early.You should have seen the usher's face when we asked where the line was. Apparently people do not stand in line to see Harry Potter at the beach. We still had time to go eat (at a sit down restaurant no less) and get back in time to stand in a line of about 3 people before we were seated in the theater.

One morning I went out for a run and the winds were fierce. By the time I got back the lifeguards were driving up and down the beach with their red flags. We decided to head to the Virginia Beach boardwalk where we ate at the a Mexican restaurant with the biggest round table I have seen in my life.

The kids all got cheesey souvenirs including Luke's cow (his newest obsession) and Ellie decided to get her hair wrapped. While my mom and I waited with Ellie, Dustin and Tommy rented one of those giant four person bikes. Except there were only two of them to pedal all those lazy kids around.
Luke LOVED riding on the front.
All in all, we were so lucky to see all of our family for an entire week. Cousins, Aunts & Uncles, Grandma & Grandpa . . . We love you!



Then it was time for the sad good bye. We checked out of the beach house and headed for the mall to kill some time before our flight.And in a long honored Mangum family tradition, Lola and Livy pushed us off for the airport.

Virginia Beach -- the beginning

Every year we get together with my family for an epic summer vacation. We rotate between two of my favorite places in the entire world: a beach house at Sandbridge Beach, Virginia and my Grandma's house in Blackfoot Idaho. Last year was our trip to Heaven on Earth, so this year was the next best place -- THE BEACH!!!

In all my brilliant planning, I wanted to get to Virginia as early in the day as possible. Between layovers and a 3 hour time difference, most flights put you in pretty late at night. When all was said and done we found a flight that got there at 2:30. Yippee! It also left AZ at 6 am. Boo! What was I thinking?

So at 4am, we hauled out of bed and loaded up the kids. We were all moving pretty slowly so we didn't even get out of here until after 4:30. By the time we got to the airport, parked, caught the bus and got checked in (where our luggage was all tagged with the dreaded neon LATE CHECK-IN tag), passed security, we literally walked straight onto the plane. We may have cut it a little close and all the kids had to pee and were starving, but they did great on the flight anyway.

Ellie took Luke up and down the moving sidewalk as entertainment in the Chicago airport. And yes, we did leash him and he loved it.

We spent the first few days with our old neighbors, the Tylers. They moved to Virginia Beach 2 years ago and we love to see them whenever we can.

Sadie, Sadie, Brody, Ellie, Nate & Ronan

We played games, went to the park, swam, went on walks, caught fireflies (and Dustin caught a frog). . . just generally hung out. One night we got a babysitter and went to dinner on the boardwalk and stayed up late playing games. Jill also gave the girls haircuts and Sadie had a few crashes on the scooter. This led to a scab right over her lip that looked like a Charlie Chaplin mustache all week.

She also tore open her toe a few times and has 4 scabs on her knees. She put it best when she said, "I am not having very good luck with scooters today."

Saturday it was time to say good bye and meet up with most of the crew for lunch. We were going to try out some hot dog joint but my kids informed me they would *not* eat hot dogs. We opted for Kelly's Tavern instead where my kids ALL ordered corn dog bites. Fire probably shot out of my eyes at that moment. Luckily we had our own room, but that was one wild lunch!

Allie, Matt, Nate, Zach, Luke, Ellie & Sadie down in front

After lunch my dad and my brother took the big kids and headed for the beach house, while we ended up with blondes in the back and headed to Costco.Costco was an adventure and everyone kept commenting on how cute my twins were. They were pretty adorable singing and hugging each other. Sadie is so lucky to have her very own built in cousin/best friend.

When all was said and done we spent $460. This is what $460 gets you at Costco:
And this is what you car looks like when you pack it all in:
And with that we were off for a week at the beach!!

Bizzarr-o World

One time I placed fish tacos, loaded with avocados, peppers, tomatoes and spinach in front of Sadie and she yelled, "EWW! There's not even any vegetables on this plate and that's my favorite part." Sadie has *never* liked much more than fruits and veggies.

The kids start school a week from today so I thought I would be a nice mom and make them hot nutritionally unbalanced lunches all week. OK, maybe that thought came into my head after I went to the gym and ran 6 miles, took 4 kids to the library, Target (back to school shopping), Costco, Sprout and Fry's all before 12 noon.

I hurried to make the kids a pot of Macaroni and Cheese. You would have thought I was trying to poison Sadie. She *refuses* to eat it. "I"m allergic to it." "I never even eat it unless Mommy feeds it to me." This could honestly be said about 75% of the food Sadie eats. We get Sadie up to the bar and promise her as soon as she's done she can eat a peach.
A few minutes later, I notice how quiet it is. HOORAY! Sadie has finally stopped her tantrum. Then I hear Ellie open her bedroom door and gasp. "Mooooooom! Sadie's sneaking fruit."

4th of July

Despite the lack of pictures, we had a really fabulous 4th of July. In the morning, we went to the gym, then I spent two hours trying to pack (OK, that part was not fun), Dustin took the kids to see Cars 2 while Luke and I napped and then we met up with some friends to swim and BBQ.

Most of our friends were out of town (and who wouldn't be when it's 118 outside) and another family got hit with the flu bug, so it was just us along with Mark and Michelle and their two girls.With just two families, we still managed to have ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, corn on the cob, fruit, chips and sugar cookies. We're pigs because there weren't really any leftovers. We also mooched off the Bryner's who were out of town and used their grill and pool. Thanks Mike and Rickie!!

Luke had the best time of all once he discovered how much fun it was to jump/fall into the pool. This was actually a welcome change from throwing rocks into the pool (which poor Nate would then dive for), but now I'm a little panicked because he officially has no fear of the water.

After we swam for a good 3 hours, everyone came back to our house to change into clothes for fireworks. The thought of keeping Luke contained in a parking lot when it was in the 100's didn't sound fun, so I decided to stay home and put Luke down. Turns out I totally missed out.

On the way to the parking lot they had planned on going to, they drove by our High Councilman's home. I guess they were having a little family party so Dustin asked if they could put their chairs up on his lawn since he's right next to the Church that was doing the fireworks. There were tons of kids, swings, a trampoline, homemade ice cream, root beer floats, cookies. . . I'm glad it ended on a high note for them. Happy Independence Day!!

Summer time and the Livin' is Easy!!

June is almost over and I feel like we're just starting to get to my major summer goal: Don't overschedule. We had so much going on with getting out of school, camp, Father's Day, Dustin's parents coming that we haven't been able to just pick up and go. This week has been much more laid back and we've been loving it.

This week we:
* Spent too much time catching up on laundry & cleaning the house.
* Went to 10 tennis lessons where Sadie made a new friend.
* Shopped at Costco & Sprouts (twice) to refill my house with food.
* Saw a Junie B Jones play.
* Tried not to think about how much we ate out this week.
* Celebrated when Luke sat through an entire summer movie: How to Train Your Dragon.
* Slacked off & bought a cake to bring to a swim party.
* Admitted it was too hot to run outside & spent some time at the gym.
* Stayed up way too late watching movies (finally saw HP 7).
* Hosted Ellie's book club.
* Reunited with my UT Road trip buddies with lunch & temple date.
* Picked Ellie up early from a sleep over because she missed me.
* Enjoyed lots and lots of spontaneous play dates.
* Cooled off swimming for playgroup with 20 other kids.
* Gorged ourselves on lunch with friends.* Cut the boys hair and finally dragged my butt to the salon after 4 months of blah!
* Tried not to rant and rave as we cleaned out the kids' rooms.
* Partied it up at the SAP summer event at Dave and Busters.* Ate a lot of ice cream.
* Crafted over at Karen's.
* Caught up on my blog!!

Sadie Love

Sometime over the course of dinner, both these random quotes popped out of Sadie's mouth:

"I'm so disappointed we aren't going to the mall tonight. I'm really craving an Orange Julius."
and my personal favorite:
"I don't love Justin Bieber. I'm just his biggest fan."
What 4 year old talks like this???

Tennis Camp

Ellie and her girlfriends have been taking tennis for a year now and they're really quite cute. I can't wait until they can play matches against each other. This week we decided to put them all in tennis camp for the week.

Nate decided that maybe he would give tennis a try too. He was so nervous before camp this morning. You could tell because he couldn't eat breakfast and started freaking out when he couldn't get his socks on. Finally I asked him what he was so scared about. "I'm scared a ball is going to hit me in my face and I'll bleed."
Well good news: No balls hit him the face. Bad news: He did bleed. He tripped and skinned his knee. When I asked him how it was he said, "AWESOME!" At first I was a little nervous because he kept wanting to swing the racket like a baseball bat, but he settled in and started getting the ball over the net.

Nate's lesson started a little later than the girls and ended 15 minutes after it. I thought they were doing a lovely job entertaining Luke. And I guess they were. Sadie came over, sopping wet, and told me she wanted to change clothes. I informed her that I had no extra clothes. She then pulled out the backpack she had brought and guess what was in it? Extra clothes. I asked Sadie why she had a backpack full of extra clothes and she said, "You know. In case I wanted to get wet." She is always prepared.

Happy Father's Day

What do you say about the Dad so amazing that he made his own Father's Day Dinner because he knew I was exhausted from Girl's Camp??We are so lucky!!

I took the kids to Target a week ahead of time to pick out gifts. I really believe in letting them pick out their own stuff so he ended up with a water bottle, a pink tie, sticky note pads, new dry erase markers for the white board in his office at Church (the kids like to play on it), peanut butter oreos and gum. They all picked out singing cards except for poor Nate who really wanted a "My Dad Rocks" card, but in the mix up, I misunderstood him and bought another card. He was completely devastated on Saturday when the card was not in the bag. He did a great job making his very own My Dad Rocks card complete with a Superdad picture on the inside.

I did manage to make him a chocolate cake (I was missing just one ingredient from all his favorite desserts) and my kids made me proud by actually eating an entire cake in less than 24 hours. The are mine after all!!!

This is how we Wiggle-Oh

In case you have been living under a rock: I don't camp. So when I was called to be the Ward Camp Director, I think we were all a little skeptical of how everything would come off. I probably had the least faith in myself, but it worked out surpringly well.

The girls are AMAZING! We had no drama, we surpassed every goal we set for ourselves and all came back loving each other and the Gospel a little more.The theme for this year was: Values are always in Fashion at the Chandler Values Mall. We ended up being assigned the value Divine Nature and the Optical Store. I think the girls were kind of bummed about the optical store because it wasn't as exciting as some of the other (shoe store, jewelry store, clothes store. . .) But we made it work. I decided we should be a sunglass store, so we went with Aloha Optical and went tropical.This meant we spent our days lazing around by the palm trees in a hammock. OK, if only! I did have to laugh that poor Sadie fell out of the hammock *multiple* times a day.

It was also fun that my sister was my "assistant camp director." My poor sweet sister always gets dragged into all of my fun plans. I am grateful that she shares her talent so willingly with me. She made me gobs of cute tags to put on all of our scripture study gifts. Like this:and this:and this:And she spent hours on the phone with me trying to come up with clever sayings to go with each scripture. At first I was worried the girls wouldn't appreciate all the time and effort but they totally got it!!

Along with the tags, she also made me a tidy tent award that all the girls were dying to win.There was also lots of hair washing, braiding, games, laughing, hiking, screaming, cheering and general Girl's Camp-ness.

Lows:
* The elbow song. If I never hear that again, I will be a happy girl.

* Too much candy. I am so sick.* Forgetting the foam pad for my cot. My sweet husband texted every Priesthood holder that he knew up there and they all jumped to my rescue. I slept amazingly well and stayed warm. All thanks to the Priesthood! Our Stake Presidency is really the best.

* Dustin lost my pillow on the drive home. After flying off the trailer, it is laying somewhere on the highway. I hope some desert animal gave it a good home.

And that's it. Even being dirty wasn't that bad. Although I did look at my leg at one point and I had dirt up to my knees.

Highs:
* The Wiggle-O
I've brought it home and the kids love doing it too

* Dustin getting to come up for Bishop's NightYou should have seen me staring down the road when I expecting him to appear. He brought the girls ice cream cake which was delicious and we even won the "Name That Bishop" game.

* Spending time with the girls.We have the most amazing YW in our Ward. I know some of them from back when I was Primary President, but I was so grateful for the opportunity to really get to know all their quirks. They made me laugh and I really love them so much more now.

* Big Booty(this is actually my favorite picture of the entire week)

Kaycee taught it to us and had to leave for a family reunion right as we were getting good at it. We ran out of chairs, and I came back from a meeting to find sweet Brother Stewart sitting on top of the ladder.

*Pranking
Christy and I may have had a little rivalry going. I think it all started over her killing me off repeatedly during Mafia and involved some "alloy" lotion. I'm not even sure if we've called a truce yet since I woke up to a "We love the Utes" sign on my garage this morning.

* Solo Time
Isn't it gorgeous? It was so nice to get out of the heat and be in nature for a few days. You could really feel the love and power of our Heavenly Father out there. I hope the girls felt the peace the gospel brings.

* Testimony meeting. Our girls had such sweet & simple, yet powerful testimonies. I am in awe of the things they shared and the spirit they felt. I am so touched that I was able to be there and share in this experience.

After a week up there I totally get why people love going, although I don't know if I could ever go with anyone other than *my* girls!!!