Here's What We've Been Up to This Summer. . .

The first two weeks after school got out, Alyssa was in swim lessons. She's really progressing well. Floating naturally is not her forte, but she is a daredevil and loves diving for those rings. Here she is practicing the back stroke. . . I think.

A friend invited us to go to a small town circus. I found out later that it was even smaller than the previous year when she had been. Ben was out of town so I braved taking the girls myself. It was a little bit more like watching America's Got Talent than a circus with all the crazy acts, but we had fun hanging out together. We did enjoy the elephant act at the very end though.

We spend many a day at our community pool. Mackenzie is a daredevil and spends about the first 30 mins. jumping into the pool over and over again. My main job is to make sure no one else is in the way. The $5 set of pool rings I bought this year has really been worth the investment. All the girls love them. Mackenzie throws them in and tries to jump and catch them. Alyssa dives for them over and over again, and Tori loves to play a game where she's a dolphin and has to go deep out into the pool to find them. It was tricky to get them to stop swimming for a minute and pose for a picture. Not sure it even worked here but at least all three were in the shot!

Playing camping inside. It's insanely hot here in the summer and often even in the 80's at night so the idea of even camping in the backyard is not very fun. We decided to set up our old tent that we haven't used in years and play inside. Here the girls are sitting around a "campfire" making s'mores.

One thing I remember from my childhood was my friend and I having hair wraps in the summer. I did some research on-line and the girls let me put some in their hair. Even Mackenzie wanted to get in on the action. Notice because her hair is so short, it's sticking straight out the back. I wasn't too upset when Mackenzie wanted hers out that night. Tori and Alyssa's lasted about a week. I learned a few things in the process, and we may try again later.

One of our favorite traditions from living in the Northwest was going blueberry picking. There is one blueberry farm in the area, and we finally managed to make time to go blueberry picking. We were kind of at the tail end of the season, and we're in a major drought so we didn't get as many as in past years, but it was fun nevertheless. The girls were excited at first.
Then the heat started to get to them. By the end, they kept asking when we were leaving!
We ended up with almost 6 lbs, and thanks to advice from a friend I attempted blueberry jam again. 3 jars of preserved jam and 3 jars of freezer jam. I wanted to see which one I liked better. So far the preserved jam is amazing!
We've also been staying busy with a few crafts. This is a project I thought might be a little ambitious for my skill level, but I think it turned out pretty good. I had 2 plain white maternity t-shirts, so I wanted to embellish one of them. I looked around for ideas on the internet and was inspired by Mackenzie's swim suit and another shirt I have. Bought some knit fabric at Joanne's and tackled the project one afternoon. You can't really tell from the lighting in the picture, but the ruffle and flower are a dark plum color. I traced a flower pattern from a shirt I already have and sewed around the pieces in white thread. Then I outlined the pieces with the purple thread. I then cut 2 strips of the fabric, gathered and sewed to the top in an uneven pattern. Again, I realize the picture doesn't show all the details, but I love how it turned out and am way excited about another sewing success.