Last Week of Summer

I have been trying to cram as much as I possibly can into this last week we have of summer before the kids go back to school. It's a bad habit I have where I panic and realize we're out of time so we'd better hurry and have as much fun as we possibly can... which sometimes tips over into not being super fun because it's so intense, but let's ignore that part. Full steam ahead!

Monday we went hiking on one of my favorite running trails. It was a gorgeous hike and we were having a good time (we saw a banana slug!!) until Elinor got stung by a bee and then we had to turn back early. You know, I think it is one of the most terrifying things in the world to hear your 4-year-old cutie-patootie little girl shrieking in terror and to see her all alone up there on the trail and not be able to reach her right away. I had so many awful things going through my head for those first few moments. Luckily we had Joseph with us and he got to her within a few seconds while I stayed with Jacob. She's fine.
After hiking we went swimming with some friends and then called it a day.

Tuesday we went to see a dollar movie in the morning (horrible movie, but the kids loved it and we got to sit in some great recliner seats!) and then headed straight to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose. I found out in researching it that Steve Wozniak was a key donor so they changed the name of the street it's on to Woz Way. It's a pretty great museum and the kids had a great time.

Dancing to the entrance.

Sitting at the entrance with a giant party-hatted polar bear (and a sleeping Jacob).

They had an ambulance and firetruck that the kids loved. Jacob basically wanted to move in.

See how at-home he is?

He got to the firetruck before I did and I caught him pulling another kid out of the driver's seat. He had to apologize and take a little time-out before he was able to drive again, but that's how passionate he feels about it!

My little firefighters. :)

This bubble room was cool. The kids spent a lot of time there playing around and possibly learning some new things about bubbles.

There were bubbles floating down from the pipe overhead that the kids liked to catch in their bubble hoop. It was pretty fun.

Even Jake got into it.

Emi spent a good hour at this corn husk doll making station. After she finished hers she helped Elinor make one (which she promptly lost) and then helped another girl make one, after which they spent some time together making braids for hair and clothes for the dolls out of denim scraps.

I turned around for a second and Elinor was missing. After searching for a while I found her here, calmly weighing every piece of produce she could fit and balance into the scale. The museum was perfect for Elinor and Caleb's character. They both love to explore and touch new things, even when it's not okay. They had no problem wandering off to a nearby display to try things out if something caught their eye. Emily is more of a rule follower, so she had fun too, but in a totally different and more cautious way. Jake was just stuck on the ambulance and firetruck and one other display, which I will get to in a minute.

This giant pinboard thingy is something Caleb remembered from his kindergarten field trip. All the kids loved it. It often ended up a battle between the two sides to push all the pins to the opposite side.

Emi was working on this wood carving machine thing (lathe?) that she powered with a pedal.

Very early on in our visit Caleb disappeared into the waterworks portion of the museum and did not come back. I checked in on him periodically and always found him very thoroughly occupied.

First time I checked in with him: roll the ball down the railing so it can land on the fountain and shoot up in the air to land in that tank on the ceiling. It was sweet to see him helping that little baby standing at his elbow. He would reach for balls that were out of reach and hand them to him and sometimes push it along on the railing if it didn't have enough momentum. Melts my heart!

This fountain would fill with fog and then the kids could manipulate it with a knob and send out little puffs of fog.

And this pipe had a little intake hole at the bottom that the kids could stick a ball through and have it sucked up and shot out the top. Caleb figured it out early and loved teaching the others kids about it.

Cool, huh?

The other kids were just tossing balls straight into the whirlpool tank. Amateurs.

And Jacob? Well Jacob was here:

At this little tank. Forever.

He loved the thing and literally fed it for at least 20 minutes before I pulled him away for lunch.

All in all, it was a great day.

Legoland!!

For Part 2 of our summer vacation this year we went to Legoland! I didn't feel ready to tackle Disneyland (mentally or financially) so we thought Legoland would be a good starter option.We checked into our fabulous hotel (milk and cookies before bed every night!), went swimming that first afternoon, and then took the shuttle to Legoland the next morning.

This was right outside the gate. They also had life-size Lego people built along the road leading to the park.

As we went into the park Joseph took the big kids to get in line for the Sky Cruiser and I took Jacob to do some littler rides.

This was his very first and very favorite ride. He used to cry as I buckled him into his carseat because he wanted to drive so badly. This was like a dream come true and he was a pro!

He went on to ride in a helicopter...

The cars again...

A train...

(Duplo city)

A boat...

This was a fairy tale boat ride with all kinds of different characters to see.

And he also rode in airplanes, but that was the next day. We were busy!

And I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my baby boy.

He loved playing in these cars as well and insisted I take his picture here, with that lovely lady posing beside him.

  Meanwhile, the big kids did bigger things. Lots of roller coasters and line-waiting for them.

Joseph wasn't as picture-happy as I was, so I don't have as many of them. Plus their lines were longer so they weren't able to do as many different rides as me and Jacob. But the rides they did get to were awesome!

They also wandered through Miniland where they have a ton of people and buildings built entirely out of Legos.

Poor El was feeling pretty under-the-weather by this time.

We met up in Heartlake City, where Jacob spent his time  watching the Lego Friends show.

The big kids took a second to ride the carousel.

And then we headed in to see the Lego Movie set.

It was pretty amazing, but sort of hard to take pictures of. I loved seeing all the tiny details.

El was about ready to pass out at this point, so I took her and Jacob to get some food while Joseph and the bigger kids went to do more roller coasters.

Within seconds of climbing into the stroller... (poor girl!)

 After this Jacob wanted to do the cars again (surprise!) so we waited in line for that while Elinor slept.

The next day at Legoland we came in our swim suits so we could go to the water parks. That was really fun. One of my favorite rides was one like Splash Mountain that the whole family was able to do together. Getting soaked felt really good on such a hot day! We also went swimming in a wave pool, floated around a lazy river, and did a couple of water slides. We did manage to also squeeze in a fourth and final ride on the cars for Jacob before we left the park for the day.

Emily and Caleb's first ride the second day.

Jake in the fountains at Heartlake City.

Emily and Caleb finally took a turn driving the Lego cars (this was on the big kid track).

Jacob and I went on a laser tag-type ride that was perfect for him. Skeletons, sound effects, stolen treasure, and little laser guns. Every little boy's dream come true!

Any time we passed a gift shop, the kids all donned foam armor and wielded foam weapons to stage a battle. The store employees were very tolerant of this. :)

It was such a fun vacation and Legoland was a great theme park to take the kids to. They were the perfect ages to enjoy everything the park had to offer. It was a great trip!

Earrings and cake

We told Emily when she was little that she could get her ears pierced when she turned 8 if she wanted to. For the longest time she had no desire to do that, but it changed recently - probably within the last year. So, last Monday we went and did it! I was so proud of her for being brave!

She was so nervous and said it hurt but she never flinched or struggled. I think it helped that she'd put so much thought into it.

And... this is the only picture I have of her with pierced ears. I'll work on getting a better one later.

I also wanted to put pictures up of Jacob's cake. It was just a cake mix I bought from the store a while ago and then found in time for the birthday, but it was pretty cool.

It had me divide the batter into six bowls, then told me exactly how many drops to put of which (included) color into each bowl.

Then I mixed them up,

poured them into cake pans in the very specifically prescribed order and fashion...

...and ended up with these. The one on the left got a little messed up when I took it out of the pan. But no matter - I just used it as the bottom layer!

I chose not to frost the top, except for to write Jacob's name, because we've been on a bit of a sugar overload here at the Cooper house lately. It was nice to still be able to see the rainbow and also have a good cake : frosting ratio. I always feel like covering the whole cake is too much.

The kids loved it and it was less time- and labor-intensive than this one of yore.
And while I'm linking to that post, can I say, Holy moley, how crazy is it to see Emily at Elinor's current age?! I swear Elinor is still that much of a baby and Emily was never immature or toddler-like. She's always just been Emily.

So, yeah, anyway. Very exciting things happening here.
We are gearing up for school, which somehow starts very very soon. How did that happen?! I'm working on plans to make next week to be the best last week of summer ever. We'll see if my energy holds up!

Happy Birthday Jacob!

This boy is 3!!

I have no photos handy to prove it, but we had a wonderful day with him. A celebratory cupcake with a candle for breakfast dessert, swimming lessons in the morning (during which he had uninterrupted access to the tablet and all of its games), sporadic present-opening throughout the day, Otter Pops to eat barefoot in the front yard, meeting up with daddy at the movie theater near Google to see Inside Out, family dinner, and a colorful cake with singing and three candles to top it all off.

We do love our little Jacob and the bright, energetic, independent kid that he's growing into. Happy birthday, Jacob!

Sequoia and Kings Canyon

For our summer trip this year we decided to stay in California because, really, where else could we go with better weather? Also, being new to the state we thought it would be fun to explore a little. We chose to camp for two nights at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and then head over to Legoland for a couple of days. It was a fun, busy trip. (I was hoping to get to the Mormon Battalion Historic Site and the beach as well, but that was just too much for everyone. We'll have to do that next time!)

The camping portion of the trip was really fun. It is just amazing to camp among so many giant trees! One really nice thing about this park was that there are several very short, easy hikes set up to get to the biggest trees so it is easy to choose a tree, find the path, and take the kids. They also had a Junior Ranger program there, which the kids really enjoyed.

On the way to see General Grant.

This was the first tree we hiked to - General Grant. It is 268 feet tall, 107 feet around, and the second largest tree in the world.

It was kind of crazy walking around in these woods because all the trees were so huge! I felt like we were in Giant Land. It made me think of that one Giant Land in Mario 3 (you know, on the old Nintendo). It was always my favorite.

This tree tunnel was also part of our first hike. It was huge and amazing and apparently had been there for a really long time! The first forest ranger lived in it for a while, soldiers had lived there, and I'm pretty sure we read they'd kept horses there too. It was big.

Family picture! Minus me. We were out trying to see the sunset. Sorry the colors are funky. I had to tweak things because it was so shadowy.

This was outside the Giant Forest Museum.

This was part of the General Sherman hike - a cross-section of a tree. The sign told about different rings and what they meant - when the tree had been burned in a fire, when it hadn't had water, etc. It was really interesting.  We also learned that when the forest was first explored, no one believed the reports of giant trees so they would chop them down and send cross-sections out to different museums as proof.

It almost made you dizzy to look up at the huge trees all around.

Another fallen tree on the way to General Sherman.

And here we are, standing in front of General Sherman - the largest tree in the world. Okay, so it's only Emily, Caleb, and Elinor here. And it's the largest tree in the world by mass only. There are other taller and wider trees. But still. By mass. It's pretty impressive. :)

Camping was fun. Being able to gather around a fire and sleep outside is always fun. The hikes were great, the trees were beautiful and awe-inspiring. It was a really good trip. I'm glad we got to see and learn to appreciate these trees!