Where Did Summer Go??

         Well, This certainly has been a whirlwind of a summer. With the big cross country adventure, getting used to having a baby around again and having Ryan get back into being super busy, it feels as though summer came and was gone in a flash!!!  Too quick if ya ask me...I seem to remember summer being a lot longer when I was a kid?! We are looking at school starting back up in  just over a week and I am one very unexcited mama here. I can't stand the thought of both Jane and Beckham being gone during the day.  My heart literally hurts thinking about it.  We have definitely had our fair share of  "driving each other crazy" moments with so much together time this summer...but I think I will always prefer that to having to trust the safety and teaching of my precious kiddos to someone else all day :(  However, they are both super excited for school...so, I guess I can be happy for them.

Beckham's terrible injury from his bike crash has healed up perfectly!! We had a fun time watching his bruises change and heal over time.  He looked different every day...

 We have become so used to having grand adventures all the time in the summer with Ryan. However, with the arrival of our precious Elsie and Ryan being so busy, the kids and I have had fun exploring our new surroundings and enjoying some smaller (yet no less exciting) adventures! Poor Beckham developed a rather unusual fear of fires rather suddenly last week! He even cried and had a hard time going to sleep several nights in a row. So we made a special trip to the Vacaville fire station to learn about firemen and their job of keeping people safe from fires!!

 The fire men were so nice and accommodating!!  They let the kids go inside the ambulance and he even took each of Jane and Beckham's heart rates and showed them on the heart monitor! the kids were completely fascinated...

 They also got to sit in the fire trucks and see the hoses...all the while the firemen were very sweet and talked to Beckham about fire alarms and how the firemen come if those go off and help put out fires!!

 The kids loved every minute of it!! And I believe it really did help calm Beckham's fears about fires :) Mission complete...thanks to the amazingly nice Vacaville firemen!!

 Naturally, within days of being in California we had to find the nearest bouncy house place...of which there are several to choose from:)... This has always been a favorite thing to do for my kids and Elsie loves watching all the commotion happening!!

 I have been vastly impressed with the Library here! The kids each participated in a summer reading program through the library!! It was so much fun! We borrowed and read lots of book and even had to learn about some inventors and do a science experiment to complete the program.  The kids and I worked together to make a "lava lamp" for our science experiment :)

For completing the program the kids got showered with gifts :) They earned Jelly bellies and a toy at the half way mark and got to choose a free book and received a certificate for a free scoop of Fenton's ice cream for finishing! We had so much fun doing it.

Also, as part of the summer reading program we got to attend some neat shows and activities that the library put on.  We saw an amazingly cute and funny puppet show by a professional puppeteer!!  I belly laughed, out loud during the show...It was that good!!  We also saw an exotic animal show.  The kids got to see a 6 foot alligator, a skunk, a very large tarantula, a kangaroo,a gigantic python snake and more! At the last activity we attended, the kids got to do some fun art and science projects!!
Side walk paint...

Large bubbles...

water crystals and oobleck... And the weather was amazing too!! 

Our ward here in Vacaville has been amazing and we have been invited to do some pretty fun things with very kind people from our wonderful ward! We went to this AMAZING splash pad!! It was 100 degrees outside that day so Elsie and I were dying...but the kids had a blast!! Luckily I brought along my trusty spray fan and kept Elsie nice and cool in the shade :)

I had to drag the kids away after several long hours of fun. I am pretty sure we would still be there even now if the kids had any say in the matter :) We will definitely be visiting this splash pad again!!

My sweet Elsie is just such a trooper as we drag her around on our little adventures!! She is just a joy to have around and her smile melts my heart every time :) She is so happy and getting so big- 4 months on August 14th!! She just started rolling over last week and gave us a pretty darn good belly laugh for the first time last week as well!! We loved hearing that...we can't wait to hear it more often!!

On the weekends, Ryan usually is aching for some fun after a long, stressful work week.  So a Dick family adventure is usually in order :) This past weekend we went to the Winchester Mansion!! These pictures are horrible and they wouldn't let us take any pics inside the home.  But it was so neat. The lady who owned this crazy mansion was the wife of the man who invented to Winchester rifle. After her husband died, she believed she would be haunted by the spirits of the people who were killed by rifles her husband made unless she kept up construction on her mansion 24/7 to confuse the spirits...crazy right? Well as a result this home is nuts, with stairs leading to the ceiling, closet doors leading to other rooms, doorways that open to drops, cupboards that open to brick walls, hundreds of useless rooms, three kitchens and more and more craziness!! The kids enjoyed the tour of this crazy house- it took 65 minutes and we walked over a mile through the house and didn't see even half of the entire home!!

I think it is safe to say we are really enjoying California and our wonderful city of Vacaville!!  I hate to say goodbye to yet another summer but I am looking forward to seeing what Fall and Winter will be like here.