July goodness!

Get ready for a super long post about July!!

Now that I'm on Instagram it seems kind of redundant to do a catch up post every month. What do you think?

Idaho Falls

Jason's family went to Idaho Falls every year for the 4th of July because his grandpa, step grandma, and uncles and aunt lived there. It's still the Anderson family tradition to go every year, but this year was the first since 2010 that we've made it! We had a blast at the parade, doing fireworks, swimming in the hotel pool, and walking along the falls of Idaho Falls. It's a beautiful town!

Also, when your van is 14+ years old and has well over 200,000 miles on it, you learn how to make due with the failing amenities. We do have a built in DVD player, but Monsters Inc has been stuck in it for close to four years now, so that's all the girls can watch. Also, the sound doesn't work anymore, so we keep an old set of computer speakers in the van for them to listen to it, but they aren't very loud, so they have to hold them up to their ears the whole time. If this van can just make it one more year......!!!!!

Best buds and built-in best friends
Juno's best buddy Abby had the same dress one day at church, so we just had to take a picture!

I always tell my girls they are so, so lucky to have so many built-in best friends--each other, plus their 6 cousins who all live within a few miles of us! We had a fun cousin zoo trip this month.

Water blob failure... and then success!
One of the things on our bucket list this summer was to make a water blob. I spent several nights ironing the edges of the plastic together, but when we were ready to set it up, we realized that there is no perfectly flat place in our yard for it to go!! We tried it in several different places, but it kept rolling over on  itself. Finally, I dragged it onto the city owned property next door and set it up there and it really worked! So, so much fun and so worth the hassle.

New favorite picture ever.

Cow appreciation day
I just printed out the "costumes" that Chick Fi La had on their website and thought it would be good enough for everyone to get free nuggets or something--nope! They gave us each a free full meal!!

More cousin fun at Fiiz
We had another fun cousin date at Fiiz (a soda shop, like Sodalicious, Swig, etc). Juno and Dina are best friends!

So are Pearl and Cutler!

Time with Juno

Tempe and Helena went to TN to visit my mom for a week, so I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with Juno. I missed my big girls, but it was nice to spend so much time with my cute little Junebug!

This girl is my mechanically minded, fix it girl. I made her a magnetic sensory bin and she had so much fun figuring out which things were magnetic and which weren't.

Juno went to "biddy ball camp" this summer!

And this was a project of her own design. She cut a bunch of slits in the egg carton and stuck big googly eyes in them.

Pearl Diana overload!!!!

Sleeping Autumn

Welcome home!

Jason's sister Morgan came home from her 18 month mission to Chile!

Only two babies were born while she was gone, and only one sibling got engaged. While Jason's brother Sean was gone, both his older brothers got married and had babies and there was another baby on the way.

Yay for being 3 months old!

Seven Canyons Fountain

In my opinion, this is one of the coolest places in the Salt Lake area! We had fun playing and exploring all the different canyons.

Tempe doesn't want to ever switch beds with Helena, so she made her sign a contract. I reserve veto power.

Smores solar oven

One of the things on our summer bucket list was to make smores in a solar oven. So fun and easy!

Pioneer Day

For Pioneer Day, all my siblings came over (minus Kelsey, who is currently in England) for a grilling party and a slip and slide made out of our water blob (I just cut it back open after it had to many holes to be a water blob anymore).

Sunset by the temple

Another thing on our summer bucket list was to watch the sunset. We drove up by the temple one night to watch, then went to Jason's parent's house to do illegal fireworks.

Summer science

We did the cloud in a jar thing with shaving cream and medicine droppers. Juno especially loooooves playing with colored water and medicine droppers. I mean, for real, who needs expensive toys or cable?? 

That time I became a foodie

One night we had a fried egg and asparagus pizza....

And for an afternoon snack, I served french bread slices with blue cheese and fig preserves, toasted under the broiler.

And then I bought my kids processed donut holes with icing for a breakfast food. JOKE. That's awful.