We made our first trip of the summer to the library. Our library situation is an interesting one. You see, we live literally two miles outside of Maricopa county. The Queen Creek library is IN Maricopa county, just 5 miles to the west of us on the major road. The Apache Junction library is in Pinal county, the county we reside in and pay taxes in. Therefore, it technically is "our" library, you know, to use for free. However, it is 13 miles away and in a direction I rarely travel. The two times I've actually checked books out from the AJ library, they've been ridiculously overdue, because I have to go crazy out of my way to return them!! Soooooo, I PAY $50 a year to use the newer, QC library, that's 10 minutes from us versus 20 minutes. Sometimes convenience is worth the price!
Anyhoo, the kids love the library. They love books! Something that I've really engrained in them from an early age. It's important to me that they love to read! We always participate in the summer reading program, even the little ones that aren't old enough to read by themselves yet. I max out my library card E.V.E.R.Y. time we go. I keep count as I pick out books and make sure we get 50 items! The one thing I can guarantee, is that when we get home from a library trip, I get at least an hour of peace and quiet because the kids are too busy pouring over the new books we checked out!
This is an aftermath photo. Books (and kids) are usually spread out all over the family room floor. See that basket? That's our library book basket that lives under our computer desk in the family room. Books are to stay downstairs to minimize the chance of a lost book. During the summer, we go to the library once a week. Once school starts, it usually slows down to more like once every other week. This summer, we've found a few new favorites~ Monkey With a Toolbelt (there are three titles, we've gotten them all), Bubble Gum Bubble Gum and When Dinosaurs Came With Everything, both of which I ended up purchasing for ourselves! The boys always like picking out a Pokemon comic book, but I have to make sure they get actually READING books too!
Matt's birthday was over the week we were at the cabin. I felt bad for leaving him here to be alone on his birthday, be he insisted that we stay for the whole week. I had chocolate covered strawberries (his fave!) delivered to him at work and a rep brought lunch into the office that day. When we got home from the cabin, we went out to dinner at his fave place, Serrano's. We gave him a few random thing for his birthday- a couple new t-shirts, Peanut Butter M&M's, a new razor that he wanted to try, a pair of free weights, then POGO passes for the whole family.
One morning, my grandma invited us to come swim at her patio home community pool. My cousin, Dustin, who is between the twins' and Gavin's age, was there for the day too. We left Gavin there to spend with grandma and Dustin for the day and Matt picked him up on his way home from work.
That evening, we took the kids to see How To Train Your Dragon 2! I loved the first one, and the second one was just as cute. I'm glad even my "big" kids are still ok with seeing this type of movie. Stay little forever, please? Before we know it, they'll be asking to go to the movie theater with their friends and I'm not ready for that!!!!!!
I think I ran a quick errand and came back to the kids "sledding" down the stairs on a piece of cardboard. It was one of those moments where I didn't know whether to be upset, or be happy they were being creative AND playing nicely together. I chose the latter and prayed that no one would break their arm. Or neck.
More library photos. Brooklyn is so good to help keep Hayden entertained while I'm picking out books. And I love that I have so many readers to help read to the littlest two! One thing that just warms my heart, when I see a child reading to a little sib.
With our two major summer trips happening back to back at the beginning of June, we didn't really have a lot of other things going on, so I think that wraps it up!
