Soccer Stars

Wow it's only been a few days and already a new post! I am on fire with my blogging! ;) It's probably because my Etsy shop has been slower the past couple of weeks so I actually have time to blog! haha I am actually really glad for the slowness right now, since my kids' activities and Summer fun seems to be keeping us busy every day! Which brings me to the subject of Soccer!

Both of the boys are in Soccer this Summer. Caleb is playing it for the first time and for Gabe I think this is his third year. Right now Gabe is one of the oldest ones on his team and I think his confidence is getting a little boost because he seems to be a pretty good player compared to a lot of the other kids! ;) Tonight he scored five goals (I think they won by about 12 to 2…. or somewhere around there…) so he is definitely feeling good. Caleb's team is a little young - mostly kids going into kindergarten, whereas Caleb is going into first grade, so he is also one of the biggest kids (even though he probably would be if they were all his grade level! haha) They seem to struggle a little bit more than Gabe's team, but they still have a pretty good fight every game. I think they have won one and lost one game so far.

Soccer will be keeping us busy for the next couple of weeks - they have games three times a week until the beginning of August! Then in the August they will start flag football. Josh was the one behind that sign-up…. haha He is more excited about them playing football than soccer I think… ;)

I can't believe there are only about 3-4 weeks left until school starts! Crazy! I am half excited and half sad that Avery will be my only child at home during the day. She is going to get so bored! I will really have to get her involved in some things.

Happy 2nd Birthday Avery! (And we'll not talk about which birthday it was for me)

The month of July is destined to be a busy one in the Rhodes home. The fourth happens first, then exactly one week later is my birthday, then exactly one week after that is Avery's birthday. Then I was informed when we moved back to Idaho, that July 24th is like, Mormon Pioneer Day apparently! So here they do parades for that too! So pretty much every weekend in July will be spent celebrating something! (They don't celebrate Mormon Pioneer Day in Wisconsin? Weird. haha)

So for my birthday (yes, it was the big 3-0) Josh and I just went out to dinner at Red Robin. It was pretty laid back, but that was okay. We are planning a trip to San Diego in a few weeks so we are kind of trying to just save up for that. Also, I don't know if I ever mentioned Josh's whole keychain stuck in the steering wheel issue the day before we left Wisconsin, but when we got back home we took the van in to get it check out and were informed that the part he broke cost $380 to replace. Awesome. I was sure hoping to waste $380 repairing something that my husband broke in a moment of Hulk Rage. *sigh*

So I told him I didn't want him to go out and buy me any big birthday present. I already bought myself a present earlier this year anyways. Two actually. ;) Ahem…. enough about that! So then the next weekend celebration was Avery's birthday! Josh actually had to go to Boise for work all week. It was for some weird training again. They sure must have well-trained policemen! So he was gone from Sunday to Friday and got back Friday night. It was a very stressful week. I do not ever want to be a single mom! I mean, it is possible and all, but I would definitely get less sleep. Luckily my Etsy stuff was really slow (I was actually praying it would be every day) so I didn't have to spend too much time working on it in the evenings after all the kids were asleep.

On Saturday, July 19th, we had Avery's little birthday party. I basically had invited any mom in my neighborhood that had a little girl about 2 years old - and that alone was quite a few people! Not even everyone was there and it was still a nice little group! I brought some food over to Porter Park around 11 and had our friend, Ashley, make the cake (it was sooo cute!) and the moms mostly chatted on the blankets and watched our toddlers play on the playground. It was "classy-casual" in Josh's words. haha The boys had been invited to a birthday party for another boy in our neighborhood, so they were at the gymnastics center while we were at the little girly party at the park. It worked out well. ;) Then once it was over, we took our kids for a little ride on the carousel, came home, and Avery took her nap. Josh took the boys to go get some wood chips to finish off the landscaping in our backyard and add doe extra to the front (it's been about 3 years since we did the first batch so most had blown away!) We can finally say now that our backyard is pretty much complete! I would love to get a patio set eventually but it's not a top priority for this year.

I will post of picture of Avery in front of the playhouse. It's so cute now with it's little flower boxes and landscaping around it. I had to buy a new slide once we build the fence because otherwise the straight one went right into it! This one curves so it comes forward. Right now she doesn't fully appreciate it, but I think in a year or two she will feel pretty cool to have her own little playhouse. I told the boys to just plan on it becoming decked out with girly stuff in the next couple years! haha Their time is up. But either next Summer or the one after that they are supposed to have the neighborhood clubhouse done (with an indoor pool, basketball courts, etc.) so I am thinking once Gabe is 10 and Caleb is 8 they will be more excited about hanging out there. ;)

I do wish we had a little bit more land to spread out, but I think this will be a really fun neighborhood for our kids to live in for at least the next five years. Maybe someday we will consider moving a little further out into the country, but I think it's fun for kids to have other neighbor kids to run around with when they're young.

Anyways! That's all for now! Oh, maybe I should do a quick "2 year old" Fun Facts about Avery.
Okay here goes:
FAVORITE WORDS: "No!" (of course) "Cocoa!" (she loves hot chocolate, thanks Caleb) "Shoes" (typical girl)
FAVORITE SONG: "Wheels on the Bus" (she especially loves to do this in the water at swim lessons)
FAVORITE ACTIVITIES: Swimming, riding her new trike, going for strolls, playing at the Burton school playground, saying hi to Truck in the backyard
FAVORITE FOODS: Chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, apple slices, cookies, ice cream, anything with ranch on it (We sound really healthy right now)
ALSO LOVES: Stealing my necklaces and wearing them everywhere, trying on any shoes, puzzles, coloring (on walls especially), bath time and swimming, playing with cars (no!!!) and any type of animals, but especially dogs!
I need to get her official height and weight, but I know she wears a 2T to 3T and people tell me every day that she looks WAY older than 2. A girl who is in my swim class apparently said to a mutual friend we have (who then told me this) "Isn't there another swim class she could take her daughter too? I think they have a preschool one for 3 or 4 year olds." To which my friend replied, "Her daughter isn't even two yet." And the girl was like, "WHAT?! No way. She looks way older than that." I think we may be in trouble when she is about 13 or 14…. :(  But it is true, her hair has always been super longer than any baby her own age, she has always been tall, and I even had a girl tell me once when she was a baby "She has an old face. She doesn't have a chubby baby face." (Compliment? Not sure.) I guess we just have a little Renesmee baby. ("Twilight" fans will get that…lol) But honestly, I may be impartial, but I just think she is sooo beautiful. It's a good thing she has two big brothers. ;)

Happy Fourth of July!

I have always loved the Fourth of July. I always tell my boys it is my favorite when they ask "What is your favorite holiday?" I think it's because I just have lots of really good memories of spending the fourth out on a ski boat in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, getting super tan and eating lots of chips and junk food, and then watching the fireworks on the grass at night. We would either watch them at Lakeside Park in Fond du Lac or at the Osthoff on Elkhart Lake once I was a teenager. My friend's parents usually got a rental there over the holiday so we used to bum off of her since it was such a nice place. I just loved the lazy Summer feeling that was always going on during that holiday. Good food, sun, water skiing, what more can you ask for? It makes me sad that we don't have lots of nice lakes close to Rexburg…. or a ski boat. haha

But, this year I INSISTED that we go to the Idaho Falls fireworks show. Every year about a week before the Fourth of July, everyone from Idaho starts posting this top ten list of Fireworks shows around the country and Idaho Falls is number two on the list. Second only to Philadelphia. While i do somewhat question the credibility of this list, it has still motivated me enough to want to go see them for the first time. I had wanted to go in the past, but Josh always whined and complained so bad and told me about how we would be stuck in traffic on the way home for HOURS that we always decided not to go. But this year, I would not be deterred. I was going to see those friggin' number two fireworks.

Oh, but first! We had the parade in the morning (Josh always has to work that) and it's kind of a bonus because he always gets there early and parks his car, sets up my lawn chairs, and saves me a really good spot. So then I pull in around 9:45 (it starts at 10) and get dirty looks as he scoots his car over and I park mine next to it. It's great. That and the free carousel pass we get are really the only two perks of the job. haha So anyways! The boys were super excited because Devin (Josh's cousin who just opened a Mac store) asked them to help throw candy on his "float" (really just a pick-up with sign on it… like most of the "floats" in the Rexburg parade.) But they had fun none the less! I sat with Avery and Josh walked around, timidly trying to tell people to please back up, since they were about 20 feet into the street. (I told him that when I worked at Disney World that was my job for every parade and he needed to be more forceful!) When the parade ended we came back home and Avery took a nap while the boys had some fun playing in the sprinkler outside. (See photo of Gabe shooting Caleb's butt with the hose)

Then that night, around 7:00, we started our trip to the fireworks. They start at about 10, so you may say we were getting there super early. But actually, there are people that go and CAMP for three days prior, just to stake out a great spot. That's a little crazy, but that's what I have been told about how much madness these fireworks cause. We were so lucky to have our friends Tiff and Scott who let us hang with them in the parking lot of a hotel her sister manages. We got there at about 7:30 and they had the best corner of the lot sectioned off with police tape and all these chairs set up. Hahaha Tiff is someone to have in your corner. She means business. (No, I am not just talking in the third person, she is actually named Tiff.) So we hung out, ate snacks, and waited until the show began.

The boys were playing with the other kids with the sparklers and things. I really thought someone was going to catch on fire. Luckily no one did. Caleb had a melt down over glow sticks though. I really think sometimes that kid is bipolar. During the fireworks, one second he was heard saying "This is the best Fourth of July ever!" and then about ten minutes later, when he lost his glow sticks, he was like, "Raise your hand if you think this is the WORST fourth of July ever." I am hoping his bad attitude is just mostly from a lack of sleep and not a serious mental problem. All three of our kids fell asleep almost instantly on the car ride home. Avery still had all her little glow sticks on so she looked like a little glow-in-the-dark robot baby. It was so cute.

Anyways, was it worth it? Yes! I thought it was really good! And the ride home was not bad at all. We stayed away from HWY 20 and took 15 instead and got home in about 45 minutes. We never really even came to a standstill. It was totally not as bad as Josh had made it out to be. He even admitted this year was great compared to the other two times he went. (Once with his dad, who had serious road rage, and once with some teenage friends)

So here are some pictures of our fourth of July!

Wisconsin Trip

We made it back from our yearly Wisconsin trip! This year we left on Wednesday, June 18th and drove for two days, arriving on Thursday night. We went the northern route through North Dakota and then on down through Minneapolis, which I have decided I like better than going through South Dakota and southern Minnesota. It seems like you are less out in the middle of nowhere for long stretches of time.

Anyways! Friday night I did my little art show at Bookworld on Main Street (aka: the small event that could make my entire trip a Tax Deduction….haha). On Sunday, June 22, 2014 - Gabe was finally baptized! Yay! Poor kid has been waiting since March to do that. I would have to say that it was worth the wait. It was really nice. Everything went really smoothly and my mom did a little lunch at the church for everyone from the branch who had stayed. I did a short talk about the Holy Ghost and my mom did one about baptism.

Then on Tuesday, Gabe and Caleb came with me and Josh to Noah's Ark (America's Largest water park) and we had a blast. Avery stayed home with my mom. She would've been too small for all the water slides anyways. We had a good day for weather and the lines were pretty small, being a Tuesday. There were a couple of rides that we waited in line for and then Caleb decided, maybe he wasn't quote ready for after all. Haha I had to walk him back down off the the "Black Anaconda" and "Stingray." I will post a picture of each one of those below so this explanation will make sense. On the "Black Anaconda" you go with three people in a tube, one person behind the next so you are in a line. Well we had told Caleb he could be in the middle between me and Josh. But when we got to the front of the line, the guy told us the smallest person had to be in the front and the biggest in the back. Therefore, Caleb would have to be in the front. Me and Josh got into the tube. Caleb stood on the deck, shaking his head no with a face like, "No way in hell I am getting that tube." hahaha So I took the walk of shame with him back down the steps and passed everyone in line, as many parents gave me the sympathetic "We've been there too…" smile. After Josh got down (they let him join another group and Gabe had gone with a group of two other boys we met in line) even Josh admitted, "Yeah, it was pretty intense. It was probably best he didn't go." haha

Then on the Stingray, there are two people that sit facing each other on a double tube. You basically get pushed off this cliff where your tube goes down a giant u-shaped slide and back up to the other side. Well they told Caleb that he would have to go down it facing backwards and he was just not about to let someone push him off a cliff on a tube going backwards. I guess it's good that we have a child that is strong enough to say "no" when he isn't comfortable with something though. Hopefully that lasts into his teenage years.

Other favorite things at Noah's Ar were the Lazy river and the Wave Pool. The boys LOVED the wave pool. Luckily they have life vests available for them to wear now, so they both did. I remember almost dying in the wave pool as a kid so I decided to sunbathe while Josh took them in.

So that was Noah's Ark!

Other highlights of our trip were going to Kohler beach, riding go-carts, bumper boats, and mini-golf at the Fondy Sports park, eating at Culver's at least 8 times (seriously), having dinner with my old friend Gini and her husband, Drake, going to the children's museum, doing the rides at Lakeside Park with grandpa Bestor (my grandpa), the fondy watermark (twice), me shopping with my mom at the outlets and rummage sales, and picking strawberries. It was pretty rainy, lots of cloudy days, but we still squeezed in.

On Sunday, June 29th, Josh blessed Rachel's new baby, Brayden in church. Then afterwards my mom invited all of the Dahlke relatives over for a BBQ. It was good to see some of my cousins that I haven't seen in forever.

Then speaking of people I haven't seen in forever, on Monday even my dad joined the party. We went swimming with my brother's family (they arrived on Saturday, right near the end of our trip) and the kids had a lot of fun. Then grandpa Bestor took us out for Chinese food. The next morning, Tuesday, July 1st, we headed out early in the morning.

It was a really fun trip. We were lucky my grandma let us stay at her condo. She has a basement with a bedroom and living space and bathroom so we were able to spread out. With my sister and her two kids still living with my mom, there was literally no room for us in the inn.

So that as our trip! Pictures to come!