Who knew?

Who knew drain the pool day would be such a hit? Seven hours of pure entertainment.  Before refilling it Jason had to acid wash it, which fascinated the kids beyond belief.  Jayden kept saying, "Dad's doing acid!", "raise your hand if you like acid!" and "cool people love acid!" I really hope that's not foreshadowing.

Crap projects

Maddox is obsessed with craft projects.  Every day he wakes up with a new "crap project" in mind.  And they're sometimes pretty elaborate...bow and arrows, tinker toy Christmas trees, tinker toy electric scooters, fishing poles, numchucks, a family portrait of turtles, a campsite made out of legos, a paper rocket, a horse and carriage for his pillow pets, and that crown was loads of fun to make at 6:45 am on a summer morning when I had to color the entire thing with yellow crayon since crowns have to be made of gold (Kylie, bless her heart, glued on all the jewels).  I wonder if he dreams them up at night or where he gets his ideas (and if he can't think of any ideas he breathes down my neck while we scour pinterest), but today's agenda consisted of "painting the whole earf with a rainbow on it".  So we did just that. 

and then after I painted the entire earth and half the rainbow he paints two strips and collapses in a heap, "this crap project is taking all my breaf away".  Which is usually how all crap projects go down.

Afterwards we had to refuel our energy with homemade bread and honey butter, which the mere thought makes my eyes roll to the back of my head.  I told him it was heaven and after a minute he said, "I'm eating heaven. I guess Jesus lives in the oven."  He's quite an entertaining little pal to have around these days.

All good things must come to an end

So maybe we didn't create and conquer any summer goals, maybe at times I turned a blind eye when they went way over their allotted tv time, maybe we didn't do crafts every day and the few that we did do were complete pinterest failures, maybe we didn't complete a single one of the three reading programs we signed up for, maybe we didn't read a single chapter book and our goal was 5 and maybe I learned while playing Yahtzee that my kids have completely forgotten how to do math....but the good news is, we had one of the best summers ever. It's always a little sad to replace the swimsuits with polo shirts and nightly movies with homework, but change can be good too.  Jayden is in second grade, he got the teacher we were hoping for (Mrs. Johnston) and his best bud in his class, but unfortunately the girl of his dreams wasn't. All those Barbie bench presses for nothing.  Kylie is in 5th grade, which brings back waves of memories.  Mr. Dominguez, dancing to "Mame" in the 5th grade traveling show, fainting in the middle of class, perms, Trapper Keepers, scrunchies, LA Gears, neon everything and seriously coveting Tori Nelson's stonewashed jeans with the zipper and bows on the back. Kylie ended up getting the one teacher she did not want (Mrs. Pekara) but I am so proud of her for making the most of it and deciding that she was going to give her a chance and have a good year no matter what.  She is so mature and wise beyond her years, what a great example to me.  Hats off to an amazing summer and cheers to a great upcoming school year.

It was fun having Papa and {aunt} Jayci here to see them off to school.  They happened to be here on Kylie's first day of Kindergarten too.

Apparently Vans are so last year and Converse are the new thing.  Kylie claims high tops are in, but I'm taking her word on that because apparently I have no fashion sense when it comes to these kind of things.

Illegal aliens were the other alternative

When we were in Utah Jason was talking to my brother Todd about flying him down to help us replace our disintegrating pool fence (don't get me started) since he's been building fences the past few summers.  When my dad heard them talking he volunteered to come too and make a vacation out of it. Then when my other brother heard, he didn't hesitate to ask if he could join the party, because the thing with these Jolley boys is that they actually think hard work is fun.  We were so grateful for their help and followed through with our promises of a lake trip, swimming, boys night out to see the Dark Knight, steak and so much food that they would have to loosen their belts a notch on their way home. 

Ryder was right at home in Papa's arms.  He reached for him the minute he saw him and rarely left his side.  My heart was sufficiently melted.

(Another thing about us Jolleys is that we have really long toes.  Just take a gander at those beauts) 

We had fun celebrating Todd and Brenton's birthdays while they were here.  I'm sure building a fence in 110 degree weather wasn't quite the glamorous 18th birthday party he had always dreamed of, but being the kind of kid he is, he acted like it was the best weekend ever.  My family is pretty top notch and I can't think of a better way to spend our last weekend of summer.

Maddox was speechless when I found this huge, much-to-my-relief-was-not-a-cockroach, beetle.  He made me research it and found out that it was a Palo Verde beetle and he carried his "pawo berde beetle" around all week and asked me to do a post-mortem photo shoot before we got rid of it.

Hacking into Kylie's itouch

Fun to take a peak into life through her eyes...

Her and a friend came up with these creepy costumes and a song and dance that they titled "Dollies at Dawn".  As disturbing as it was, I have to give them props for creativity!

Circus afro, circus afro, polka dot, polka dot, circus afro....

Her and another friend came up with this themed photo shoot...rockstars, hawaiian, red carpet...I loved the outfits they came up with and I love the creative way she spent so many summer afternoons with her friends.

A while ago they had a really fun circus themed daddy/daughter night at church,

Dads

Jason looks hot when he wakeboards. 

Jason looks hot when he snowboards.  But hands down, Jason looks the hottest when he's doing the dad thing.  Ryder is such a daddy's boy.  He's the only one of our kids who will pick Jason over me 100% of the time, it should make me said, but it doesn't.  I love that he loves his daddy so much (despite head butting Jason and cutting his lip, which incidentally coincided with the cut he gave me from a tinker toy to the nose.  That kid's a firecracker). 

And it was totally worth being 15 min late to church (which, let's be honest, is our typical arrival time anyways) to take a few pictures of Jason teaching Jayden how to tie a tie for his first time. Yeah, I think I really kinda like this guy.