Our June Adventures

I feel like the summer has just started - minus the melting temperatures that are always lingering on the other side of the front door away from the sweet air conditioned house.  We moved here taking Preston out of school a week early and today I sat in a new elementary school registering Preston for kindergarten that will start in 1 WEEK!  I cannot believe this. I have very mixed emotions on this whole topic but for now let's focus on the short summer we have been trying to make the most out of.

Not far from our house there is an actual olive farm.  They grow the olives, harvest them, and then produce their own olive oil.  It was amazing.  We took a tour of the facility and learned all the inside information on growing olives and producing the oil.  Inside they have all samples of all the olive oils they make along with samples of all different kinds of Balsamic vinegar's.  We bought ourselves a homemade baguette at their cafe and went on an olive oil tasting journey.

Can you see all those olives in the trees.  Did you know a ripe olive actually turns purple?

 Every day both boys are always begging me to let them jump on the tramp.  The problem is the tramp is a scortching black mat that burns your feet when you touch it.  Finally, I hooked the sprinkler up and placed it under the tramp and let them jump their little hearts out.  And now everyday they ask to jump on the tramp with the sprinkler.  It brings back several childhood memories.

 Across the street from the new Gilbert temple is a park called Discovery park.  It is a beautiful park with a big pond and big grassy areas which I picture our family going for picnics with the temple overlooking the park.  One of the selling points for me to move here was the closeness to a temple.  Isn't she a beauty?  And lucky us, we even have the Mesa Temple close by too.  Porter and Preston enjoyed chasing the ducks and Porter attempted fishing. (he is using a piece of grass to catch a fish, but maybe he could have gotten lucky).

A lady in our church organizes a weekly field trip to help break up the days of sitting in an air conditioned house avoided the ridiculously hot outdoors.  We went to Krispy Kreme one day and the boys learned about the machines and what they do and then were able to frost and decorate their own donut that they watched go from a little ball of dough to a hot, glazed, yummy donut.  They did their mommy proud and their donuts were beautiful.  Porter ate his with no hands.  And, yes, for the record he had a sprinkle go up his nose, and yes later I saw him picking his nose and out came the sprinkle.  He acted like it was his lucky day (and it did make it to his mouth - GROSS!)

Another field trip included the Gilbert Historical Museum.  the boys were not as impressed with this stop, but we tried to make the educational experience a little exciting.  I bought cherries at the store for Preston to liven it up a bit.  Holy smokes he ate almost that whole bag in one sitting.  The boy loves cherries.

 Downtown Phoenix we went to a little permanent carnival in the park type of place.  Although, very cheesy, the boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves riding the rides.  Porter even went on his first "roller coaster" and loved every minute of it.  His face in the picture explains it all.

And to finish the month off we took the boys to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus.  It was such an amazing show!  I can't believe some of the stuff that those people can do.  They had 8 motorcycles riding in circles in a small metal ball cage and it was more frightening for me to watch that than the lion trainer in a cage with lions and tigers.
I am not sure if the Preston and Porter enjoyed it.  They were a tad on the grumpy side the entire show.