july 4th

With Independence day falling on Sunday this year we kept our celebrating to a minimum. Our friends, the Shepards had us over for some fireworks. I guess most kids grew up lighting fireworks in their driveways on the 4th of July, weird... but FUN! Landon enjoyed the entire plate of cookies I brought (mom's recipe, which i have PERFECTED btw) and watching from a distance and refused to join the other kids in lighting them.

"i'm bakin' like a toasted cheeser"

We got our Wallingford community pool passes! Sam loves The Sandlot and this pool is just like the scene out of that movie, minus Wendy Peffercorn of course.Landon needs to learn how to swim.

toy story 3

Sam took a 2 hour break the other day and joined us for a movie. It only took them the first 15min of the movie to realize the 3D effect was off and fixed it.
I loved it, and so did Landon! Or maybe it was the ENTIRE bucket of popcorn that he loved. Either way, he cracks up every time we quote the movie.

Sleeping Giant

Last weekend we went for a "hike" at Sleeping Giant state park. It was actually more like a stroll, which is just fine by me. One of these days we'll get a sitter and attempt a grown up hike. We packed a picnic lunch and enjoyed the lovely scenery... as well as the wildlife.

failure

I tried to be domestic, and failed miserably. Our ward had a dessert auction to raise money for the YM/YW camps. I thought triple chocolate pretzels with caramel sounded easy enough. WRONG. I restrained my inner fat-girl and didn't even taste test. The downside to this was by the time I got to this stage I realized I had cooked the caramel too long, and ended up with hundreds of crunchy sticks. They were beautiful, but hard as rocks. I couldn't offer them for public consumption, let alone sell them to some helpless member of our new ward. I even made cute tags to cut out and tie around each batch. After throwing out hours of work and pounds of chocolate and caramel, I defaulted to brownies. Live and learn.

raspberry picking

Today we picked fresh raspberries with friends at Lyman Orchards in Middlefield.

six flags

Sam's friend from class got season passes for his family to Six Flags, so naturally we followed suit. At only 40min away this will make a great option for Landon and I to kill some time since Sam studies... constantly. We went up last Tuesday and had such a blast. I was surprised/thrilled at how many rides they have for small kids. Landon goes on all the big rides that he can with us, and loves it! I will admit I was nervous our raft was going to flip and crush Landon, but we came out just fine... SOAKED, but fine. We didn't even venture into the water park, but I am sure we will be spending the majority of our summer there.

Our first trip to Six Flags was a total success! I wish I could say the same about our second...

Actually the rain cleared out the park, and then cleared up so we were free to ride Landon's new favorite as many times as humanly possible. And we did.