Summer Fun Club - Owl Painting

The best Summer Fun Clubs are when we get together with family.  The first one this year was painting ceramic owls.  I ordered the owls in a 12 pack from Oriental Trading Company (one was broken on arrival) and a bunch of paints from Michael's.  The kids were super excited, and this was fun for everyone.  You could see their personalities come out. Some wanted perfection in the design, others just wanted lots of color.  I am so glad that we live close to cousins and we can enjoy doing things like this!

Swim Team

This summer was the year of Swim Team.  When the kids and I were in England and Dave was house hunting for us, he sent us pictures of the house we wanted to buy (this one) and a big selling point for the kids was that it had a community swim team.  At the time we were wrapping up 3 years of pretty regular swim lessons at the Hydro.  Hilde is a natural swimmer, she is graceful and lovely in the water.  Enoch enjoys the water, but swim strokes were not coming as naturally to him.  We bought the house and moved to Virginia in August of 2011.  It was too late for swim team that year.  The next year I was working full time which meant there was no possibility of swim team again.  This year was different though, and we signed the kids up.  It was a big time commitment, with me having to wrangle the two younger kids for two hours every day while the older two had practice.  But, in the end, it was definitely worth it.  Hilde picked up right where she left off, and was one of the best on the team for backstroke for her age group.  Enoch started the summer barely making the team.  You had to swim one length of the pool without stopping, any stroke.  Enoch barely did it, but his look of pure joy after completing it was priceless.  By the end of the summer he was begging to do the IM, and could do freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and some butterfly.  These kids are awesome.

Younce Family Reunion Part 6

These are the last few pictures I have of the family reunion.  The older kids took turns on the big bouncer.  I even took a turn, and wow it was hard work.  The pictures from our reunion are great, but it doesn't capture all of the fun that was had.  A week is enough time for cousins to bond or re-bond, for adults to have real conversations with each other, for 20 games of Dominion to be played, for movie nights, for family dinners, for water aerobics and runs and long bike rides, for fishing and hiking and time at the spa, for naps and make believe and art.  This was a pretty epic family reunion and there may never be another one quite like it.  But this year, I am glad we were a part of it.  We really love our family.

Younce Family Reunion Part 5

What did you do for the 4th of July?  This year we had a whole day of fun.  Our kids love miniature golf.  Not just a little bit either, a ton.  They had been begging to play for probably the last year, so that was first up on the day's events.  We invaded the course with enough people to break up into 4 teams, they were glad to see us coming.

Then in the afternoon the older two kids did the youth ropes course.  They were pretty excited to do the zip line.

 This is the perfect picture of Enoch these days.  Missing teeth, super excited, and probably yelling.

 And this sweet girl has a little bit of dare devilness in her.  I love it.

 The best part of the day was that Phineas was able to attend a whole day of Pirate camp!  They made the sword and hook, went on a treasure hunt, and did all things pirate.  Lucky for him he had the right clothes to attend, and we had not planned it in advance.  A true pirate is always prepared.

After a nice family dinner we ended the day at a really fantastic park in Harrisonburg.  The highlight for most of the kids was Dave's impromptu Blind Lava Tag game.  Even the oldest kids were loving it.  Best Uncle (and Dad) ever.

I could not keep this little lady out of the water.  She loved going up to this rock where water poured out of little holes.  By the time we left she was pretty wet.  After that we headed home.  We saw a few fireworks from outside the condos, and watched some on tv, but we were all pretty beat after a fantastic day.

Younce Family Reunion Part 4

Picture Day!  Let's be honest, the real reason for family reunions is for everyone to get some updated family pictures.  There was a new addition from the last reunion, and a missing face (a cousin serving a mission in Russia).  Grandma also made all of the girls matching dresses.  Unfortunately, I either didn't get, or got and immediately forgot, the memo to bring a white t-shirt to wear under the dress.  Oh well, they still look adorable.  The hardest part was getting a picture with the 1 year old in it, looking at the camera, and not distracting everyone else.

Younce Family Reunion Part 3

Phinn has not outgrown his love of horses in any way.  Luckily, Massanutten had pony rides.  Even Enoch decided he wanted to be in on the fun.  Just look at how happy these guys are.

 One very happy little boy.

 Dave took his camelback with us and filled it up with light lemonade.  He gave the end to Freya and it took her just a few moments to figure it out.  Then she was UNSTOPPABLE.  Not just for this day, but for the rest of our vacation.  Dave created a monster.

After the pony rides we had lunch and then headed up with the rest of the family to do the Alpine slide and the Go Karts.  One point about the Go Karts, they had a strict 4 year old minimum.  I didn't notice the sign so when Dave said that Phinn was 4 (which he is in like 3 weeks) I corrected him and the guy wouldn't let Phinn on.  Which led to a major meltdown.  Way to go mom...honesty is not ALWAYS the best policy...

 The Apline slide turned out to be the biggest hit of the whole reunion.  It was super fast since it was raining and everyone flew down it.  I was a little scared about letting Phinn go down on his own, but he was fearless and did great.  SO MUCH FUN.