From Juneteenth to July Fourth of 2015

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Kathleen

Zach has been wanting to celebrate Juneteenth for a few years now and this year we finally did. We invited some friends over for brisket and strawberry soda on June 19th.

Zach explained the history and read the Juneteenth proclamation to everyone.

Thomas helped me make some pumpkin cookies for his Dad for Father’s Day.

Lately Thomas has been my little buddy. At some point each day the only thing he wants to do is be my helper. So he unloads the dishwasher, takes out the trash, puts laundry away or any other little task I can assign him.

On the night before Father’s Day I had all the children make cards for their Grandpa Cochran. Thomas made what he called “a cwipper.” I’m still not entirely sure what it was, but he spent a lot of time getting it just right.

We are on a later church schedule so on Sunday mornings I send the children over to their grandparent’s house for breakfast. They all brought their cards to give Grandpa. Ila always wants M&M pancakes and Thomas asks for M&M french toast (see below). Grandpa spoils them all by filling their grandest breakfast desires.

Charlotte had a manners tea for activity days and they sent me this picture.

In the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday, we left the children in the care of their grandparents while Zach and I took a trip to San Francisco. Zach had to go for work which meant his work paid for his flight, hotel, and food.

While Zach went into the office, I stayed in our hotel room and worked on selecting pictures for my next photo book. I also napped way more than I thought I would. We stayed in the Robin Williams room of the Carriage Inn and it had a typewritter as you can see.

Here we are at the Coit tower, only we didn’t get much of the tower in our picture.

Our brother-in-law, Dan works for ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) so he was able to take us up for lunch at the Skywalker Ranch on Friday. We’re not allowed to take pictures inside the ranch, but it was neat to explore the house after lunch.

Here is a picture from the lobby where we waited for Dan and Bethani (Zach’s sister). They had lots of interesting things to look at. I was a little sad that I didn’t get a picture of us in front of the Yoda fountain in front of the building.

On Saturday Dan took us to Pixar for a screening of the movie Inside Out. It was really cool to be able to watch a movie in the place that it was made with some of the people who worked on the movie.

They have a private movie theater inside Pixar with comfortable seats and excellent sound. As the lights turn off, the ceiling lights up with constellations of stars. We had to take pictures of everything, as you can imagine, I insisted on it! Lego Woody and Lego Buzz:

This wall was filled with interesting concept art. Here’s a close-up: We were allowed to walk through the halls of the building and observe a variety of unique art and storyboards from a variety of Pixar movies, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures of most of it. We had a little fun acting out the characters from the movie.

Then we went to Fenton’s for lunch and ice cream. Fenton’s is the ice cream shoppe you can see at the end of the movie UP. The manager noticed my Pixar nametag sticker and was jealous because he said he’s always wanted to go on a tour of Pixar. Here are some pictures of our food so that you can also be jealous, and probably hungry as well:

We took a late flight home on Saturday night. On Sunday morning we gave the children the gifts we had purchased from Chinatown in San Francisco.

Thomas likes to make a face and then ask me to take a picture.

We’ve gone swimming at the Orem Fitness Center several times in June, but I never remember to bring my camera. We swam with my parents when they were here and with our neighbors before our trip to San Francisco.

I’ve been pleased to see some of my more fearful children getting over their fear of water and actually becoming comfortable in the water.

I bribed Nicole with bubble solution to write in her summer journal.

The I’m not sure if it was Charlotte’s idea or Lucie’s idea, but they made a shower in the neighbor’s yard.

The children also made up a silly game on the trampoline and had a lot of fun playing it. We love our neighbors. Four of my five children have a best friend next door and the other child has Autism and generally prefers to do things by herself so it works out really well.

After some water fun and a dinner break, we all had a snow cone party.

This is Nicole having breakfast before school. She was invited to attend the BYU summer practicum which is a summer school for students in the special ed teaching program to practice their teaching skills. I haven’t been able to take pictures at school yet, but I have arranged to go take some pictures on Monday. Also note how Nicole’s hair is finally growing to a length that looks almost normal, like someone might have cut it that way on purpose (can you tell I’ve been impatient for it to grow since she cut it herself months ago).

Thomas can now dress himself as you can see from his outfit below:

Here he is being my helper again. He discovered that it’s hard to juice lemons.

Charlotte and Ila helped me remove some tiles from the bathroom wall downstairs.

The youngest three helped me make sugar cookies for Independence Day.

We took the family to see Inside Out on the morning of the 4th of July. Zach humored me by allowing one picture of all of our family to be taken outside the theater.

After the movie, we gave them some gifts we had purchased at Pixar the week before. Here they are all lined up waiting to see what we got them. I didn’t actually take a picture after giving them their gifts, but we got them the little figures from the movie.

Charlotte attaches wheels to her feet as often as possible. She’s become quite good at skating.

We put a blanket out for people to sit on while we lit off fireworks, but Nicole decided it should be an outdoor bed for her so she got her pillow and blanket.