Well,
Last Friday night Darren and I headed down to Barnes and Noble to join in on the Harry Potter Mania! We did this with our dear friends Margaret & Andrew for book #6 and we were excited to do it again. We wish they were with us! Anyway, they had tons of fun activities - trivia games, crossword puzzles, word searches, guess how many Bertie Bott's beans were in a jar, a magician show, costume prizes, readings from favorite passages, pictures with Harry, free glow-in-the dark glasses... etc. One of the fun things for Darren was to have the "sorting hat" question him and place him in the House of Ravenclaw! (of course he was hoping for Gryffindor) He got to decorate a shield to wear around his neck. He also got to make a bookmark for the about-to-be-released book #7.
Late into the evening we spotted some of the employees wheeling out cases of the books to the front registers. I quickly snapped a shot of Darren with the books. It's pretty serious stuff - they were really edgy about letting me do it but let me anyway. They immediately covered the boxes with a large sheet of some sort. We thought it was funny.
Tons of people were dressed up. One guy made a pretty good Albus Dumbledore. He was kind enough to pose with Darren. Some other good costumes were Fred and George, a Snitch, and Professor Umbridge. We did meet up with a few friends from the ward who were equally excited to receive the final book.
I have finished the book and loved it. Darren is still working on it as we had to share. Over the past few years, we've read all the books together, and separately. We love to discuss them and joke about them. I've enjoyed having this unique experience with my son. I'm so sad there are no more books to look forward to. We'll just have to re-read them again and again until something new comes along. Will there ever be anything as fun as Harry Potter?
What a fun week we had camping at this lake! We were invited to go with a group of friends and it was a blast! We camped right on the water and were able to enjoy many fun activities. I love our family time together when we take our camping trips.
These pics are: 1. Dad and Darren going out for a ride, 2. a view of our camp site 3. a family shot on the jet ski, 4. Alli lookin cool, 5. playing with little sis, 6. Alli decided to learn how to stand in the play tent and was quite taken with herself, 7. cheesy romantic sun down photo, 8. Daddy's little girl, 9. Darren whittled a bow and some arrows out of sticks and used a rubberband to make it really work! Impressive boy!
Alli celebrated her actual birthday while we were there and shared cupcakes with the 30+ kids that were there. We had a great time visiting with many friends during the trip and we're so grateful we could go.
Our little Alli went swimming for the first time at cousin Gavin's b-day party June 16th. As you can see, she LOVED it!
She played in the pool for hours!(with short breaks in between of course)
Darren got to spend a whole week in Visalia at his best friend Andrew's house. They went to science camp each day at the middle school there and watched experiments, performed experiments, and made cool things like this rocket. On Friday I came out there and we got to see them launch. 
They had a real egg on the tip and if your parachute worked, your egg didn't break. It was cool! They went sooo high. Below is backyard fun at the Schimelpfenings as they used PVC pipe to make marshmallow guns. Yes - they blew marshmallows out the tubes at each other. Thanks to the Schimelpfenings for taking good care of Darren and entertaining us well! I miss Sonic!!
Sorry -here are more of today's pictures. I'm playing around with this blog and learning. Above are the boys w/ Presidents Jefferson and Washington. Below is Daddy getting an impromptu kiss from Alli. She just reached up and smooched him! Precious.
Here are the boys' face painting results. It was airbrushed on and sprinkled with glitter. A man from The Star newspaper took a photo of Darren getting his done and took down his name. We'll have to watch to see if he got his pic in the newspaper!
I forgot! The boys met Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington! I just can't figure out how to attach the other photos. Be patient with me. I'll get it!
+of+DSC_1132.JPG)