Wichita Visit

We just got back from Wichita where we celebrated Gampy (Carlton's Dad, Dan Brinda) - he turned 90!!! We were able to spend about 4 days visiting with family and they threw a big celebration for Gampy on Saturday. We had lots of fun catching up with everyone - here are some pictures of our trip!

We spent our first day at the Exploration Center (Children's museum).

We walked to a nearby resturant that evening with Eileen and Remy. The kids just had to have their picture taken on this sign....each on the letter their name starts with.

And again on the walk back to the hotel.

Extra sugary pancakes for Avery and some meaty bits for Gavin to sink his teeth into at breakfast time!

The highight of our hotel stay was the robot butler who brought up a complimentary toothbrush and toothpaste just so the kids could interact with the robot!

Robot Butler

The next evening we got to hang out with the Bartnick's for a bit and since Moira wasn't going to make it to the birthday celebration, we got pics with her!

Here Moira is holding sweet Evelyn, her 3 month old niece, Maxine's new baby!

And here is a quick video of Avery checking out the chicken coop!

Chicken coop

The next day we met up with Olya, Marcus, Ariana and Deana to walk along the river, find the troll and see the Keeper of the Plains.

Avery and Deana

Deana, Avery, Gavin and Ariana with the Keeper of the Plains statue in the background.

The troll - a local woman made the statue to hide under this grate and see how many people actually noticed it.

Later that day was the big celebration! Here are some pictures with all the family!

Molli holding her grand-niece Evelyn.

Gampy holding Evelyn - his newest great granddaughter.

Our family getting pics with Jasmine before she had to leave for work.

Gampy and Jasmine (one of his grandkids).

Gampy modeling the t-shirt we bought him.

Gampy and his birthday cake that Molli made!

Happy Birthday song for Gampy:

Happy Birthday Gampy!

More pictures with the Birthday boy and his enormous family! This first pic has most of the "kids". Liska Dae, Eileen, Marcus, Paula, Anna, Molli, Carlton and Audie.

Gampy with his sister Margaret, brother Gary, and nieces Mary and Jocille.

Here we are with Maxine and her daughter Evelyn (with MArcus photobombing in the background).

Dasha and Teddy Renteria! Dasha is one of Molli's daughters. Here is Angelica and her daughter Lorelai (totally Angela's mini me).

Anna with her son Danny and her grandson Sebastian (Danny's nephew).

Kids playing in the puzzle room. And below we are with Eileen and Remy again and this time inclued Jeremy (Audie's son).

Molli and her other daughter Teril. Below pic with Liska Dae.

Here we are with Cassie (Audie's daughter) and her husband Nate.

PIcture with Gary and Margaret. Below pic with Mary and Jocille.

Pic with Marycile (Gammy's sister) and her son Jim. Belowpic with Angela and her son Liam.

Here we are with Audie (above) and Paula (below)

Above pic is Joe, Audie's husband. Then here is Remy with a big cheesy smile. Next to her is Alex, Molli's son.

Then we got one more pic with Gampy before leaving. It was o fun to see everyone and try to catch up a bit in the short time we had!

Back to School and Lego Mania!

The kids have really enjoyed being back in school! Here are their pics from the first day.

Avery lost two teeth within a week of each other before school started. She was very excited to have the tooth fairy visit and loves showing the hole in her mouth to everyone!

The weekend after the first week of school, we went to the Lego Convention! This was our 4th year going, Gavin's second year submitting a build and Avery's first year submitting a build.

Avery did a build of minons camping with Lego Friends. Gavin built an indoor amusement park with a zipline. As usual there were a lot of cool builds to see.

Huge lego pirate ship!

This was a replica of a portion of the Berlin wall.

There was a chain reaction table like last year. Here are a couple videos showing different parts of the chain reaction:

chain reaction

More...

Gavin driving

More chain rxn

Then we saw a Pirates of the Caribbean display:

Pirates

We also got to see some "celebrities" at the convention! For those of you who watch LegoMasters, some of the contestants from Season 5 were at this convention. The kids were able to talk to several of them and get autographed trading cards that all the LegoMasters contestants get!

We talked to Corey and Nick but didn't get pictures with them. We did get to see some of their builds at the convention and the kids enjoyed learning what it was like to be on LegoMasters! It was a fun day checking out all the different builds and the kids got excited thinking about what they want to build for the convention next year!

Summer!

I cannot believe the kids are already back to school! The summer just flew by! We kept busy all summer with the kids in different summer camps, swim lessons, dance, and gymnastics!

Carlton built himself a workbench in the garage:

The kids built a fort:

They improved their swimming skills:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fft6WjRCob0BxMmqTQpkWJ1mDU0lQeqk/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WI-UaO_SSCgZU9RqpA_2NNLNoCv5wpOY/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16zpUqn8NmdPJx3V2VHpO3mh0nRjCSvtI/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DNRLCXIQAWy8GJXV8vkfrtHpabIh8idn/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v6atJQRbpCzW3M7HoQs8jg0kLSnrcmu0/view?usp=sharing

We had fun with friends at an indoor playground called Kids Empire:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xuv-mbcFE4aF2JOFfvijBj5-bnBx_VVm/view?usp=sharing

Avery lost her first tooth...in Target! Then a week later, she lost her second tooth (in Costco parking lot) - both teeth made it to the tooth fairy safely.

Then we did a couple projects around the house. The first one was to extend our driveway to the north side of our house to get rid of the weed garden that had grown and to give us more parking for our camper.

In July we had some family pictures taken! It was a fundraiser for the drill team of the new high school in Tooele that just opened this Fall. Here are a few:

That is all for now!! Will do a separate post for back to school.