We took another trip to our local LegoLand. I took an unusual amount of photos there because we took Brendan’s friend Graham along. We did the whole circuit.

Starting with the outside octopus, we got there the moment it opened. We skip the movie intro and get the place all to ourselves for a short time.

We were the first ones on the shooting ride.

We breezed through Miniland

The played for an oddly long time in Duplo Town before any babies arrived.

They gathered up every single yellow Lego jumbo brink and pretended that it was a vault full of gold so they could play cops and robbers. Then they added some green cash too!

Graham is silly, we like him!

See Trevor? They disappear for hours in to this climbing structure.

The special feature right now is dinosaur land.

There is an instructional volcano showing you how to build dinos

Then there is a dino to eat you

Brendan loved this big orange one.

Time for the 4D movie

Then on to Build-a-Car

Once we made cars, it was on to lunch!

Brendan and Graham each got a blind-bag figure and ended up with the same one!

All these boys are silly

Flush Graham down the Lego pit

Flush Brendan

And Trevor too!

Why I oughta….

One more time through the shooting ride..

Four and a half hours of fun.. phew!

Trying to get away from the summer heat, we went north to the Mogollon Rim for a few days of camping. We invited Trevor’s friend from school and his family to join us for the weekend!

We arrived right as an afternoon thunderstorm was starting to roll in. The thunder was the most thunderous I think I have ever heard.

Brendan in a baggie

We got the tent set up for our friends right before the sky opened up and it started to pour. The rain only lasted about 30 minutes and then the sun came out. Talmage and Afton are ready to camp!

We are about ready to sell this jeep. The boys can barely fit in to it anymore, their shins are crammed against the dashboard. But it was THE THING to do this weekend. Brendan is driving around little Aramy. She was too small to drive, but she lived in that jeep waiting for anyone to drive her around camp.

Brendan looks enormous next to Aramy!

Brendan got tired of driving so it is Trevor’s turn to take Aramy around.

We brought up our new toy, a metal detector

Brendan is holding the pinpoint detector. Once the big machine finds something, the small one can really zero in on the location and then the kids could dig up the treasure. Mostly it was bottle caps.

Time for more driving!

Trevor and Talmage are about the weight limit, the jeep was working hard

Brendan gets to be passenger while Afton gets a turn to drive

Brendan’s favorite red and white shirt goes everywhere

This log made a perfect heat shield and marshmallow stick rest

Perfect!

Maybe the extra large marshmallows are not such a good idea

Ewwwww… Brendan barfs if he even looks at these pictures

Afton takes dainty little bites

Or not…ewwww

The boys crashed in to the tree and the jeep stopped working. (we witnessed the crash). When I asked what happened, they said “the battery died”. Turns out it was just a fuse.

Talmage caught a little moth!

Time for some exploring

Ahhhhh! It is sprinkling again

The other kids don’t care when there is climbing to do

It started pouring again in the afternoon with more enormous thunder crashes. It was really nice and made another beautiful cool evening.

It was an awesome trip!

When the day is seriously hot…

…we decide to try an experiment!

Starting dough

After 2 hours in the sun

3hrs of cook time. They didn’t brown, and it makes them look weird. But they cooked up to a nice texture and they tasted fantastic.

It did not make the car smell anywhere near as good as I hoped, and it did not last. Without the browning sugar, there wasn’t the heavenly smell. I don’t think we will do this again unless the oven is broken!