The Rest of Our Summer Fun!

This might be my longest post of pictures yet, but since summer is coming to an end, I wanted to put up all of our summer fun before September comes and we move on to fall fun! This has been a great summer full of splash parks, summer movies, play places, museums, libraries and story times!
Robert and I usually take the kids to Tempe Marketplace every Friday or Saturday night. We start at Paradise Bakery and get a cookie sample, then we go to Barnes and Noble and look at books there, then we play in the fountains, and then we get a Mojo frozen yogurt sample on our way out. That's our routine, every week. We love it!
The kids never tire of the splash park! And where is Winston?
There he is!
Robert got some free Diamondbacks tickets so he took Stanton to the game with him! It was a big night because not only did they have so much fun, but Stanton ate a hot dog again for the first time in 2 years. He used to ask for them all the time, and then one day he decided that he hated them and refused to eat them ever again for the rest of his life, and now 2 years later, he likes them again...but only certain ones from certain places with certain buns.
While Stanton and Daddy were at the game, we went to the Scottsdale Mall and had a shopping and play place kinda night. It was so much fun! Winston went down the slide all by himself for the first time, and people kept laughing at Noelle because she kept saying "Hurry Mommy! We need to go to The Gap before it closes!" She also tried Horchata for the first time and loved it. It was a big night! She is such a fun daughter!
Robert is our hero, for many reasons, but also because he manages to get us a culture pass every week on his way home from work. So he got us one to the Science Center.
We saw "real guts" (a stomach, a kidney, a liver and a small and large intestine) and Daddy finally got to lay on the bed of nails that we've been telling him about forever and ever. We also saw the planetarium show, and it was one of the highlights of our summer! We all LOVED it!
We've kept Jamba Juice in business this summer (actually we might be putting them out of business cause we had so, so many coupons) but every time we went, Stanton wanted to try a grass shot.
I promised him he wouldn't like it, but he really wanted to try it, so I let him. He took a pretty big sip, and he gagged, but he swallowed it. Then I took a sip, and gagged, but I finally swallowed it too. We both agreed that it tasted like salt water and yard work. It was so, so disgusting! Noelle thought we were both crazy for drinking grass.
Daddy also got us a culture pass to the dinosaur museum because they had the Hubbel Telescope exhibit that we (mostly I) really wanted to see. It lived up to our expectations! There were space torches that looked like Star Wars blaster guns, and moon rocks and pictures of the planets.
We even made up a sherrades type riddle while we were there. Stanton and Noelle kneel on the ground, then they stick out their arm, and then they flex, and then you have to guess which astronaut they're talking about. (Neil Armstrong)
Then we headed over to the Arizona room exhibit and crawled through the prarie dog tunnel .
Winston got out first!
Afterwards, we looked at all of the dinosaur stuff, and watched a really cool movie where dinosaurs eat each other. It was a really long movie. The T-Rex never gets full. It was a great day!
This summer we also started reading our first chapter book. I remember a few months after Stanton was born, Robert asked, "When can we start reading chapter books with him?" He has been anxiously waiting. So this summer from the Border's summer reading program Stanton picked out "The Chocolate Touch" and we read him and Noelle one chapter to every night before bed.
They really loved it. They would get excited and tell us every night what part we were on..."We're on the part where he kissed his mom and she turns to chocolate." I think they also really liked that they got to stay up a little later every night to read it instead of going to bed right after scriptures.
When we finished it, I let them pick out any candy bar they wanted to share, and they picked 3 Musketeers. (I would've picked a Kit Kat.)
Once we finished the first one, they wanted to pick another chapter book, so I let Noelle choose this time. She picked "Freckle Juice" (one of my favorites!!!!) because she has freckles, the cutest freckles you've ever seen!
They loved this one just as much as I did when I was little, and we even made freckle juice when we finished the book, The real recipe calls for vinigar, mustart, mayonaise, grape juice, an onion, etc. I couldn't let them drink that (especially after the nasty grass shot flavor still lingering in our mouthes.)
So we made up our own freckle juice recipe that wasn't quite as bad: salad dressing, honey, syrup, ketchup, club soda, apple juice and lime juice. I thought it was pretty gross, but Stanton said that he kind of liked it. Noelle said it tasted "yummy like soda" and she asked for a refill. I didn't give her one.
The night before my birthday Robert took me to the movies to see "Cowboys and Aliens," which is the best.movie.ever! Then he took me to this really fancy restaurant called Noca. They give you a palette cleanser and amuse bouches on little tasting spoons. And they give you gourmet, sour apple cotton candy for free while you're waiting for your dessert.
Speaking of dessert, I couldn't decide which one I wanted, so Robert told me to pick 3 (one for each decade I've been alive) for us to split. It was a two and a half hour dinner, and I enjoyed every minute of it that I got to spend with Robert. I love him so much, even if he did order squid ink pasta for dinner, which totally grossed me out!
Oh, and they give you a little treat bag to take home! It doesn't get better than that!
And finally, to end our summer fun, yesterday we brought our pillow pets and our blankets and our friend to the Scottsdale library, invaded the reading castle and had our own story time! We spent a couple hours reading book after book and eating snack after snack, tucked away in the reading castle! A few stragglers joined us from time to time and made themselves comfy on our blankets and listened to our stories. One little girl even helped herself to our goldfish snacks. The more the merrier!
Winston enjoyed story time. He always enjoys everything!
Afterwards we looked at the superhero exhibit they have there. Noelle went in the phone booth they had as Noelle, and she came out as "Supergirl!"
And Stanton dressed up as Batman! He pretended to punch the Joker and then he rode away in the very cool Bat Mobile they have. It was a really cool exhibit, and a really wonderful day!
Our super fun summer went by pretty fast, but I am going to make this coming fall, winter, spring and next summer EVEN MORE FUN because it's the last year before Stanton starts kindergarten, and I am already so sad about it!
I know I can't stop him from going to kindergarten next year, but I can make this coming one the most fun and exciting year of their little lives, while I still have all three of them at home with me!