Rocket Launches and Shaky Ice Cream

Memorial Day 2012 was a blast!

Literally!
Our Cromar Friends built rockets and chose M Day for the launch.
They graciously invited all the neighbors to come.
The boys loooooooved it!

The only shot I got of the blast off...

They soared impressively high!

One fun side note of the morning... We walked around to a few locations in our community to find a good place to send them off, taking into account the wind, possible landing hazards etc. In the process of doing so we discovered a bunch of hidden treasures in our housing community.
Who knew we had mulberry bushes? Yumm!!!
Here's Jeff, or "the tickle monster," as he is more commonly known to Jack and Aly, showing the kids which ones are ready to eat:

The boys stuck around for quite a while watching the rockets take repeated launches. Truman and I went home after a while to put him down for a nap.

When the boys got home Jack and Daddy set out for a bike ride, their new favorite activity:

The afternoon was pretty laid back. The boys went with Gram, Grandpa and Tyler to scout out the location for the stake 11 year old scout camp.

Ed and Corey are both leaders for the camp. Jack and Aly were happy to tag along of course. They always love a field trip with the Grandparents!

While they were gone, Corey and I were able to finalize our summer school plans and order our curriculum. Can't wait to tell you more about that!

After dinner and FHE we ended the night with a classic summer treat, ice cream! To make it special and fun we made it ourselves.

Tutorial HERE.

(We used whole milk and it worked fine. Also, save your large zip locks and go for double bagged grocery bags!)

The shaking part was super fun, and the final product was worth the effort.

How neat that it actually worked! This was a seriously fun activity!

The day was filled with so much family fun that by the end of it all Jack was brimming with affection.

He insisted on some snuggle time with Truman (who loves Jack very much but still tried to wiggle away):

And made notes for Corey and I which he left on our pillows with an instruction not to read them until we went to bed:

Front:

Back:

Corey's:

Pretty cute!

(And don't worry... spelling will be a focus of Jack's home school experience this summer!)

We love these kinds of family days! This particular day was made even more fabulous by the fact that Corey had the day off from BOTH jobs. Yahoo! He and I spent quality lazy time together in the evening talking and watching a super cute french film "Amelie." We had the edited version, lent to us by a friend so I can't necessarily recommend it to you, but that's really a shame because we loved it!

The only thing that I wish we had done was teach the boys the actual meaning of Memorial Day. Something to shoot for next year!