Jess, Adam, and Olivia visit

My sister Jessica, her husband Adam, and Olivia came all the way from California to visit us for a couple of weeks and we really packed in the fun! The pictures are in no particular order and are not all inclusive. We had some great game nights where we played Blokus and Settlers of Catan (Jessica's favorite) that I thought were some of the funnest times we had! It's just so lonely out here sometimes that it was nice to have someone to play games and go have fun with!


Of course we had to go to a Baltimore Orioles game! It was a fireworks night too! and we won!





Lots of swimming at the pool! Olivia taught Ryley how to swim and now she can go across and back without help!! Amazing what peer pressure can do.


This is an east-coast game called "Duckpin" bowling. It's almost the same, but you have a smaller ball and smaller pins. better for this kids i think. Olivia actually almost won, but Jess ended up pulling ahead in the end.

We met Grandpa Paul, Coleen, and Aly at the D.C. Zoo where they spoiled the kids with panda bears and cute T-shirts! Pandas really are as cute as a stuffed animal.

We saw the Joseph Smith movie at the D.C. Temple. I think it was my 6th time seeing it and I still cry every time. It's such a great reminder.

Our longest day was treking around downtown D.C. looking at the monuments and museums with 3 whiney kids. We did see the Whitehouse, the Washington monument and the museum of Natural History. That was enough for one day.

We love the farms around here. The countryside is so beautiful. Jessica spotted a half dozen houses that she wanted. Jensen's favorite part was the blueberries! Be glad you didn't see his diapers the next day.

I Looooove Blueberries! Even the green ones! We made blueberry pancakes, waffles, milkshakes, and even blueberry syrup...mmmm

We also got cherries at the same farm! What luck! Have you ever tried Cherry Jam? It's delicious, we made some. We also bottled 6 quarts because we had so many!

Olivia didn't bother putting them in the bucket, she just ate them.

We also took them to our favorite ice cream place called Tropicool! It has really good "gelati" and I found a new favorite flavor-- it's rootbeer flavored shaved ice with the vanilla soft-served. MMmmm.

We celebrated father's day,

and Olivia's birthday at the same time, with the same carrot-cake batter. We're so efficient.

At Ocean City we rode some of the carnival rides.

Even me and Jess got to ride the zipper! My childhood favorite! and the boardwalk fries were amazing.

Catching crabs at the beach! More like, torturing crabs at the beach.

Don't we all wish we could have bleach blonde hair and tan as easily as Ryley.

Little Mermaids

I like Camping!!

We camped at a place called Assateague Island right by Ocean city. We got rained out the first night so we had to eat our hotdogs in the tent.

There are wild horses on the island, and we found out that they're almost as bad as the bears at yosemite. This one pryed the lid off our food tupperwear somehow! They're kind of fun though. At least they don't eat people.

Grandma Jensen visit

This is all still catch-up work. My mom came out to have a job interview in June and came to see us for a couple of days. She graduated from nursing school in December but no one is hiring new nurses in California, so she came over to the east coast (the better coast) looking for work. She landed her dream job in a level 3 NICU in West Virginia and so they're moving out here this fall! They'll still be 3 hours away, but that's a lot better than clear across the country! I'm incredibly excited. We had a great couple of days while she was out here. We went to "the bouncy gym" to jump around, swimming at our apartment pool (thank goodness for that pool during the hot summers out here!) and we went strawberry picking at our favorite farm. She's such a pretty grandma! Everyone in my ward thought she was my sister.

Family Fun 5K

So, the reason I haven't posted anything on my blog since easter is because I've been trying to organize the fundraiser for girls camp and boyscout camp. We decided not to do the annual car wash because it never makes any money, and we thought it would be much more fun to organize a 5K run! Well, I worked my tail off getting this together and all I have to say is- those kids had better enjoy camp this summer! In the end it really was fun though! See, I'm smiling. I think gathering prizes for the run was the most work and took the most time. We went around to local buisnesses and got donations so that we could give them away as prizes for our winners and have some fun things to raffle off to the losers. (just kidding, everyone's a winner, right!) Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at how generous everyone was. We got some great prizes to give away, like gift cards to P.F. Changs, Cheesecake factory, Uno's, Hard Rock Cafe, a pass to the local bouncy-gym place for kids, a free massage, paddle boat passes... etc. I think we had about 30 prizes to give out, plus the food was all from local grocery stores. We also had to do the t-shirt design (Ammon did a great job of course), get insurance so we wouldn't get sued, advertising, and get permission from the local park where we did the race. The location was actually a really beautiful trail and I liked it, even though we had to drive an hour to get there. We had about 70 runners sign up and we made almost 1000 bucks. It was such a success in fact, that me and Ammon thought maybe we could organize another one as a fundraiser for the Posey family vacation fund.


We used high-tech stop watches and megaphones.


The two track boys in the front ended up doing the 5K in 17 minutes! I thought that was pretty amazing.


Our YW and YM doing their part of the "work."



The finish line crew. Like our high-tech finish line too.

Ammon ended up taking 2nd in the stroller-pusher division and we got a $20 gift card to the Hard Rock Cafe and some coloring books for the kids.

Learning is fun!

Here's a picture of Ryley's preschool class. Notice it's all boys except Ryley. She knows how to hold her own. We just finished up for the summer and Ryley really misses it. Last fall we got a group together and made a schedule and took turns teaching. It was great and I think it was the perfect size group! I'm surprised how much she learned too! They pick up things so fast at this age.





Jensen learned something too. He can brush his teeth and spit very good.



Ryley also learned how to do her own hair, but she only does one hair style so far. She says it's supposed to look like a unicorn.



She also does Jensen's hair for him.


and he seems to like it.

EASTER

Ryley learned how to spell -and eat- "Easter."



Jensen insisted on wearing Daddy's shoes the entire day. He didn't seem to mind face-planting every five minutes.


We had an Easter egg hunt with some friends in the ward. Most of the candy got eaten before the eggs reached the baskets.


"Yay, my basket is full!!"


"Yay, my mouth is full!!"


"Can't smile... eating."

The Surprise Visit!!

Last week we took a spring break trip to Rochester, Minnesota, of all places, and surprised our long-lost friends that used to live next door to us in Baltimore. They had no idea we were coming and it was hallarious to see their reactions when we showed up. Only the Cheneys would still be our friends after pulling a prank like that.

Ryley and Saffi, reunited again!!

They even had to sleep in the same bed they were so excited to be together.

Jensen and Schaffer got to be buddies too. Painting eachother's toe nails is a fun thing to do.

And we finally got to meet Violet, the recent addition to the Cheney family!

Trying out the Fly-Bar. It's a Mega pogo stick. Tons of fun.

We also got to go see how to tap maple syrup trees. It was really interesting! Did you know that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup? We tasted the sap right out of the tree and it's not sweet at all. It's like water. Not what I was expecting.

We had promised the girls we were going to go swimming, but the pool wasn't open, so we let them wear their swimming suits to the bouncy gym.

It was a trip worthy of a "commemorative pose"

We love the Cheneys!! Yeah!!

Botanical Gardens

In an effort to escape winter for a little while, we went to the botanical gardens here in Baltimore. There are 4 rooms- a desert, tropical, mediteranian, and an orchid room. Ryley said the cactuses were her favorite. I like the tropical part cause it was nice and warm. Jensen wanted to go swimming in the little pond, and nearly succeeded. It was fun, and best of all, it was free!