June, 4th of July and Truman turns 1

I have been a very negligent blogger lately and so this is going to be a long, catch up blog.

Well, it is finally warm enough to swim down here.  The sad thing is that it has to be around 100 for us to be able to get in the pool and not freeze to death.

 Avalon has been a little timid this year.  She keeps saying there is too much water.

 Truman loved floating in the pool.  He really likes the water.

Avalon spent her own money on a pair of Barbie roller skates this year.  She really likes them and keeps telling me that she needs to take a roller skating class.

One day I walked in the toy room and found my kids and their cousins in this airplane.  The exercise bike is the front of the plane and the other seats are the passengers.  They had even packed their luggage.  Sometimes their creativity amazes me.

The weekend of the 4th of July, we went to the Mesa Freedom Celebration.  It is this really fun, free event that Mesa holds for the 4th of July.  There is a bunch of live music and some patriotic displays.  There is a free kids carnival area where the kids can win toys and all of the games are free.  There is also a water play area that the kids love.

 There was a booth where you could hold birds.  Sterling liked it so much that he has spent the last several days trying to catch a bird in the back yard. He always wears rubber gloves and I think he has used up almost 10 pounds of bird seed in the yard.  Sometimes it looks like the movie "The Birds" out there.

 Yes, I let Truman play in a puddle in the parking lot.  In my defense it was around 117 degrees.

On the 4th of July, we had my sister and her family over for dinner and fireworks.  The kids love the snap-its or pop-its (the things that you throw on the ground and they make a popping sound).

 Running through smoke bombs.

 Dancing in front of a strobe / lighting flasher firework.

Once it got dark, we headed over to a local church to watch the city's fireworks.  The fireworks were cancelled because of a windstorm though and so we headed home.

Truman's birthday was July 5th and he turned one.  I can't believe he is getting to be such a big boy.  He talks a lot more than my other kids did at this age.  He says Mommy, Daddy, Dog, uh-oh, peek-a-boo, and two (we learned this when I realized that every time the kids are in trouble and I start counting to three, he chimes in with two). 

He had a good birthday even though everyone was very tired from the night before.  We went to McDonald's with my sister and her kids for lunch to celebrate.  Truman really gets excited to get a happy meal with a toy of his own.  I think he has watch the other kids get toys and so he feels like a big boy now.

 After dinner that night we let Truman open his presents.

 Truman is the only kid that I have that didn't dig into the cake.  I think it was because he was very tired.  He squished it around a little and then wanted to go to bed.  Here is a video of him opening his presents:

 Truman got a big boy car seat for his birthday because he has out grown his other one.  He is around 24 lbs now.

The day after Truman's birthday we went to a splash park with my sister and her kids.

The next picture is the kids swimming in the backyard.  They really enjoy their little pool, especially when we put bubbles in.

In other news, Sterling was tested for diabetes recently because he had to go to the bathroom a lot and was eating a lot.  His test results came back negative and we are very relieved.

Well, that is what is new in the Russell house.