Memorial Day 2014

The thing we don't like about AZ--we are away from our families and missing them. So we wanted to distract ourselves this last Memorial Day by doing something out of the ordinary for us. We wanted to explore this new area that we are living in a little more. So we headed to Tempe Town Lake!

 The kids rode bikes and ran on the grass! (Grass is pretty great now that it isn't as common.)

 We walked a long a fun pedestrian bridge. 

 Overall pretty fun!

We saw a great memorial too, which was wonderful because it gave us a great chance for us to talk to the girls about what Memorial Day really is all about.

Afterwards we came home and went swimming!

Sometimes even when we have fun things planned, there are temper tantrums and crazy children that make it less enjoyable. I am really happy to report that this is more the exception to the rule than the rule, but it still definitely happens. My sweet Eliza got so mad at us for trying to make her practice her swimming. I actually had to film a bit of her meltdown because it was so over the top. (I know I am a mean momma.) She wasn't really able to get past it for a while, but after some quiet time (the best way she resets her mood) she was my normal happy girl again.

Mad Ellie.

Then we had our traditional Memorial Day BBQ. We have never really done a BBQ with just us before and since we were lonesome for our families we kind of went all out.

Homemade mango ice cream!!!

We had real burgers and hot dogs. (We try to eat mainly vegetarian, so that made this an extra special occasion.)

Real BBQ!

We had delicious kabobs. Oh my goodness. So much delicious food! The only problem was that it was way, WAY too hot to be engaging in any activity outside that doesn't include being neck deep in cool water. Check out the red cheeks on my girls. Poor kiddos.

Kabobs and flushed girls!