July Highlights

July was a busy month. When you're only in the states for a couple months- you just got to pack it all in! Let's do all the things! Eat all the foods! Stay up late! You get the idea...

Mina competed in her 1st swim meet. She did great and came home with a couple of ribbons!

4th of July happened- we went to Gerald & Raquel's for a potluck and fireworks.

My 3 youngest had never tried pickles before. My bad. I guess no one really eats them in our family. All 3 tried some at Gerald & Raquel's- no one liked it. I guess we'll remain a pickle-free family.

Funtopia for Mei's birthday. She loves this place! Even the big kids enjoy it.

After Funtopia we invited family over for pizza and swimming...of course, we did cake too to celebrate Mei's 6th bday!

Kaiya got her permit, started driver's ed, and I'm not sure I'm ready for her to be growing up like this...

A couple girls camp photos for you- this 1st one was before they left and were loading up their bags.

This 2nd one was taken during their sunrise walk one morning.

While the big girls were at camp...the littles went to 7-11 on 7-11 to get their free slurpees!

Baby Desi- the newest Dibb cousin- was born and she is just the most beautiful thing ever.

The Lee side started coming for a mini-reunion to celebrate Gung Gung's retirement, mission call to Japan, and 40 years of marriage! This summer we bought kayaks and it was so fun taking them out over the summer.

AF Steel Days Run- I ran the 10K- I got 2nd in my age group. That just shows you how small of a race it is...haha.

The 2nd place medal is a fork- for American Fork- clever, eh?!

Dibb Reunion- at the Little Bear Bottoms water slide in Logan

Emiko bought herself a bow...we had to leave that in Utah when we came back to Saudi!

Snowbird in Little Cottonwood Canyon for the day with the whole Lee side. It was a fun day of various fun activities for the kids.

We loved hanging out with the 2 newest Lee cousins. Kai is such a chunk.

And Kylie liked Brian way more than me. I tried not to be offended...lol.

Mei also got her ears pierced at the local tattoo parlor. She was scared and there were tears- but she was brave and so happy with the end result!

The Rest of June- Post Amsterdam/Brussels

Hooray- we landed in Utah to begin our summer! (The rest of Brian's June- Brian went back to Saudi and then ended up in Bangladesh for a weekend with some friends- I have no pics but he said it was awesome- you'll have to take his word for it.) In no particular order:

Annual lunch with Kirsten- my friend since 11 yrs old. This time we managed to meet up with another high school friend, Angela (and her sister), whom I haven't seen since college! Such a fun lunch playing catch up!

This photo is a bit dark...but here is Kaiya getting highlights for the first time ever!

Sidewalk chalk art with cousin Joanna

AF Canyon Run- b/c of my knee I only ran the 5K (it was my first run in about a month)...I also made Kaiya run with Emily. Kaiya was not excited to run. Neither was Emily. But then they finished 9th and 10th in their age group! I should make all of the kids do it next summer!

In June we also started up swim lessons again for the 2 youngest kids- I love where the girls swim. The 3 oldest girls also did swim team this summer.

I knew for awhile that Mei was ready to ride a 2 wheel bike but the weather is already so hot by March in Saudi that I waited until summer in Utah. Mei learned within a few minutes and had a great time riding around the rest of the summer.

Lehi Round Up- it doesn't get better than a rodeo on a summer night- we took Emily and it was her 1st rodeo ever! Not sure that Emily loved it- she was worried about the animals...

A Day Trip to Brussels

When planning our trip to Amsterdam...I knew I wanted to drive down to Brussels for the day and eat all of the things. B/c hello, Brussels- belgian waffles, chocolate, fries, etc! As we drove down, we stopped at the Hague temple for a family photo.

1st stop was at Maison Dandoy for traditional liege waffles...so good. I think mine was just sprinkled with a bit of sugar...but everyone else drowned theirs in chocolate, nutella, ice cream, all the things! It was a good way to start the day.

Next up was a stop at the Chocolate Museum- at the end there's a wall with dispensers filled with free chocolate samples. And you take take as much as you want...so we did. It was a sugar overload kind of day!

The Grand Place (square)- Kaiya's handstand photo

And a family photo in the square.

The famous Mannekin Pis (Peeing Boy statue)- it's a tiny statue of a boy peeing...kind of underwhelming but definitely the most crowded spot we visited in Brussels that day. (Also, they have a peeing girl statue too which we saw and a peeing dog statue which we did not see- I'm not sure why the city of Brussels is into peeing statues?!)

Brussels also has a love of comic strips and there are murals all over the city of popular comic strips. This one is of one of the most famous comic strip heroes, Tintin- that means nothing to you...really it means nothing to us also but we took a photo b/c that's what you do when you're a tourist!

I lied, while Mannekin Pis had a big crowd...the line for Belgian fries was longer! Totally worth the wait though- fries are good.

So now you know we ate nothing but junk all day in Brussels!

Amsterdam

After school got out we started our journey back to the states...but since it was the Eid holiday we stopped in Amsterdam for a few days before continuing on to Utah. Brian came with us to Amsterdam and then traveled back to Saudi. These photos are a bit out of order. And sorry, but I'm too lazy to go through and put them into chronological order. I mean, I still have 6 more months to catch up on! Ain't nobody got time to be nit-picky!

With our visit to Amsterdam, Mei hit her 30th country. Pretty impressive for a a girl that's 5 11/12 yrs old! You can't really see it, but Mei is making a "3" and "0" with her hands.

Obligatory "dam" handstand photo for Kaiya- at Dam Square!

Van Gogh museum- none of the kids were excited to do this- they here the word "museum" and they immediately started groaning. The Van Gogh museum is awesome though b/c it has a free scavenger hunt for kids and man, my kids were determined to finish to get their "prize" (a postcard of their choosing of various Van Gogh prints...and something else I can't remember). Anyways, I'm grateful for cool museums that cater to non-museum loving children.

Amsterdam Cheese Museum- yes please! I mean, what's better than sampling a bunch of gouda samples?! No complaints from my museum averse children. Everyone thought the cheese was "gouda" (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) and so we bought some to take back to Utah!

Canal boat tour with the Dam Boat Guys...so many more puns I could use right now but I won't use a dam one b/c this is a family blog. It was such a great way to begin our exploring of Amsterdam. The dam guys know their stuff and it was fun to get a different perspective of the city. (Sorry I can't resist a good pun!)

We did lots of walking around the city...it seemed like every street was photo worthy!

Anne Frank house- no photos allowed inside- it was so interesting to walk through the house where she lived and listen/read about her story. I read her diary when I was a kid...as I'm sure most kids do at some point!

If there's a zoo, you know the Dibbs will go visit it. My kids all enjoyed the random dinosaur sculptures in the zoo.

Micropia- no one wanted to go except me! But I begged and promised them it would be awesome. It's a hard sell when you say "it's the only museum in the world about microbes"- I mean, no one in my family gets excited about microbes. You know what, though?! I was right- the museum was totally awesome- they had great displays and videos. Everyone loved it. And who doesn't love a little potty humor...one of the featured exhibits was the Tour de Poo, where you get to learn all about poop.

Do you know what this microscopic animal is? It's a water bear- google it- there's some pretty fascinating facts to be learned about the water bear! Thank you Micropia...!

We walked through a market and tried freshly made stroopwafels- so yummy. I could live in Amsterdam- I would eat stroopwafels and gouda every day.

The annual Father's Day "let's jump on to the bed and wake him up" routine. We love Brian so much. He's still my favorite human and a good father to our kids.

No visit to Amsterdam is complete without a bike tour. We rode out to the countryside and visited a cheese factory...

...and then a clog factory (yep, we totally bought clogs and had our name engraved on them too)

Also, we got to see some Dutch windmills.

I think the only thing we missed during our trip was the tulips...maybe one day we can make it back there when it's tulip season!