Aliya & Rope Climbing

I've been changing up my training routine to include what's called CrossFit. Cross Fit training involves a lot of major muscle group training & one of the workouts includes rope climbing. So I could continue to train at home I headed down to the local hardware store & bought 30 feet of rope, borrowed a ladder from a neighbor & climbed up a tall tree on the side of our tree & secured the rope.
I thought I'd include Brendan as Daddy's little helper so I asked him to hold the ladder; being a Weaver & therefore being curious & mischievous he began to shake the ladder violently while I was at the very top of the ladder!
I yelled down for him to stop but he kept shaking the ladder thinking it was funny to see the Old Man in a panic. I quickly realized that I was throwing gas on the fire by letting him see I was upset so I calmed down & explained that Daddy would fall &get hurt if he kept shaking the ladder & his job as helper was to hold the ladder with his feet shoulder-width apart; being such a good boy he did what I asked & I finished up & came down.

Almost immediately, the rope became Aliya's favorite thing to play on. She will spend hours twisting, flipping, swinging & climbing the rope. Particularly, she loves to climb the rope & sit in the lower branches of the tree, Queen of all she surveys.

Finally, the kids were inside, & after watching Aliya climb the rope like a little monkey, I decided it was my turn to climb the rope & get in a workout. I started climbing to get in my workout & my arms quickly got tired & I started slip. Slipping down a rope from 20+ feet up isn't something I wanted to do. I tried to hold on but continued to slip & finally shot to the ground & landed with a dull thud. First, I looked around to make sure no one had seen me, then...I checked to make sure I hadn't broke anything.
Sore & feeling stupid that my 5 year old could climb this rope for hours, I picked myself up & went inside.

Week of 8 July-3 August 08

This week was a really fun week.

On Monday, 28 July 08 the entire family went to the amusement park, Lagoon. We had everyone there...Marla's twin Marty came up from Phoenix, AZ with all his family & so we had every Sipe kid & their families at the get together.

We got there & the kids went nuts.
Brendan couldn't help himself & wet his pants a little as we pulled into the parking lot. As I was parking the car, the kids began singing, chirping & making various monkey noises singing the praises of Lagoon....we had reached the fabled Shangra-La.

We unloaded the kids, slathered every square inch with SPF 30 Sun Block, tanked them up on water, put hats on Brendan the redhead, Dallin the fair blonde & baby Corban. All this while Aliya danced a little jig.

Finally we were in the park! Brendan bolted with uncle Marty & his family to the back of the park. Marla was having problems with her papers & immigration so they held her up at the gates but finally, with papers in order they let her in.

We put all our stuff in the family pavilion at the back of the park & played, played, played!

Aliya rode her first big kids roller coaster! At first she did the whole thing with her eyes closed but finally got to where she could do it with her eyes open.

Dallin was very serious about driving his 'bum bum' car around. It was sobering to see him do EXACTLY what I would have done at his age; drive the car as fast as possible by avoiding the other kids.

Aliya wanted a piece of the action & loved driving her car around the track over & over. I can just see her as a Formula One driver.

We rode rides, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of lemonade & had a ton of fun.