Fun Family Weekend

We had a fun filled weekend because for James it was the last weekend of summer. He starts school TOMORROW. We decided to pack it all in. 

Before I get to all the conventional fun, I have to share with you all probably the most exciting thing we did this weekend. We saved about $500-600!!! James' books this semester are CRAZY expensive, and there was just NO way that we could afford them. So first I checked out half.com, and located everything for about $300, then I checked out chegg.com (an online site that allows you to rent books and provides you with a box and free label to ship it back after a designated amount of time), and found everything for $200. We still thought that we could do better. So we checked out The U's library catalogue and found three of his most expensive books, and they totaled a cost of $0 and .0!!!! We are going to wait and see how necessary the other two books are before we rent them from chegg, but they're the cheapest anyway!

Hooray for saving money!!!!!

Now for the weekend events . . . 

On Friday our childhood best friend, James Tarbat arrived in Utah after driving all night long. After giving him some time to rest we went over to his new place and got in some good face time. The boys played some basketball at the apartment's indoor court, and then we decided to go bowling. We called up James R. and Marianne to meet us (so MANY James). 

Ben fell asleep on the way, so we wrapped this blanket around his stroller and he slept until the last fifteen minutes our so, despite the extremely LOUD music. It was funny when he woke up and was in a complete daze wondering where in the heck he was.  

Everyone had a great first game, and that bottom score . . . yah that's MINE. Can you believe it 180. I almost closed out (got a strike or spare) every frame, until I blew it in the 9th. Truly a one time thing I'm sure. The next game I bowled a 100, still good though. 

James, our great friend James Tarbat (who just moved to Utah this weekend to go to school), and his friend and roommate, Jake entered a 3 on 3 basketball tournament this Saturday. It was outside and very, very hot, but the boys had a good time and it offered them some good practice before their league starts in a couple weeks. 

James also entered into the dunk contest and got 2nd place, and James and James T. entered the three point contest, and James T. won 2nd!

The 3 on 3 tourney. First they played three games, and won one of them. Then there was a single elimination tournament, which they lost, so it was time to go home. I think everyone was relieved, it was really hot. Bentley was done! 

Remember how I said that our apartment complex was offering discount Raging Waters tickets? Well, I thought that I could buy the tickets the day of (the lady told me they weren't at risk of selling out), and guess what . . . they were sold OUT! Don't ask me why but I was so upset that I actually began to cry when I got home and told James that I missed the tickets.

So  obviously for some reason it was important to me. The next day we went anyway. Luckily they had night time tickets that were half the normal price. It was so fun, we rarely do anything really big (not that the water park is some huge grand vacation), but it just makes me feel more like a family when we do stuff like this. 

Bentley really enjoyed it which made me so happy. Not that I want my baby to grow up too quickly, but I've just always looked forward to doing stuff with him and him actually being somewhat aware of DOING it! I loved it too. Water parks remind me of my childhood. James watched Ben as I went down two water slides. There was something so freeing about it and exhilarating (it's weird the things that give you a sense of freedom when you're a mom).  

We left the camera in the car because we didn't want to leave it in our bag as we walked around the park. But I decided to go get it because I had to capture Bentley playing in one of the kid areas. It was this splash park that had all kinds of different spraying apparatuses. At first he was a little weary, but then he got so into it. Eventually he even walked right under a waterfall (he was lucky it didn't knock him down). 

BUT, the park was closing in about thirty minutes, and they turned off all of the sprays, and closed the lazy river (our two favorite places). So we headed quickly over to the other kid area to get some pictures and take some video of Ben's first water park adventure.  

Bentley (and James and I--we went to bed at about 10:30--early for us) exhausted from the long fun weekend!