July 1

I married an absolutely amazing man 12 years ago today!
I'm on cloud 109.
Thank you for loving me and being patient with me.

Lemonade

I think I could write the same story day in and day out about how hectic things are. Life is full and I honestly don't know how to squeeze it all into a day. This morning I woke up to little cute ants eating popcorn under our kitchen table. And when I went to do the dishes this afternoon I realized there were dishes from Sunday evening that I was loading into the dish washer. Are you kidding me? I seriously do not know how to squeeze it all in. We did reach a milestone today as Samantha, Seth and Trey worked together to unload the dish washer. Ah-ha! They can unload the dish washer and they are really good at it. I should never have to do it again. I wish. I hope. I was impressed with their initiative and team work, can I order a repeat of that for tomorrow?

It was hot today, over 90 degrees. We stayed inside most of the day. Tonight I went to Young Womens. We weeded a lady's flower beds then got rained on. I love summer thunderstorms.

Below are my picture selections from this last batch of pictures. The picture below is the annual filling-up-of-the-rental-swimming-pool. See that little garden hose that Seth is holding? That little hose fills up the entire swimming pool. Isn't that impressive? We finally got the pool cleaned out of all the dead leaves and yucky rain water then we turn that little hose on and for 2 whole days the hose runs until the pool is filled. I kind of think that is amazing.
This pool is the known by students from all over. The USU student population have nicked named this house the "Pool House" because it has a pool of course. Even Big Bill from the USU basketball games (You know that crazy wild USU fan) swims at this pool, he lives next door.

The above picture is of Lemonade Stand Training 101. We have this little school room where we do Summer Learning (I try to be consistent with it, some days are better then others) On this day we were learning about how to run a lemonade stand: how to give correct change, how to provide good customer service and how to drum up customers to buy lemonade.
Here is the training in action. The real motive behind the lemonade stand was so the boys could buy new Bay Blades. (see below) It went pretty good. They each earned $3.25. It seemed like a ton of work. See this is why I suffer from fatigue much of the time. I'm exhausted thinking about this lemonade stand. I do it because I want our kids to learn how to earn their money but man it's alot of work on my part for that lesson to be learned.

New Bay Blades. The boys combined their money and money they had saved to buy the Bays. I must admit it is pretty fun listening to the boys and Samantha on occasion have the Bay Blade battles. There is a whole lingo used when talking about Bay Blades.

I have got to get to bed. I still need to read my 6 pages in the Book of Mormon for our summer challenge of reading it in 90 days. Trey's road rash is just about healed. Last night we were at my sisters house late helping them put up a cedar fence along this swift canal that runs along the back part of their property. She had a huge scare last week when she thought her 2 year old had fallen in. It turns out the two year old had not fallen in but that motivated her and her husband to put up a much needed fence.

Everyone be safe!

So Cute

I have discovered that one of my favorite things is going out on a summer's evening, just Tom and I and the kids. Last week we had a couple of these evenings and I felt so grateful and joyful. Last Wednesday we went to a concert in the park down the street. The evening was perfect we were together and we had a nice picnic dinner. Food is always a plus. We listened to fun music, were surrounded by friends and sat under a beautiful sunset sky.


Then Thursday we went to Summerfest (a Logan Art Faire in downtown Logan). We walked through the booths, ate some delicious food (Greek gyros and dutch oven and caramel apples and corn on the cob) the kids got balloon animals and we listened to a band sing Beatles covers. It was lovely. So to remember the evening we crammed our kids on a bench with their balloon animals and took several pictures.

So Tough

Here is Trey being extremely tough! He wrecked on the 4-wheeler yesterday sending the 4-wheeler flipping in the air according to eye-witnesses and giving himself some really bad road rash. My sweet boy cried for a good hour after the accident. I had to keep his mind off the pain with shaved ice and M& Ms while Tom held him and comforted him. Last night he slept in our bed and moaned and groaned throughout the night.
Today he was doing lots better unless someone bumped his wounds or purposely pressed against them like Seth did. Aren't brothers great?

So Good

I'm going to post three posts in a row because I hardly ever get to blog and I have some things to share. The picture above is the garden evolving into a garden. I think we got it planted June 1. I had high, very high hopes of checking for weeds every day and staying on top of that but it's the 21st and I really need to get to that weeding ~ tomorrow.


These pictures of Sadie are for my nieces who live in far away Pennsylvania. They were wondering recently (via txt) if Sadie was a big girl or still a baby since it's been one year since they have seen her. Well my Darlings, she is a big girl. She is walking and talking and eating with a spoon and drinking out of a cup and almost putting on her clothes by herself at least hats for sure.


Tom playing basketball by moon light. Here he and his 3 on 3 teammates are winning the championship game of the tournament. Yeah babe!

My Reward

I just finished unloading and loading the dishwasher in 8 minutes flat so I'm rewarding myself with some time to blog. We had a full weekend. We finished the soccer season on Saturday. Then we worked and cleaned and did 1 of our 20 things on the To Do list. We cleaned out the garage. I'll spare you the details of that project.

I still have a garden that is in dire need of being planted. My seeds are fine but the starts I bought on Friday need to get in the ground. Plus the raspberry starts Sariah got for me 2 weeks ago need to be planted.

Samantha lost another tooth. The tooth fairy forgot to come last night. Samantha was really bummed. Sadie went to nursery at church yesterday. She walked in and Tom and I walked out and that was that. The nursery teachers said she was perfect. She has been wanting nursery for along time. She never really new it existed until yesterday but she new there had to be something better then mom and dad's boring Sunday School classes. She was right!

Seth is in T-ball. I promise we really are not those over involved people that have their kids in everything. We just need our kids to try different things out and then stick to what they love.

Trey is a super 4 year old. You can see below a picture of his birthday. He does pretty good going to all the soccer games and such. He is gearing up for next year when he can play.

Seth in soccer

Samantha in soccer


Seth in T-ball getting some coaching from dad

Samantha's team. 3 players were missing

Seth just graduated from Preschool on Friday
We celebrated at the new Logan Chuck A Rama/He knew his mom would like that idea. I did!

Girls spending alot of time on the 4-wheeler

Boys in the bath

We got some bees. Tom is brave, only got stung 4 times.

The boys on the farm. American West Heritage farm

Trey's birthday!

Breakfast at our house.

Next Up

This next group of 5 pictures is from April, when my older sister and her family came to visit from Washington. We packed tons of fun into their week stay.

Ice skating.

Nephews Forrest and Spencer doing the Flowrider in Ogden

If you look in the back you can see the Ogden temple. This may be one of the last pictures of the temple in it's current state. It's going to be completely updated in the coming year.

Roller skating.

My sister Sariah with alot of kids. Four of them are mine!

I Have Missed You...

...And I know you have missed US!

I have been a little busy as everyone is. Just life in general. I have missed updating the blog. I just cleared 300 pictures off my camera from March until this week. I have over 20 to share but tonight I'm just doing the first 5 because I should get to bed. I'm such a better mom when I get decent sleep. Life has consisted of soccer, piano, school, rental stuff, chickens, reading, bees, trampolines, cleaning a little, folding alot of clothes, family get togethers, and more soccer. I'm getting a little antsy because soccer is crowding my garage sale time. But it's worth it because Samantha and Seth are loving soccer. They have grown so much this past 6 weeks. They are dynamite at the games. Seth is one of the top scorers and Samantha runs her little heart out. (They are on different teams) We love going to their games. Below are just some extremely darling pictures. You will also see the amazing chicken coop my talented husband built. CHickens! That is another story. We bought chicks then realized it makes more sense to buy hens that already lay eggs, so we went out and bought 4 hens. They lay the most beatuiful, gigantic eggs but they are mean, chick-slaying hens. We have lost 2 chicks by the hens pecking them to death. The first one lost was pure inexperience on our part, the second chick lost was because the little critter went on the wrong side of the partition and got pecked. Anyways it has been a learning experience. We went from 11 chick/hens to now 9. Goodnight!

Such a fun age. This picture is fun because I have the same pose of Samantha at this age.

Samantha with cousins

Our awarding winning coop....at least it should be.

I'll post some of the boys soon!

Oh, how sweet

My sis-in-law saw this on a truck and sent it to me. I love it and wish we would have done it first!