More vacation!

I just love pictures of my kids reading!  Mark read Fanny’s Dream to Karina one morning before they got dressed.  I’m not sure Karina actually understood the story (it’s kind of long), but she was happy it sit there with Mark. We played a game of dodge ball in the backyard.  The kids love to try and get Ken out.Neil and I watched and cheered, and took pictures.  Then Abbie took a few pictures of Neil for me.  Most of my other kids have not liked the grass touching them when they were small, especially Spencer.  But Neil was just happy to be outside.Karina and Spencer loved being with the babies.  I think these are two of my favorite pictures.Neil likes his baths a bit more now.  That’s good.  He usually doesn’t cry until it’s time to wash his back.  Abbie, Spencer and Mark have each gotten their turn to bathe with him and they are so helpful to wash his feet and such.The Springville Art Museum has detective kits for the kids.  I think Jessie and Conrad felt they were a little to old to be doing them.  Instead they had fun playing with Aunt Heather’s camera. Abbie wanted a picture of almost every clue she found.  Here’s the wagon one.Mark looked for the hat for quite a while and then asked me to help him.  So we went through all the pictures again together and couldn’t find it.  We decided that maybe it had gotten put in the wrong kit….So we moved on to another clue.  A while later Spencer came running up, “ I found it!!!”  And yep, he had!  Right in the corner of this picture. One of my awesome friends made this darling hat and some booties for Neil.  It is just too cute!  While the rest of us played a little soccer at the field by the church, Neil and Uncle David took a snooze on the couch.Abbie LOVES!!! taking pictures and videos of Neil.  And quite honestly I’m glad she does because I always forget the video setting on the camera and she’s gotten some pretty good ones for me.  Thanks Abbie!  (Her videos always come with commentary that is super funny.)  So here’s a picture from Abbie.  What a great smile she captured.

Birthday and a Blessing

On my birthday we walked up to Bridal Veil Falls.  (Grandpa stayed in the car and watched Karina who had fallen asleep on the way up.  But don’t feel bad for him.  He had a book he wanted to finish and someone had to stay.  Spencer almost stayed too, but he woke up just as we were leaving the car to start hiking.)Since we didn’t have two strollers we packed both babies into mine and boy were they cute.  The people who passed on the trial thought they were twins and it was just easier to smile and nod than explain.Here’s half way up to the falls.  We were the stragglers of the group.Before we came home Jessie, Mark, Abbie, Becca and Conrad had all climbed up to the falls, half of them up the mountain side and the others straight up the falls.  Conrad thought it was pretty cool.Becca, Mark and Abbie are the little pink dot in this picture right above her name.And here’s Jessie with her extremely small “walking” stick.  She is just too funny.  Conrad was up here with her, but he’s behind the tree tops, so he didn’t make it in this picture.Here’s the snapdragon Conrad brought back from the falls for is mom…what a sweet boy.Spencer loved watching the rocks make big splashes as he threw them in the pond at the bottom of the falls.  He had asked if it was ok to throw rocks and I told him it was fine as long as he was careful and made sure no one was where he was throwing.  I thought he was being very responsible, but some other mom didn’t appreciate him and told him to stop.  Poor guy had to consol himself.Here are a few picture from the walk back down.

Ken totally surprised me with a birthday get-together after the hike.  It was so much fun to be with everyone.  Thank you for coming.  It’s the first surprise party I've ever had.  For my birthday this year I asked for single plates so I could have all mismatch ones.  My cousin gave me the idea and I just love it.  Now at dinner time you never know what you’re going to get to eat off of and it’s just so much fun.  The kids favorite plate is the shell one, and Ken really likes the square ones and I….well, I LOVE all of them!Neil’s blessing was on Sunday.  Thank you to all the family who came.  We love you!I guess red and yellow were the colors of the day.  Isn’t that funny.  Heather helped us take a few pictures of Ken and Neil and me.  Thanks Heather!  (Man, I am so short!)

Party at our house

My family arrived the first of July and boy were we excited!!  (And sad that Rachel couldn’t come.)  We played TONS of games, which meant that we got little sleep, but we’re blaming the lack of sleep on the babies and not ourselves.  Hee, hee, hee.

My sister brought out a new fun game, Monopoly Deal.  It’s one of those short and sweet games, which is nice to have if you only have a few minutes for sit-down fun.We held lots of babies…Neil cousin is 21 days older than him and we had a great time hanging out together on the couches nursing, day and night, that is until Heather fell asleep (wink, wink)…Becca was also a huge help with the kidos.We played Ultimate Frisbee at the field by the new church.  And it didn’t even feel like exercise to run around catching the Frisbee!Dad and David helped us cut down the big pine tree in the front yard and the very old apple tree in the backyard.  THANKS!!!  Man, our front yard looks better.  I’m thinking of planting a Mimosa tree out there closer to the sidewalk so there’s some nice shade in the summer when you go on walks by our house. All the kids enjoyed spending a whole day carving wooden spoons with Grandpa. We even used Jessie’s to serve our dinner of creamed eggs on biscuits.My dad joined us at an Activity Day Daddy/Daughter hoedown.  We had bacon-wrapped chicken for dinner, the girls and dads all drew themselves on a wanted poster, we took pictures, did some Virginia Reel dancing and had a shaving relay where the dads used the back of a plastic knife to “shave” the girls.  It was really funny and Jessie said she had a blast.  YEAH!!! We got to use all those Owlz passes from the library reading program.  Only Ken played catch with Spencer for most of the time, and I watched kids at the playground and Grandpa read a book.  I’m not sure we’re all as excited to go again as Spencer is…. And here’s a cute picture of Abbie and Karina coloring at the table while we played games.

The Fourth Celebrations

A great lady in our ward organized once-a-week play dates for the summer.  We haven’t been to very many because of family in town or Neil related days of not getting ready for the day until after lunch, but we did make it to the Colonial Days with her and her kids up in Provo.  It was way fun!

Abbie and Mark tried out the stocks…Do you love Abbie’s stool?  Poor Spencer was too short to try it out and I didn’t trust the other kids to drop down the top of the stocks while I held him, so he didn’t get a try.  Man, can you imagine how many fewer problems we could have around if we still used these things….sitting out there in the hot sun for a day…..well, it may change a few minds.

Neil got to try out the cradle that was all muscle-made (no power tools).  Man he looks so tiny in it at almost a month old.

Abbie watched some girls make a cornhusk doll which they gave to her and she propped up in Neil’s arms…boy she thought that was funny.  She and Spencer also made a little Lavender pouch for their drawers and then went back and made one more for Jessie since she was at Shadow Mountain (a fifth grade team-building type 3 day camp).

Mark volunteered to be the water boy…boy was he SURPRISED at how heavy the water was and surprised at how much easier it was to carry once his load was balanced even though that meant there was twice as much water.

We also got to watch them fire a real cannon (minus the cannonball).  That was COOL!!  They only used 4 ounces of powder for the demo.  In war they would use 16 to 20 ounces.  They warned us first that it would be loud and then proceeded to walk us through the steps of preparing the gun and such.  As soon as Spencer heard that it would be loud he covered his ears….he HATES loud things.  Then the whole time they were explaining he kept asking me if they had shot it off yet…I kept telling him that he would know when they shot it.  And he did.   They were right - it was loud and impressive…that thing loaded for war would be scary.  YUCK…why can’t we all just be nice to each other?

Anywho, they also had some wool spinners which Mark questioned until he could almost write a book on the art of spinning wool.  He can also discourse on a trapper that he was quite impressed with.  It was a fun morning. Our new tradition with Ken’s family is a fourth of July brunch and boy is it tasty. Our awesome neighbors invited us over for a 4th of July BBQ…YUMMY!! and then we did sparklers and glow sticks until late.  Well, Ken and the kids played with the fire – I played with the camera.  The funny part was that it was actually chilly enough that you could have worn a jacket and been quite comfortable.