New Fun Fonts

I’m taking a break from the normal posting tonight to share a bunch of fun new fonts I found.  I mean, who doesn’t enjoy new free fonts….

http://www.kimberlygeswein.com/

Go ahead take a look….you might find one or two or forty-five….. that you like :-)!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Janda As Long As You Love Me

Janda Stylish Scrip

KG All Things New

KG I Like to Move It

KG Strawberry Limeade

Summer in Full Swing

Don’t you love lazy summer mornings when you don’t even get out of your jammies before you go out to play?  Neil does.  Thankfully he at least put (Abbie’s) flip-flops on before he ran outside with a whistle to help coach Spencer and Abbie while they practiced soccer.Isaac is such a good baby.  He wakes up happy in his crib and just coos for you to come get him.  He’s patient if he doesn’t get to eat right away, and loves everyone he sees.  Although sometimes it’s hard to tell how he’s feeling, because he just has this surprised, stare on his face.Once we realized our last caterpillar didn’t survive we moved the cocoons to our butterfly house and waited for them to hatch.  Here’s the first one!Angie brought Emma and Natalie down for a visit and we spent the afternoon together.  It was so fun.  We had lunch, played Trek to Zion (like Ticket to Ride), went bowling and got treats at a little shop in Provo.

Mark didn’t feel like his bowling score was quite up to par this time.  But on his last frame he got a strike….and then another…..and then another!  TURKEY!!!  He was so excited he didn’t know what to do with himself.  You can read about it here: http://mkpayne.blogspot.com/2012/07/turkey-anyone.html.

Neil was so excited to “help” others bowl.  Natalie was a great sport and shared her ball with him, as did Abbie.Here’s one of our cocoons almost ready to hatch.  Can you see the designs on the wings through the cocoon?  Isn’t that SO awesome!We went to Flow-serve (I still want to call that place Val-tec, even though they changed the name probably 9 years ago) to feed the ducks with Addie and Quinn.While we were throwing day old bread some pelicans came over to see what was going on.  I have never seen real pelicans before so this was quite a treat.  Look how big they yawn!!Only a few ducks and geese came over to eat, and they were good and stayed in the water to get the bread.Then someone started feeding the enormous fish that are there that follow the ducks around.  And soon that was more fun than the fowl.  With that nice centration of fish the pelicans got excited!  Two of them almost caught a fish before one actually succeeded.Then is just swallowed it whole. You can see that whole fish in his throat!  Look at the width of his neck compared to the other one!After swimming around a bit that pelican climbed onto a rock and started rubbing it’s neck with it’s beak trying to push that fish down.  It was amazing!

Abbie and Quinn had fun running around on the grass, and she was so good at making sure he didn’t get to close to the water.  So much fun.  Thanks Addie for the invite!Neil loves to pick seeded dandelions and blow the seeds.  This one was being particularly stubborn.Jessie found this beetle climbing on our window.  She looked up what kind of beetle it is, but I’ve forgotten.   However, I have not forgotten that it’s a beetle that eats the roots of fruit trees and we are blaming the sudden death of our peach tree on it.Isaac found his tongue.  It’s so fun when they discover something new!

Say Moo

All the kids were great apricot helpers, but Neil was the one I got pictures of.  He jumped right up on the chair and pitted and pitted apricots for Ken to blend up.  Jessie was even a great helper when she got back from camp and the rest of us were getting sick of apricots.  She pitted a whole box for me.  It was really nice to have the second kitchen downstairs to make the leather in because then it didn’t make the upstairs even hotter while the fruit dryers ran.  And it was nice not to be tripping over the dryers.  Ken’s mom and David let us borrow their dryers and for most of a week we had about 24 trays drying – night and day.  It’s kind of amazing that 50 to 75 lbs of apricots dry up to fit into five 1-gallon ziplock bags!Mark was practicing his his bow and arrow and got a bull’s eye right between the card board flaps.  Too cool.Rachel stopped by to tell us about Chick-A-Filet’s cow day.  The two babies were sleeping, so I didn’t want to go, but my other kids were pretty excited (Mark needed a little convincing, but he had fun too).  So we cut out cow spots and ears.  Jessie painted noses and we attached tails to belts.  This is my FAVORITE picture!  Abbie and Spencer turned to the side to try and show us their tails.  Jessie’s sign says “birdees, eegles, chikin”.Rachel took them up by way of her apartment so she could change too and I just love the picture of Spencer checking his tail while he walks to the car.  The kids were excited to tell me all about their free meal and the other people they saw, although most weren’t as head to toe as they were.We celebrated my birthday with family and friends on Friday.  Addie made this totally AWESOME hamburger cake to celebrate along with the chocolate cheesecake I had made.  I got quite a few new white bath towels which is what I really wanted.  We played some Hobbes Ball in the backyard – boys against girls – and the boys won again.  It was so fun to have people over.

On to July

We stopped in at Old Navy one afternoon and got a bunch of school shopping done.  I love great deals – the kids love balloons – so we were both happy.  Abbie and Spencer were especially good at balancing the balloons on their noses.  So fun!

Rachel was down and we had a sleep on the deck night.  (Sounds hard to me, but the kids were so excited.)  Abbie didn’t want to be bitten by any mosquitoes so she’s all scrunched down under the green blanket. I can’t remember if this is the night that it started raining at some unearthly hour in the morning, but one of the sleep outside nights the rain caught them by surprise and when I woke up to get them they were already dragging themselves and the blankets inside.  Jessie just curled back up on the blankets in the front room and went back to sleep, Rachel ended up on the couch and Mark was back in his bed by morning.  Ahhhh….the memories.Ken’s good friend from High School and college and his family stopped in to see us for an afternoon.  His oldest daughter LOVED holding Isaac and the younger daughter and Abbie got along great.  It was fun to see them and show them our new house.  What a fun afternoon.That day just kept getting better.  The Albertson’s came over for dinner and Rachel made us speghetti and breadsticks.with delicious chocolate cake for dessert.  We love having Rachel so close.Jessie left for girls camp with the 17th Ward, but first Sister Albertson put all of her hair into braids.  What a lot of work, but Jessie was so excited!  We dropped her stuff off on Sunday night at Bishop Collings’ house and then Ken took her to the stake center before work on Monday.While Jessie was off partying the apricots on our tree ripened.  Fruit leather time!!  We picked and picked and picked and picked some more.  Ken even took a morning off work to finish the picking.  The kids were fabulous helpers too.

On my birthday we went bowling.  We all did pretty well.

We had waffles with strawberries and whipped cream for dessert.  Yummy.  Ken had to leave for YM’s, and Mark for scouts, but the rest of us enjoyed ice cream cones.

Neil and I had fun making silly faces for pictures with my iPod and I got a beautiful new plate! It was a good birthday.

We got some caterpillars to hatch into butterflies as a gift, and it was so fun!  I was hoping that I could time their arrival just right so that they would hatch out while my family was here.  I was about two days too early.  Three of the caterpillars were pretty big when they arrived and one was medium sized and one was SO very tiny!  As it turns out the three big ones made there cocoons on the top of the jar within about 4 days, and the middle size one a day or two later.  Then there was just that tiny caterpillar all alone in there munching on this brown pellet stuff surrounded by a ton of caterpillar webs the others had woven.  The tiny caterpillar was so far behind the others that we were afraid the others would hatch before he even made his cocoon.  As it turns out he finally crawled to the top and hung upside down, but the poor thing didn’t make it.  He died with his cocoon only part way formed.  :-(.

One funny thing was that after the big ones had made their cocoons the middle size one was crawling around on the top trying to find a place to hang and when he touched the cocoons they would wiggle and wiggle trying to keep him off.  Jessie got it on video for us and the kids watched it over and over offering commentary for the cocoons.

Jessie came back from camp happy and full of fun stories.  She also came back with her braids all out and really awesome kinky hair.  It reminded me of when we were in grade school and we had a crimper and mom would crimp our hair.  In fact, I texted Becca to ask her if we still had the crimper and her reply was, “A what?”  So, I guess not.  Maybe we can find one somewhere and bring that back into style. ;-).  It would sure help me out with all the hair I’m still loosing from Isaac.  (Man, if kids don’t make you pull your hair out, it will save you the trouble and just fall out for you.)

Independence Day

Ok, so this day only had some 130 pictures to choose from….ok so they were really from two days, but we were celebrating the same holiday.

Ken’s friend invited us to go to a freedom celebration up in Orem.  The kids and I got there early with Quinn and Addie and looked around.  Megan got to come with us too.  It was quite fun and they had a lot of different hands on booths.  The older kids favorite was the potter.  They stood and watched him make bowls for probably 40 minutes; asking questions and just trying to take it all in.  It reminded me of the pre-pageant shows we used to help with and how watching the potter was always our favorite thing too.

It’s not everyday that you get to put yourself in stocks…huh, Jessie.  But I think Spencer’s face about summed up how you would have felt.  Who came up with these anyway?  Maybe they had children that were poking and teasing each other and they needed a way to hold them still.  Who knows?

They had wool carding, and children’s chores to do, and games to play and a little play about the Mayflower and what they brought over, and how they bargained with the Indians, and who died (which was almost everyone), and how a “nobody” became the leader and changed the way everyone looked a peasants.  They did a good job.There was armor to try on and hard tack to try.  Neil DID NOT like the hard tack --  And our hard tack was only 1 day old.  And the kids got to go to school.  I think having all the grades together would have been so hard for one teacher!!  Although they sure did have to memorize and preform in front of others a lot more than I think we have to.There were also a bunch of time period costumes to try on.  The kids had a blast doing this and finally convinced Megan to try a dress on too.  I’m so glad I don’t have to sew my own clothes….I mean like really glad….Neil and Quinn had fun playing in a little tent that was set up….in and out….in and out…..in and…..   We watched a black smith for a bit.  Then we watched a little play on winning our freedom while we ate our dinner.  I made up a big bowl of Tuna Grape Salad that we brought with us.  Ken, and Trevor and Ken’s friend Mike had joined us by then.  I think all in all it was a fun afternoon and evening.

I have been trying to organize all our DVD’s and CD’s they just take up way too much room.  Really, a whole cupboard for them….so the Signing Times were the first done.  Yeah.  Look at that big pile of cases and just one little CD holder instead!

The real fourth of July started out with our annual breakfast with Ken’s family.  Yeah for yummy food and family.

Neil’s FAVORITE part of breakfast was the water jug!!  He kept bringing everyone drinks (sometimes we weren’t even sure where he had procured the cup :-) )and Jennie was so sweet to keep asking him for seconds….fifths….maybe even tenths on her water refill.

Then we played a little baseball….little because that’s how much room there was in the backyard…but we played for about half and hour.  Kyle and Scott and Grandpa took turns pitching to my kids.

And Neil decided that his job was catcher.  It was so stinkin’ cute!  At first he just threw the ball back in the direction of the pitcher.  Then he started kicking one leg up.  Only he didn’t quite have the needed balance to do that, and sometimes he kicked up the leg on the same side that he was throwing the ball.  It was just too fun.  I don’t know where he noticed that pitchers kick up their leg, but he was determined to do it too.We finally finished our decorations before everyone came over for a BBQ dinner at our house. Yeah! Jessie also punched out a bunch stars and hung them on strings over our back door . Believe it or not it actually rained that night (maybe for the first time all summer and drenched my decorations :-( , but Jessie’s are still up in the kitchen and may be until next fourth of July at the rate we sometimes go. :-))Abbie got the face painting she had been hoping for, since we missed doing it on Flag Day and I suggested a star for Spencer and it turned out cool too.  They matched all of our blue and white food we had at the BBQ .Time to dig in!

Addie brought the stuff to make these AWESOME festive drinks.  You can learn about them here: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2012/06/layered-patriotic-punch/ …(we didn’t do the white part) and Rachel made us some star ice for them too!   We learn that you need a lot of ice and you pour really slowly right on top of an ice cube so the juice trickles down and doesn’t mix.

Lisa loves holding Isaac.

Can you tell Ken had a long day?Neil and Quinn entertained themselves for a bit with Hobbes Ball.  It’s so cute how they hang the balls on the rungs.  And how they kept trying to put it back together.Rachel took Mark and Jessie to the last home BYU men’s soccer game that night.  They watch the BYU fireworks, and then Mark got to spend the night at David’s and Jessie at Rachel's.  We played some Hobbes Ball and the boys won.Then we did sparklers in the backyard with the kids.  Neil and Quinn were on the same page when it came to fireworks – they were happy to just sit and watch the other kids.Ken finally got Neil to hold the end of a sparkler and then soon afterward we got a sparkler that malfunctioned….can you believe that!!  It started shooting flame down toward his hand…it scared us all and Ken grabbed it and submerged it in the water bucket and it WOULD NOT go out!  It was amazing.  Can you see the bucket glowing! It was totally under the water….and kept burning until the stuff was all burnt!After that we heard some big fireworks in the front yard and so we decided that we were done with sparklers and went to look and see what we could.  Neil didn’t like the loud noise (even though the fireworks were far away and not really loud at all)  Funny boy.