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.)