The 24th etc.

As part of our pioneer celebration the kids slept outside in Scott’s tent with Rachel.  We only got pics of the girls, but Spencer  joined them too.

Some of our friends from college came over for a visit.  They younger kids had fun playing with each other while we caught up and then we headed outside for ice cream in the back yard.

For the 24th we had a bbq lunch with Ken’s family.  Instead of lot of junk to go with the burgers and dogs, we’ve started doing one family brings fruit and the other a veggie and it’s been great.  You just feel better when you eat better.  Yea!We did dinner with the Albertson’s but Neil wasn’t feeling very well, so Ken and he and Isaac stayed home.  They had cream of wheat for dinner and then took a play bath in the jetted tub in the basement and watched some fireworks online.  The boys thought it was great and they were in bed early.  (Poor Neil did get sick later on that night. :-(. )  We did some sparkers and fireworks after dinner.  The Albertson’s had picked up some smoke bombs too and boy were my kids impressed!  They were the favorite…..they all ran to the gutter where the first one rolled and pretended they were making potions.  It was SO fun!!  The very last firework, went a little haywire and sent some pieces in the general direction of the kids….that was a bit crazy/scary, but no one got hurt.We headed down to the sports fields for the big fireworks and were not disappointed!  I covered Emma’s ears, but she quite enjoyed it, a great and pleasant surprise.  Rachel, Becca and some of their roommates also joined us.

On the 25th we picked Mark up at the airport….boy did I miss that boy!!!  He had ridden back to Missouri with Grandma to keep her company and visit for a week.  He got to do a bunch of fun things like the zoo and Worlds of Fun (I was a bit jealous he got to go on rollercoasters :-).)  He had a great time.  Thank you so much Heather and Mom for taking care of my boy!

After picking up Mark we stopped to see David and Lisa’s new apartment.  While we were there David took Abbie to get one of her Christmas dates…popsicles for us all.  Yummy!

Man, this boy was tired.  I just had to chuckle once he FINALLY feel asleep still holding the toy train he was playing with.

Returning from running errands we got stuck waiting for a train.  Neil and Isaac LOVE it when this happens, but Neil wasn’t in the van with us, so we took a picture to show him. (Actually I’m completely amazed that we almost never get stopped by a train…especially since it seems like they are running all the time and blowing their horns.  They especially love to blow them nice and long when it’s dark out….annoying!!!  But in the last two years I bet I could count the number of times on two hands still that we’ve been stopped, that’s why it’s still “fun” to get stopped.)

Neil passed his flu through the family.  Mark was bored on the couch wading through his turn at it…..

We had a great rain storm come though and the the kids were in heaven.  Jessie had a camera heyday taking pictures of the kids and flowers.

I thought I had missed the flu…but no….at least the kids were pretty good while I rested.  What started out as a Mark selfie that day ended up as a group picture.

Look at the eyelashes on this sweet baby…she can thank Dad for those.

Mark is our weeding maniac!  (Plus he was doing jobs to earn money to pay for his plane ticket home from Missouri.)  I’m not sure if I’m more proud of his work or more frustrated at the number of weeds that are still left in that darn flower bed.  But anyway….nice work Mark!!

Time to finish picking apricots….and clean up all the ones that were gross on the ground.  All the kids pitched in to help a little better after we found some plastic gloves for them to wear, so they wouldn’t have to touch the slimy things.

Here are some surprise pictures I found on the camera…so here’s the first one…

…and the second…

….and the third.

We spent a day up at the Farm and Country section at Thanksgiving Point.  It was a bit more fun for the little kids than for Mark, but he was a good sport.  We did see the fattest goat I have ever seen in my entire life, and the coolest part was the peacock who showed off for us.  It was SO cool to see his dance that he did with his tail all displayed.

Spencer was playing with Emma and stuck the reindeer antlers on her and took some pictures.  He asked me to post one to Instagram for him.  What a fun brother!

We had a late-over with some of the big kid’s friends….that turned into a water gun fight and then dessert afterwards while everyone dried out.

Mark is excited for band this year and wanted to get a head start on a design for the shirt competition.  Here’s what he came up with.  He and I had a lot of fun playing on Wordle together….and we stayed up kind of late…silly us.

Rachel got tickets for the Harry Potter Heber Creeper train ride.  The kids had a blast dressing up again  (well, Mark was in Missouri for the library Harry Potter party, so this was his first time dressing up).  There favorite treat of the ride was the pumpkin tart.  The grass and dirt flavored jelly beans were…um…gross. :-)

And our final picture is one from Jessie of our dinner.

Here we come May

The three little ones and I joined Abbie for her Track meet.  Abbie opted to run the two longest races, the 400 and 800.  Neil was an awesome cheerleader.  We got to sit in the stands with her and her friends (which we knew quite a few of from doing spelling, that was fun), and run around on the grass, up and down a tiny hill, while we waited for her next race.  It was SO chilly that morning when I got the boys dressed, but by 11:30 when we got to the races shorts would have been nice.  Oh well – that’s spring.  Ken took this one of Jessie and Spencer with Squirmy the snake that lives under our water spigot in the front flower bed.

While the boys are at Fathers and Sons and Jessie is camping with her aunts Abbie and I made cards for her teacher's birthday. Fun, fun, fun!  Ken took the boys for Fathers and Sons.  Everyone had a great time and tasty food.  Neil wouldn’t take a nap when they got home (but REALLY needed one).  Later that afternoon he crashed watching Life.We saw a couple of deer in the neighborhood one day.  This one was in the neighbors yard.  Man can they jump and run fast.  So cool to see them up close! Abbie found this poor butterfly with a deformed wing.  The bottom wing had grown on top of the top wing so it couldn’t fly properly or lay its wing down.  She cared for it for a couple of hours then left it on our flowers.

Isaac was so kind as to fill a shoe with oatmeal for us...Neil and Isaac could NOT resist playing in the bucket of oatmeal that got brought up to refill the can in the cupboard for making oatmeal cookies.  Over and over I had to ask them to stop playing in the oatmeal…….just take a picture and smile about it later. Scott’s birthday BBQ.  This had several date changes due to the passing of Ken’s dear cousin.  She had battled breast cancer for several years.  It was a rather solemn week for us.  And we continue to pray for her family.

Here is Neil at the BBQ searching his pocket for “Phil the Pill.”  A pill bug he found at our house before we left that took a ride in his pocket to Grandma’s house.  Fortunate or not Phil got dropped in the grass later and was not findable.  At least he didn’t cry about that.

Scott is so good to my kids and had to have help to blow out his candles (that never actually got lit because the ceiling fan blew out the match).  That was funny! When we got home from the BBQ we discovered Grandpa’s mitt had been packed up with ours.  That mitt looks well loved.We exchanged grandpa’s mitt the next day for Mark’s horn mouth piece he had taken and left at Grandma’s.

Neil unloaded the silverware from the dishwasher 15 times to get a slinky out of the prize box.  Way to go!!

Mark took Isaac by the hand to help him go get jammies on….well, Isaac didn’t want to go get jammies on and so he made himself go limp.  Mark was still holding his hand through all this and as his body went slouching down his wrist popped.  Aaaahhh….he wouldn’t move it and so Jessie and Ken took him to the instacare that was still open and they x-rayed it and wrapped it up.  They said they didn’t see any break, but to come back in a week to x-ray it again to see if they could see any spots where the bone had started healing.  That was a night.  Isaac didn’t like the bandage the second day, but after that he didn’t even notice it anymore and when we went back to get it rechecked they didn’t even end up dong another x-ray after they examined it.  What a scary week.  Glad that all turned out well.  (Rachel brought him balloons to cheer him up the next day.  Thanks Rachel!) Heading back to the races.  We watched Spencer run the 400.  He did a great job and was so sweet to go back and congratulate the other runners.  Nice job! We enjoyed Mark’s band concert.  It’s almost funny to listen to the whole band perform the song you’ve been hearing only the French Horn part for….it’s almost a new song altogether.  So fun! One random day my kids came home from school all wearing Ken’s credit union shirts.  Totally unplanned and spontaneous.  (I think we must have just finished folding the red laundry the night before and it was the top shirt in everyone’s drawer….who knows.) Ken went with Rachel car shopping so she wouldn’t have to do it alone.  This was her face as she sat in the drivers seat of the one she picked out.  I think it’s a winner. Talk about a bad hair day.  This was Isaac when I pulled the hooded towel off his head after his shower. 

Emma’s four month visit.  Her head went from the 11% at two months to the 63%???!!!!???  CRAZY!! And she’s just shy of 12 pounds. Neil helped me fill a five gallon bucket with pancake mix in preparation for Ken’s CU annual meeting breakfast.  I also ended up making about 5 batches of waffles with it for our Activity Day Mother Daughter activity.  (Which I then remade more mix for Ken.)  I’ve decided it is easiest to mix that much stuff with your bare hands….and Neil didn’t mind helping!