July!

We started off July with a Fourth celebration and a couple birthdays at Ryan and Rebecca’s house…an attempt at a family shot.

(please excuse my grainy pictures…my camera was having a rough night)

We did sparklers…Ty is still pretty leery of them.Ace, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoys all things fire.Ellie was just shocked and amazed.

The next night we headed to our spot on the mountain to watch the big fireworks…Then we had Carson’s Birthday party.All the kids loved playing in this toy boat, especially Ellie, she played in there the whole time.

We took the family to Peter Pan.  It was fantastic!

Then we celebrated Pioneer Day with some neighbors and more fireworks.  My kids were much more excited about all of this than they seem in this picture though.

And last, but not least, even though we now have to work on getting rid of more weeds, we have all been thoroughly enjoying our lovely grass

That’s it!  I am officially all caught up! Woot!

--patting myself on the back--

June!

June was the start of Easton’s soccer.  Oh how he loves soccer.  In fact there’s not much else he talks about.  He loves it.  I keep asking him if he wants to try another sport, and he says, “All I want to do is play soccer forever.”  Okay then, soccer it is.

At Easton’s games, when I am taking pictures, I can’t really see the pictures I am taking because of the sunlight…but once I looked through them at home, I found that Easton does a whole lot of face-making…

The faces of a soccer player…

And my personal favorite…And all of the family enjoys watching from the sidelines…Easton had a great season, and still says he only wants to play soccer.

The boys also started swimming lessons... there's nothing like little kids in goggles.They both had a blast and did really well.  Easton can swim the entire length of the pool.  Easton’s favorite thing was learning to flip underwater and jumping on the diving board.  Ty, even though he slightly resembles a jellyfish, can swim about half the length of the pool.  His favorite thing was “ducking in the deep” (diving for diving sticks).

We had some of our cousins over for a big sleepover. 

And everyday, we were out in the yard weeding, grading, raking…EVERYDAY.  And then at the end of the month, for my birthday, in the timespan of 2 hours (thanks to INCREDIBLE family and neighbors) the yard went fromthisto thisto thisTO THIS!!!!

Amazing! BEST DAY EVER!! Hooray! WooHoo! Hallelujah!

(I am pretty happy)

Side note: That area of dirt will someday be a deck.  And I am looking forward to getting some trees...But for now I will stay grateful for the grass…

A pretty great end to the month if I do say so myself.

May!

What is happening!? I am so behind.  We’re more than half-way through summer and I haven’t blogged a bit of it!  We really haven't been up to anything super exciting, but hopefully I can get all caught up this week, and then somehow stay on top of this little blog…

So here we go…May:

First, we had another appointment for Ty and his stinkin eyes… what am I talking about? His little clogged tear ducts that just. wont. go. away.  We did a simple probe surgery when he was 10 months old… that didn’t work, and then we did this surgery…that didn’t work either.  I sort of was hoping they would somehow go away with a little more time, but that has not been the case.  So we had to go back to the dr. who recommended an extra special specialist who basically said the only thing they can do is put the stints back in and hope it works this time.  Lame.  He did say we might be better off waiting until he’s a little bit older before doing the surgery, because there would be a higher success rate.  So we might wait a bit.  But in the meantime, Ty had his eyes dilated and was pretty thrilled about the sunglasses he got to keep…

Next, Ace got into a really bad car accident and totaled his little truck.  It was real scary, but thankfully, he was alright.  The big bummer was that we had to get him a new truck, pronto…we were hoping to make his old truck last one or two more years to save up a little more money.  Never. Make. Plans...luckily we found a new truck for a pretty good deal, and this one fits our whole family.  So yay for family truck outings!

School ended May 30th, and we had a last day of school celebration with our neighbors:Me and my dumbo camera missed the actual “run through the banner moment” but you get the idea…

And we worked and worked and worked on our yard.  Since we had to buy a new car, we had to save money where we could, so we decided to weed and grade our yard by ourselves.  I should’ve taken a before picture but just imagine every bit of this dirt was completely covered in a thick giant layer of weeds.  So everyday, we weeded and graded, weeded and graded, moved dirt and weeded and graded etc etc… and at the end of the month, this is what we had to show for it…Just a whole lot of dirt. (but no weeds!) 

So that’s May in a nutshell…and tomorrow we’ll move on to June!

Easter & Conference

Easter was great this year.  On Saturday, Ryan and Rebecca threw a great Easter/birthday celebration for my cute little nephew, Tate!Holy smokes! Look how cute he is!

Of course there was an egg hunt…

We trapped Ellie and Tate on the Trampoline with their own eggs so as not to get attacked by the big kids

They were all happy with their big ol’ loot Now, it’s time for our Annual Cousin Easter Picture Shoot…Way to go kids! Way to go.

Then, we colored eggs…I don’t know what Corbin is up to in this picture…but I assure you he’s fine.

The next morning was Easter, and the Easter bunny treated us real well!Oh that hair.She had to wear everything in her basket.

And now, for round 2.  The Annual Easter Sunday picture… First we tried to do it outside.That went well enough.

Then we headed inside to try again…So that’s how that went.

Then all of my family came over for Easter Dinner.  And it was a party.

Had one more little hunt.And tried for some more family shots.  Why, you ask? I haven't got a clue.Look. At. Us.

Happy Easter.

Then General Conference Weekend was the best Ever.  My dad got us a 4 bedroom room(basically a condo) at the Escala Lodge in Park City.  Jesse and Lauren sang in the restaurant, We ordered room service and lounged around in our pjs all day long, listening to the Prophet.  Fan-tistically-tastic.

Awesome weekend.  Thanks again to Dad, and to Claudia!