So, What Have You Been Up To?

Other than Birthdays, which seem to be abundant during the summer, we really did not do anything too exciting over the summer. Since school started, things have been pretty slow around here. But I would like to at least document a few things. That sounds so exciting, right? So here are a few things we did this summer. Hope it’s not too long.

 

Our 4th of July celebration was pretty low key.
It gets pretty chaotic if we try to take the whole bunch anywhere, so we just stay home and do a few fireworks in the driveway.  It’s safer that way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather was very nice – it didn’t even get very cold when the sun went down. Jack was probably over heated by the end of the night.

 

I wanted to be a fun mom this summer – I wish I had more patience to take all of the kids out to fun places. We did make it on two picnics. We even got pictures of one of them. I took the kids to Bridal Veil Falls the first week of August. I think they had fun?

I don’t know if you can see them, but those are my kids climbing up the falls – I made them come back down because they were wearing flip flops. I pictured a not so fun slide down the falls for one of them.

Henry would not get out of the stroller to play in the water. It’s ok, because it was quite cold, and I don’t think he would have liked it.

 

Every summer I tell myself that I am going to spend more time with my family up at Bear Lake. This year we were able to fit one whole trip in the week before school started.

My plan was to get the beach out of the way first off and then head to my mom’s house. I found a nice quiet spot and let the kids loose. Not 10 minutes later a big green suburban pulled in next to us, and as I watched all of the little girls pile out of it, I wondered why they had decided to park next to me. The next thing I know, my kids are yelling, “It’s Katie and Fallon.” Sure enough it was some of my cousins come to the beach for a summer party. They didn’t even know that I was coming up – what a coincidence! We had such a great time, I felt bad that we had not come up more often.

 

I never would have thought that Libby would like to be buried under the sand – she’s quite claustrophobic – but that is the first thing she asked for when we hit the beach.

 

I wonder if we can re-create this look for Crazy Hair Day.

This was Henry’s first time in the lake. He had tons of fun filling up a bucket of water and dumping it in the sand.

Jonathon was very proud of the sand castle that he built.

We had so much fun, that we even went back the next day. I love it that my kids can enjoy the beach just like I did when I was a kid.

 

Lastly, once the kids were finally back in school, I decided to try my hand at canning. I have only ever made jam before, but this year I bottled tomatoes and peaches.

Lots of tomatoes and peaches.

It was a messy job. (Thanks Heather)

But I’m so glad that I made the effort.

 

Well that’s about all, I just want to post a picture of Jack, because he’s getting so big. He is almost 8 months old now. Time is flying by so fast.

We call him fatty fat pants.

 

One final note - because we just got done watching them win game 2 GO YANKEES!

Hannah’s Magical #8

Hannah turned Eight on Wednesday. She was lucky that her birthday fell before the first Saturday of the month so that she could be baptized today.

It seemed like August was going to last forever to her. She was very excited and couldn’t wait for September to get here. I promised her that we would go shopping for a white dress towards the end of August, and she would not stop asking me when we would go.

When we finally did go shopping, we had a little trouble finding a frilly white dress – there were quite a few in the spring when I was out shopping, but not so many at the end of the summer.

Finally, at the fifth store that we visited we found a wall full of pretty white dresses. We looked and discussed and decided on a few to try on. She knew right away which one she wanted – but of course, it was too big and they didn’t have one in her size. So we tried on a few more – nope, she wanted the first one.

I had a bit of a flash forward to us trying to pick
out a wedding dress, and I’m not sure if I’ll
be able to cope when the time comes.

After trying on every dress – some even twice, she finally picked out a different one. Whew!

Wednesday the 2nd was her Birthday – she got a new outfit to wear to school and I made rice crispy treats to take to her class at school. When school was out, we decided to go to the Kamas pool and swim for a couple of hours and then come home for dinner and cake. So we loaded everyone in the car and made the 30 min drive - just to find out that the pool was closed for maintenance.

(I did check online before we went, but silly me, I was looking on the POOL HOURS page, not the Rec Center front page with the small red print at the bottom that said the pool was closed.)

So we were all bummed and drove home in sulking silence.

However, when we got home there were presents to be opened and we forgot all about the pool.

Along with her new dress, she got her own set of scriptures, some art/craft project books and new clothes and shoes for school.

She asked for a lemon cake with strawberry frosting. I was not sure of the combo, but I tried my friends recipe for strawberry frosting and it was quite a tasty cake.

Luckily Thursday and Friday went by quickly and today we all got dressed up and headed to the Baptism. It is so fun to see all of the kids dressed in white on the front bench. Hannah was a little worried, but she did great.

Tonight we continued our Baptism Tradition, and took her to The Roof down at Temple Square – Just Steve, Me, and Hannah. We all enjoyed dinner very much, and then we walked around Temple Square.

Tomorrow she will be confirmed, and that will be her last special day for a while. I hope that her memories of this weekend will keep her smiling for a while.

Hannah is a very high maintenance girl. She knows what she wants and won’t stop until she gets it. This is both good and bad. We battle a lot of the time, but I think it’s because we are very similar – neither of us like it when things don’t go our way. She is very good to help me with Jack and Henry. I am very proud of her today.

And Another One – Libby Turns 6

Libby had her 6th birthday on July 18th. We started off her Magical Birthday Weekend with a trip to the Kamas pool on Friday. It was Jack’s first visit, and he loved it. Steve even took the day off to come with us. We all enjoyed the morning swimming and then headed to the pizza and ice cream place to have lunch. We had never eaten there before, and it was surprisingly tasty.

 

On Saturday Grammy dropped by with presents for everyone. The weather was beautiful and so we decided to have an impromptu water party. We invited a few friends over and they ran through the sprinklers, threw water balloons, and ate tons of popsicles.

 

She got a razor scooter, a pet shop doggy and some hair accessories. She asked for chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles. She didn’t even eat it. I had a feeling that she wouldn’t like it. I don’t think she has ever really liked any of the birthday cakes that we have had. Steve liked it though, because I used chocolate mousse instead of frosting. I didn’t like it, so this is the first birthday cake that I didn’t eat – all in all it turned out well for all of us.

Libby is just getting used to the fact that she is not the baby anymore – it only took her 2 whole years to figure it out. She loves to play with her friends – she is not happy to just stay home. She always lets us know when she is being good. She always wants to give and get hugs. We can always make her laugh even when she is on the verge of tears. We love her happy smile.