The New Swing Set

 Right before we left for Texas, we purchased a new swing set!  It was put in while we were gone!  The kids have LOVED playing on it!  It is all they have been wanting to do lately.  Yesterday was such a nice morning out that we spent the entire morning outside playing.  Our back yard is nice and shady in the mornings.  The kiddos wanted to go out and play again this morning, but it is wet from the rain we got yesterday afternoon and into the night time and the ground is all muddy.  We have had a dry, hot summer for here (but nothing like Texas!) and the fescue grass always has a hard time here when that happens.  I am glad for the rain and today's cooler temperatures.  It will only be in the 70's here today.  :)  Nice, huh?!?

I am so glad that we finally got a swing set and that the children are enjoying playing with it!!!  Happy Friday to you all!

Eating outside

Yesterday morning was so nice!  The kiddos played outside all morning long!  Then, Weston decided to surprise me by making everyone lunch!  He brought it outside so we could eat and enjoy the swing set at the same time!  :)  Weston ate on the swing.

Aaron ate up in the fort!

So did Amber!

Brian ate on the glider.

Evan started out at the picnic table but then decided that he wanted to join Aaron and Amber up in the fort!

It was a fun way to eat lunch!!  :)  And the perfect end to the morning.  I was glad we played out in the morning because then it rained most of the afternoon!!!

Lemonade Stand

 All summer long, Brian has been dying to have a lemonade stand!  Monday was the day that he finally got his chance!  :)  He wanted to set up shop on the street corner, but we decided that he was fine to just do it at the end of the driveway.

 He had his stand in the middle of the day (like around 3pm) when there really wasn't anyone out of the streets, but he got lots of business from Aaron, Amber, Evan and myself.  Aaron even bought some with his own money!  I think Brian got every last quarter and nickel that I had.  :)  I think that there were only like 3 cars that passed by our street's intersection during the whole 45 minutes he was out there, but every time, he would jump up and yell, "Lemonade!  Get your ice cold lemonade!"  It was so cute!!!

It was a hot day for here - like about 98 I think, so after sweating in the sun, we headed out to the pool to cool off and spend the rest of our afternoon there!  Then, when Daddy came home, Brian sold him the last of his lemonade!!  :)  It was a very productive stand!!!

Off to Camp!

My sweet Weston left early this morning for his first ever scout camp!!!  :)  He was soooooo excited to be going!  We had everything packed on Saturday but double, triple checked it last night.  He can't wait to get out there and earn lots of merit badges!!  I hope he has a great time.  I know we will miss him here, but I bet he doesn't miss us a bit!!  :)  And then, as soon as he gets back........its off to TEXAS!!!

Stop and Enjoy

Sometimes I think that we can behold some of the most beautiful things that life has to offer if we can just stop what we have planned so that we can enjoy the things that our Father in Heaven has to offer. 

 When I saw that the color outside my window this evening had changed to be something different, I went out to investigate.  And this is what I saw.  Such a beautiful night.  I stopped what I was doing and took the time to sit on my front porch step for over an half hour and enjoy the beautiful word that the Lord has created for me!  I'm so glad I did!

He Lost it!!!

 The past few weeks, Aaron has had a wiggly tooth.  This morning, he was complaining quite a bit that it was bothering him.  So, once we came in from playing outside, I pulled it out for him.  :)  He was a little anxious at first about the whole thing, but once it was out, he was excited to put it under his pillow to see what the tooth fairy brings him tonight!!!  I can't believe that this little guy is almost 7!!!  He is growing up so fast!

New Glasses

 This past weekend, Aaron got new glasses.  Granted, they look almost identical to his old ones, but there are some differences.  First, we got the anti-glare stuff put on these pair so that there isn't so much from the flash of the camera or lights.  Secondly, the ear pieces are double hinged, so they can go in any direction.  Also, the frames themselves are a bendable, re-enforced alloy.  So, hopefully they will not break and last a very long time!!  :)

 Most importantly, Aaron loves them!!  He looks mighty handsome in his new glasses!  Of course, because I was taking pictures, Amber wanted to be in them too!

And so did Evan!  This summer seems to be just flying by!!  Where has the time gone to?  I can't believe how big all of my kiddos are getting!!!

The Easter Dress

 This Sunday, Amber wore her Easter dress again!  Since Momma wanted pictures of the dress and Amber closer up, I decided to snap a few after we got home from church.  Of course, everyone else wanted to join in the fun!  :)  Brian had already changed out of his church clothes so that he didn't mess them up!

 Evan wanted to be where ever Amber was.  Those 2 are best of friends and yet they can fight like cats and dogs too!!  I think that the dress looks especially good now that Amber has a little bit of a tan.

 It is rare that Evan actually looks at the camera and even more rare when he actually wants to have his picture taken, so I had to take advantage and snap one of him too!

Happy Sunday!

Fishing

 Friday was a lovely day, so the children and I set out around 10 to go fishing in the pond by our house. I love it there.  It is the best fishing spot around.  The kids pull up fish left and right, and by the time an hour is done, everyone has caught lots of fish and are happy to head back home.  All the bigger kids were so excited that they ran on ahead of me.

 Evan was my faithful little friend, walking beside me.  Behind him is the other pool in our neighborhood.  We never go to that one.  It is bigger and more crowded and isn't as good for the little ones to swim in.  Plus, the pool in the back of the neighborhood is closer to our house.  

 Amber and Evan had a good time looking at the ducks before we got started on fishing!

 This last year, Weston got a new pole.  So this time around, Amber used the pole that Uncle Aaron bought for Weston many, many years ago for his birthday!  :)  I think that in the hour that we were there, Amber caught about 7 fish.  Not too bad!!

 Weston let Evan "help" him reel this one in.  Weston caught the very first fish of the day.  I think that he caught 6 or 7 as well.  I love fishing with hot dogs!!  :)  It keeps the fish biting!!

 The next one to catch a fish was Brian!  There is a funny, but not really funny, story about Brian's fish.  See, Weston had caught his fish first and I was trying my best to get it off the hook, but it was hooked badly and it was taking a while to get Weston's fish off the hook.  During that time, Brian caught his fish, and kept calling for me to come and unhook his fish.  Well, it was taking so long with Weston's fish, that I told Brian to put his fish back into the water so that he wouldn't die until I could come and unhook him.  So, Brian puts his fish back in the water like I asked while I got Weston's fish unhooked.  All of the sudden, Brian starts yelling for me to hurry up and get over to him.  I run over to see a HUGE bass (like as big as from my elbow to my finger tips) trying to eat the fish that Brian had caught and was still on his line!!  That poor little perch!!  We pulled it up out of the water quick!!!  By the time I get it unhooked and tossed back in the water, that poor fish was traumatized!  It just laid there on it's side for a bit before I finally got it to swim away!  I felt so bad!!!

 As you can see here, Amber wasn't quite sure about it all.  She wanted to touch the fish, and yet didn't really at the same time!  Silly girl!!  :)

 Aaron did his name sake proud!!!  He caught the most fish and the biggest ones too!  Aaron caught about 10 to 12 fish, and Brian caught almost as many.  :)  He just may be our family's master fisherman!!!

 The fish kept taking Evan's bait.  He and Amber took turns with the pole.  Every time Amber got the pole, she caught something, and every time Evan got it, the fish got away.  He finally did catch one fish all on his own though!!

 I taught Brian to take his own fish off the hook!  He did a great job at it too!  Way to go Brian!

 After we were all done, I wanted to get a picture of the kids all together.  It just wasn't in the cards!!  I think that this one was the best, and that is just laughable!

 The next one looked like this!

After about 10 pictures that had some funny variation of the same thing, I decided to just give up and try another day!!!  :)  The summer is passing just too darn fast!!!

Lego City

For over a week, we had been seeing signs all around town about a Lego City coming to one of the local middle schools as a fund raiser.  Brian had been begging and begging to go.  So, last Saturday, when I was heading out to do some Father's Day shopping, Barth suggested that I take Brian with me and that we head on over to see the Lego City!  Brian absolutely loved it!!  You can see it behind him in the background.  The pictures don't do it justice.  It really was quite a cool thing to see.  This was one man's collection that he came and set up for the kids to see.

There were all sorts of things to see.  There was city hall, and trains.  Pirate ships and lots and lots of cool lego people.  The trains ran and they had an amusement ride replica that went up and down.  It was a lot of fun to stand there and look at each individual thing.  There was so much there and so many little details.

When you went in, they handed you a paper of guys to find.  If you found at least 15, you could enter to win a prize.  Brian didn't win anything, but it was still fun to look for everyone.  In the end, we decided that we wouldn't leave until we had found all the lego guys.  In the end, we did find every single one of them!!  :)  It was especially fun since it was just Brian and I.  I didn't have to worry that Evan would climb up and destroy something.  I think that while some of the others would have enjoyed it too, it is nice sometimes to just have a little one on one time with each of the children!  It was a time well spent!

Final Day of Camp

 Yesterday was the last day of Day Camp for Brian.  It was the hottest day of the week.  It got up to 90. At 3:15 the dens were to perform their skits or songs that they had written.  We (the kiddos and I) arrived at 3 just as everyone was heading back to their den boxes around the flag pole.  The skits and things didn't even begin until about 3:45 and so Brian took Weston around to show him a few of the places close by while the rest of us stood in the shade.  The top picture if of Brian's den- den 10!  

 Brian preferred to wait in the shade when he could.  Den 10 was lucky.  They had this nice big tree right behind their group.  No one else was as lucky.  Their leader, Mr Chip, encouraged the boys to be back in the shade as much as possible so they didn't get too hot.  He was a nice man.  Behind Brian you can see the outdoor cooking station.  YOu can just see the logs for the campfire at the right hand side of the picture and the shade tent over the table where they ate their goodies.  Further back through the trees behind Brian is a creek where the boys did their daily fishing.  Brian only caught one fish while he was there, a little sunfish, but he enjoyed it every day.

 Here is another picture of the den from the back, but at another angle.  At the end of this long field/ clearing area was the b-b gun and archery range.  At the beginning, Brian didn't like that station at all.  The first day he only hit the paper for the guns twice (or something like that) and didn't get any arrows at all.  By the last day, all his arrows hit the target and he got the most gun shots on the target with 42.  He shot 6 bulls eyes on the target with the b-b gun on the last day.  He loved it in the end!!  :)

 Here is Brian's den doing their "song."  The dens could choose to do a song or a skit.  Lots of the groups did skits, but Brian's den wrote a song.  It was pretty cute and even talked about stinky feet.  :)  So typically boy!!!

During camp, they asked the boys to bring in school supplies to help out families in need for the fall.  There was a contest between dens to see who could get the most.  The top 5 dens (out of 18) got to put pies in Mrs Ruth's face.  She was one of the 2 heads of the camp.  Brian's den came in first place for the school supplies.  But also, and I think, more importantly, Brian's den was also awarded as the most respectful den at the camp!!!  :)  Way to go Den 10!  It was a fun week at camp for Brian!  Hopefully he can go next year too!!!

Day Camp

 Monday morning, Brian started cub scout day camp!  It is every day this week from 8 to 4!  To say that he has had a blast thus far is a HUGE understatement!!!  He has been looking forward to it for the last month.  :)  Our day camp is run by the BSA, not by the stake like lots of other places.  They go to an actual BSA camp that is just a few minutes from our house.  Monday was a cold and rainy start to the week, but they still had a great time.  Every day the boys get to fish, shoot b-b guns, do archery, make a craft, do outdoor cooking, and all sorts of other things!  He says that his favorite part of the day is the fishing.  :)  We put down on the registration form for him to be buddies with another boy his same age and rank from our ward who is his good friend, and it ended up that there were actually 8 boys from our pack that went.  Our pack is made up of boys from the 2 combined wards that go to our building.  All the boys from our pack were put together in the same camp den!  They have had such a great time being all together.  Brian and his friend have had lots of fun doing all the activities together!  Today, they were all excited when they hopped in the car to tell me that one of the boys in their pack had "almost been killed" today on the hike.  It turns out that while they were hiking, a big dead tree fell over on top of the grandson of our old bishop as he was walking past it!!  Pretty scary if you ask me, but he just hurt his leg and could still walk after the leaders were able to move the tree off of him.  From the sound of things, it wasn't a huge tree.  Still, I would have to say that there were some prayers of safety that were answered today!!  :)  The weather has been perfect for camp.  The hottest it has been so far this week has been 81, but it is supposed to be mid 80's tomorrow and 90 on Friday!  I am so thankful that Brian could go to camp and that he has enjoyed it so much!!!  :) 

Well Loved!!!

 When Weston was a baby, my mom made him this blanket.  I remember going to visit my brother, Aaron, in the hospital and she would be quilting around the animals.  She hoped that Weston would really enjoy the blanket when it was done.  I couldn't have known then just how well loved this blanket would become.  Weston's feet in the last several years have poked out from under it, and he has other blankets, but this one has remained his all time favorite. 

 Any trip we would go on, this blanket was brought along.  Even up until about 6 weeks ago when he brought me the blanket and asked if there was any way that I could fix it.  He still wanted to use it, but was afraid that if he did, the whole thing would fall apart.  All of the edges of the blanket were so threadbare that they had come apart.

 There are some parts of the blanket that have holes in it, and I couldn't really fix those, but today I had a little bit of time, so I decided that I would let the pile of laundry that needed to be folded sit, and I would try to bind the edges of the blanket so that Weston could have his blanket back.  :)

When I was looking for binding, I tried to match the blue of the blanket, but it was too washed out to match with any other blue that I could find, so I decided to just go with white.  It is not the best sewing job ever, but when I was finished, Weston was SOOOOO happy!  He hugged it to himself and exclaimed that he was glad it was fixed because someday it was going to be a family heirloom.  :)  Grandma, thank you so much for this very, very well loved blanket!!  It is now back on Weston's bed, just waiting to be snuggled underneath tonight!!!!