July Update!

For our July update, we have been enjoying several different activities. We celebrated little Summer’s first birthday. She is ADORABLE!!

Then the girls and I have been enjoying some of the free summer stuff going on. We are all signed up for the summer reading program with our local library. Plus we have been enjoying free lunches either at the park close to us or the middle school by us. And we even made it to one of the free movies they had, “The Bee Movie.” On the fourth we all went fishing in the little fishing boat at Liberty Lake. We caught a ton of little fish. The girls caught so many they lost track. They loved getting them out long enough to see and touch once and then we sent them back to get lots bigger.

Then, that night we had a yummy BBQ with watermelon, yum, and finally we headed to the fireworks.

The girls loved them. Our favorite part was the finale!!


This month the girls took swimming lessons. They loved every minute of their lessons and are now asking me when they get to take them again. We are glad that they learned a few basics.

(The first picture is one of their favorite things they did....called "chop, chop, timber" the other two are them holding on during lessons.)

We also celebrated Sam’s birthday on the 11th. It is a big one for him. He is the BIG 30!!!

We had a family party for him and a little party with some friends from our ward.Both parties turned out really great, thanks to all who came and made it so fun.

These two pictures are from our friend party. We played water balloon volleyball. It was lots of fun!! We are so glad that we have our Sambo. He is so good to us. He truly works so hard at being the best husband and father that he could possibly be. And HE IS the best in the world!! We love you Daddy, hope you had a great birthday!

This last weekend we went on a little family camping trip with Sam’s family. We went to Central Ferry State Park. Yes I went camping at 7 ½ months pregnant.

And it was actually pretty good. The first night was actually one of the worst nights we have had with our kids...ever. I think that was the night that we got the least amount of sleep, one because Hailey had an atrocious cough that kept her and the rest of us awake for about 5 hours and two when we weren’t worrying about her we felt like we were in a wind tunnel because there was so much wind and our tent was like a kite flapping around in the breeze. Thankfully the next night was much better. Hardly any wind and a lot less coughing which aloud us to get more sleep. During the day we had fun even with all the wind that continued on. We spent time by the water beach combing and swimming,

there was the Polar Bear Dip which was the girls favorite part (the polar bear dip consisted of jumping in the River first thing in the morning),

and there was the obstacle course,

earning their boondoggles for the Polar Bear Dip and the obstacle course,
and just having quality time together with cousies.

This is Hailey with her rainbow stick, which she found down at the river.

Overall there was a lot of fun had by all. Thanks to all the family for some more wonderful camping memories.

On Sunday we celebrated Grandma Kathie's. We love her and are so glad she lives close enough to us to spoil.

Happy Birthday Grammy!!

I am Way, Way Behind, June Update

Here is our June update. One of our biggest events of June was having our first graduation for one of our children. Our, not so little anymore, Ashtyn graduated from preschool.

Yeah that is right, this fall she officially starts kindergarten and No we are definitely not ready for that. She soaked up every minute that she had in the spotlight and was so proud of all that she had done that past year.

Isn’t she adorable!?! She wanted to dress up to the hilt for this special event. We can’t believe how fast the last five years have gone and we are proud of our little Ashtyn and can’t wait to see how well she does in kindergarten.Hailey has been in a little playgroup this past school year too.

It was mostly playtime with a little snack, craft and lesson in between. She loved it and is really growing up fast. At the end of her school year they had a bowling party. The kids loved it and it was great fun to see them try and get their bowling balls down the lane fast enough to knock some pins down. Then the next week, I put the girls in a dance camp that was three days long.

They were only able to go to two of the days but they loved every minute. The teacher was great and they really enjoyed dressing up and really getting to dance. They are still dancing around the house saying the names of the steps that they learned. It is adorable. As soon as they were done with dance camp, the girls and I headed off with Grandma Kathie

for Island Park, Idaho

for a week, where we would be able to see my grandma and grandpa, Aunt and Uncle, my sister and her family and a few other relatives. It was great. We missed our Daddy tons but loved all the activities that we got to do and all of the family that we got to hang out with and give loves to. Some of the fun things we did:
fishing off the dock
and in the pontoon boat,
feeding the big fish at Big Springs and then watching Big Springs get stocked with fish,
swimming at the pool,
riding the four wheeler,
playing games, eating good food, swinging in the tire swing, visiting and playing with all the cousins and family, going for boat rides and getting to drive the boat,

watching cousin Mark fly overhead in his little plane, and going on a float trip down box canyon.
Things that weren’t the greatest about our trip, #1 the long drive which wasn’t too bad, and #2 the worst thing of all was the mosquitos. They tried to eat Hailey and take her away. We went through a lot of bug spray. The worst was the last day. She got them all over her face the night before we were going home. We had to celebrate our Father’s day early because we were apart on the real Father’s day.

But we set apart a special day to show our Daddy how much we love him. While we were in Island Park, Daddy went to Denver, CO for business.

He had fun getting to stay in the Ritz Carlton…..the only hotel near the conference that he attended that would honor the government rate….oh darn! He had fun being treated like royalty but we all missed each other like crazy! Some fun stories from his trip: The first day he arrived, the shuttle he took from the airport pulled up to the Ritz and said “Ritz”, Sam said that’s me. Then almost magically his side door opened and the back door opened and there were the bellmen asking who was getting off and which bag to get out. Sam of course said, “its’ just me getting off and I just have the one bag.” Then the bellman said, “Hello, Mr.X (named changed to protect innocent), how was your flight? Would you like bell service up to your room?” He said no thank you and then heard enjoy your stay at the Ritz. Then he goes into this amazing lobby and goes up to what he assumes is the check in desk and the man behind the counter says “Hello Mr. X, we see that your flight arrived a little early but luckily we have a room all ready for you. Will this be alright? Is there anything else you will be needing? We hope you enjoy your stay at the Ritz.” So Sam starts heading up to his room wondering how on earth they knew his name. So he watched them as he came and went the next time and he figured it out. The bellman checked the luggage tag and as he was saying Hello Mr. X how was your flight he was holding down a little button on a headpiece which allowed the man at the front desk to hear who it was he would be expecting next. Also they do room service twice a day. And when they check the room in the evening they turn down the sheets and leave a little chocolate for you. Plus they had the big fancy robes and it was just high comfort! Also the conference center where he was at was gynormous. He was thinking after he got there that it would be nice to have a bike so that he could ride around to all the different classes and events. All the people who worked security there rode on segways. And the janitors rode around on golf carts going from bathroom to bathroom. If the workers didn’t have some kind of transportation they would never be able to work all day without being completely exhausted. He also had fun at some of the places he ate out at. One in particular was John Elway’s restaurant which was located in the Ritz. He had the Elway’s signature salad, a buffalo steak, and a fancy smancy dessert. He hhAfter Sam came home he had a couple of days home without us, so he had a little bit of man fun. One of the things that he did you might not believe but it is 100% true. He came home from his trip, was unpacking his stuff, and out by the garden was a rabbit. Now you might be thinking “oh a cute little harmless bunny, so soft and cuddly and cute,” but he was thinking, “that is the rabbit that won’t stay out of my garden and has eaten some of my finest vegetables.” So, in the house goes Sam to find his pellet gun. And then he quietly sneaks outside and gets up as close as he can to the garden without scaring this rabbit away and then………yep you guessed it POW!! Now there is one less rabbit to eat all of our garden veggies. Well, Sam being the good man he is didn’t want to just kill the poor helpless thing for nothing, so he built a fire in our firepit, skinned the chubby rabbit, put it on a stick and roasted it over the fire for dinner. He said it was pretty tasty too. I am glad that he did all of that while we were away, because I can almost pretend that it didn’t happen because I have seen no evidence that it really did. Well, after we were finally together again we just hung out at home for a couple of days just enjoying finally being together in our own home. Then the next weekend Sam headed out on an overnight campout with a friend. They left early Friday morning and drove up to Upper Priest Lake, loaded all their gear in a canoe, portaged in a little, and paddeled up to a camp site. They had a lot of fun, except for that there were a ton of mosquitos and not enough fish catching going on. They were back home Saturday around noon. At one point, Brent, Sam’s friend, said, as he beat off the mosquitos, “you are either going to have to set me on fire, or throw me in the lake so I can get away from these things.” Here is a little video Brent made up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHN8zZwG8og
And then we finally got our little kiddie pool out and the girls loved it.

They played for two days in that thing. I enjoyed dipping my feet in too. We love summer!!

I am Way, Way, Way Behind, May Update

Okay so I have been a total slacker in the blog department. I am way, way, way behind. I can’t believe that it has been almost two months since I have posted. I hope that I can start doing better. I think I will do this in three big chunks….May update…..June update…...and then July update. I know I should probably just start with July and forget the rest but I am going to do some catch up. First a few things that I wanted to post but never did…..starting back in May after Hailey’s birthday we went on a day trip down to the falls and looked around.

Wow! The water was high and the falls were bursting with the new summer melt off.

We also made it to a couple of my brother’s football games. One in which the sprinklers turned on and it turned out to be pretty entertaining. We also had our first summery weekend, one in which it was hot enough for the swimsuits to come out. So we got the girls in the backyard with the sprinkler.

Then we had a fun park day with cousins. It was hot when we got there but within just an hour it was cooling off. Ashtyn had already ran through the water and then ended up wrapped in a blanket because she got too cold. My belly is getting bigger. Everything is going great and the baby is healthy and so far the weather has been hot enough to go outside and enjoy but not so hot that we are croaking.

We celebrated our 7^th anniversary, just a simple out to date dinner and a dozen roses from my sweet, amazing, perfect for me, great dad, honey bun. We can’t believe that it has been seven years. We have loved every minute together and it just keeps getting better.

We planted our garden, had a pizza hut field trip, which was awesome because the kids got to check out the kitchen and make their own little pizza. We watched it go from one end of the oven to the other and come out the other side just in time to be put in a perfect little pan size box and then be devoured at the table by the hungry child that made it. Then on Memorial Day weekend we went on our first campout of the summer. We went up to Farragut State Park. It was a lot of fun, even though it sprinkled one of the days.

We were there with a big group of people and so there were some fun group activities that the girls enjoyed. The girls’ favorite part though was being able to take their bikes and ride around the big circle we were on. It was even hot enough one of the days to go by the lake and dip our toes in the freezing cold water.

We wore the kids out and I was even lucky enough to hold a sleeping Hailey. That hasn't happened in a long time. That is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. It was a great first campout. Then after we came home that next week we finally had our first park day of the summer with friends. It was great.

Yeah, summer is finally coming!