On Second Thought,

Maybe the trampoline is a good photo shoot spot after all.

Just LOOK At that HAIR!!! 

Does Summer get better than this?

Playing at the beach all day.

Going to watch a Musical at the outdoor amphitheather at the beach at night.

And chowing on Nutella and Banana sandwiches for dinner.  With Grandma and Grandpa.  And really pleasant and happy kids.

This is one of my favorite summer traditions.  I mean, really, does it get better than this?

Our Stand Up Comedian, Carter!

With August rolling in and Back to School Ads plastering the TV, you won't want to miss Carter's Stand Up Comedy Act he performed in our family reunion Talent Show!

So turn up your speakers.  Grab some popcorn.  And Enjoy.  You will soon see how LOL becomes more than a colloquial acronym and actually becomes a reality. (Because be honest...how many times do you type LOL with a straight face and you're really not laughing at all?

4th of July

How do you celebrate your favorite holiday when there is a state-wide ban on fireworks due to Colorado wildfires?

You Wear Red, White, and Blue,

 You have an All-American Barbecue

Complete with festive desserts.

 

 You take pictures of all the 2 year old cousins together on the trampoline.

 And then all the 4 year old cousins,

And you quickly realize that perhaps a trampoline is not the best spot for a posed photo shoot.

Your 4-year-old tugs on your sleeve to ask if we can all say the Pledge of Allegiance.  That little light bulb goes off above your head that says "Gee, why didn't I think of that".  (Thank you, Addison, and our awesome Preschool Moms!)

As the sun goes down, you play Pictionary Junior with everyone, just as competitvely as if we were all the same age.  The grownups love it just as much as the kids.

 You pop open the glow sticks, of course.

And when the sun has set at last and the rest of the country is spoiling themselves in all pyrotechnic glory, you project your own fireworks onto a sheet on the backyard wall.  And you turn up the speakers to hear the boom as loud as it will go.  And you play it to streamed patriotic music.  And you let the kids take turns putting on the fireworks show and making their own grand finale.

Because that's what you do when there is a state-wide ban on fireworks due to Colorado wildfires.

Reunion Time

If there is one thing we know how to do right, it is Family Reunions.  Every 2 years, my siblings and parents and all our kids get together for a 4-day Family Reunion Retreat. 

First there was just us...

Janae, Shaun, Tauna, Brent, Heidi
Me, Dad, Mom, Cheri

And then we all got married...

Enoch & Janae, Braden & Cheri, Dad & Mom, Steve & Me, Chris & Tauna, Nate & Heidi
Susan & Shaun, Brent & Sunny

And we all had kids...

No, I'm not typing all the names :)

So that's:   2 Parents + 7 Kids + 7 Spouses + 27 Grandchildren =

43 AMAZING FAMILY MEMBERS 

I LOVE this family!

For the second consecutive reunion we went to a lodge near Colorado Springs, CO.

Yes, near the wildfires.
No, we were not evacuated, but met lots of people that had been.
Yes, we could see the haze and smoke produced by the fire on the other side of the mountain.
No, we were not worried, but we were aware that we could get evacuated at any time.

Um....To say we had a great time is an understatement.  WOW doesn't even suffice.  We are an amazing family.  We support each other.  We are positive and optimistic, but also know that we all have hard times.  We all have different strengths to offer.  And we all love to be together.  Among many many things we did:

We celebrated my parent's 46th Anniversary, my sister's 33rd birthday, and my nephew's baptism.

Carnival Day
 
Ah yes, the donut on the string game knows NO age limit.

Cousin Cameron was SO determined to GET THAT DONUT!

Yes, this looks like a 3 legged race, but really, there are 8 people tied together.  That takes communication and team building!:

And the face painting was amazing! Way to go Tauna and Nate!

Marshmallow Fights

Due to the wildfires, s'mores were out of the question, so we used our mini marshmallows in the most effective competitive way we knew how:  Made blow guns out of PVC pipes.  WATCH OUT!

Iron Chef!
Last Reunion's Minute to Win it night was such a success that this year's game show theme was Iron Chef...we were given a cart full of food, 10 minutes to plan 2 entrees + 1 side + 1 dessert, and 1 hour to get it all prepared to be judged.

Yes, I was terrified:  I am a cookbook follow instructions kind of gal...but I was AMAZED at what each of the teams came up with!  It didn't hurt that I was on the same team of Nate who used to work as a chef at Turtle Bay in Hawaii...and my Mom.


GAMES GAMES GAMES!  
The day is dedicated to the kids.  But by NIGHT all of the grown ups can be found talking and playing games all night long!!!

Nothing makes you laugh harder than seeing Enoch act out Ariel in Clue Charades!

PARTNERS IN CRIME
It's always fun to see cousins bond...but when it's lunch time and we couldn't find our two 2-year old best friend cousins Alana and Avery, we began a search party.

 We searched high and low, in the woods and near the fishing pond, but FINALLY found them locked in a bedroom, giggling away...they had discovered the stash of marshmallows hiding in Grandma & Grandpa's room!  And they found her nail polish, and the cheerio "beads" for necklaces.  And the vase of flowers.  And the perfect jumping beds.  When they found all these treasures, they sure were smart to lock the door and keep it all to themselves!

After we unscrewed the doorknob, popped the back screen off the 2nd story window and climbed up a ladder to get in, we discoveredthis:

This picture gives it NO justice, but the room was TRASHED!
Here the girls are trying to get the nail polish off their COVERED toes:

Talent Shows, Night Games, Glow-in-the-dark Ultimate Frisbee, Water Balloon Toss, Kites, Hikes, Water Ball Launches, etc...We had the greatest time ever!

Steve and I are in charge of our next reunion in 2014...any suggestions are welcome!  And we are just excited to be all together again!

If you're a goldfish, read this...

Yesterday we became "gold fish pet owners"...Take 10.

And yet, for some reason, these resilient
can live in a bag
can be prizes from a carnival
can live in a fishbowl forever
easiest pet imaginable

have never managed to live over 52 hours at our house (yes, goldfish take 9 was a REAL fighter, breaking all previous records, and giving us the false hope that we actually might make it).  But nope, we came home from church on Sunday and he was belly up.

So for Take 10 we pulled out all the stops.  We even bought filtered water, the stuff WE don't even buy for ourselves because it's so ritzy.

And what do we get?  36 hours of awesomeness just to end with yet another goldfish's cold blood on our hands.

Honestly.  My goldfish lived FOREVER in their fishbowl.  Carter's goldfish in his classroom lived the whole year (well, almost) in a fish bowl.  Yet they claim a goldfish needs to be in no SMALLER than a 10-gallon tank...um, excuse me?  have you not seen the success rate of fishbowl gold fish?  OK, not at OUR house per se, but really ... are you with me?

Aren't goldfish supposed to live longer than this in a normal fish bowl?  Where did we go wrong??

So I guess the moral of the story is:
if you're a goldfish,
beware. 

Maybe we'll move on to hamsters.

Last Train from Paris -- and we were on it!

I am Princess Idelle Chatre.  He is Weyland Awfcorce.

It is June 13, 1940.

We are the rich and proper folk catching the last train out of Paris before it gets taken over by Nazis.  

Can't you tell?

Sure we all look like we are getting along, but in reality one of us here apparently committed a murder while on the train.  And it was our job to figure out

who.

and why.

and how.

Thank you to Jackie who planned this awesome AWESOME dinner party.  She bought a How to Host a Murder Party Game super cheap online and we can't wait to do it again.  It was fun to dress up 1940s style with our friends, and if you'd walked in on us you wouldn't have been able to differentiate WHO went to college on a theater scholarship and WHO would rather be caught dead than be on a stage....EVERYONE did a great job!

SCHOOL'S OUT!

I picked up our kindergarten graduate from school yesterday in this hot ride!  We were the talk of the parking lot ... and we loved the smiles and honks and waves we got throughout the day driving to all our end-of-school-start-of-summer celebrations.  Odyssey Fun World, the library to stock up on chapter books (which he's already read 2 since we got yesterday at 5 PM), and out to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings.  So cinch up your bootstraps, because here we go into the summer of fun!

Sure would be easier to believe if it wasn't only 54 degrees today!

Colorful Water Bursts

Want a cool experiment to do?

Fill a vase or large pitcher with water.

Put some oil in a measuring cup or bowl.

Add a few drops of food coloring to the oil and stir so the food coloring drops disperse.

 Slowly pour the oil and colors into the water. 

Watch and be amazed as the colors slowly disperse and leak through the water making threads of color in their path.  We talked about density and color mixing, and let them predict what would happen with the colors we chose to put in.

If only every Memorial Day could be spent like this!

Best way to kick off the end-of-school week!!

Carter - the kindergarten grad!

Addison will LOVE the extra playtime with his brother now!

Alana now has two brothers to dote on her daily!  Oh what ever will we do!

Every few minutes we would see Alana sunbathing like this!  So relaxed.  So natural.  And SOOO not something her mother does...where DID she learn this!

Addison building us our own swimming pool.  It was quite fun when it was done!

What a good sport Daddy is!  Thank goodness for showers at the end of the day.

Maybe next year the water will be warmer; then again, probably not.

We're at it again!

These week-day date-nights are SUCH a good idea!  

The movie theater was so empty they even let us bring in a milkshake from Johnny Rockets.  Sweet Sweet movie-theater-working-teenagers :)

Carter's thinking outside the box...

Today Ms Jensen, Carter's kindergarten teacher, brought me over to see all the kids' sealife project.  They had been learning about sea creatures for a while, and were making a 3D art project...They were supposed to just pick a favorite sea creature...draw it, paint it, then stuff it with newspaper, and then she hung them up in the room.  Why did she ask me specifically to see this display of jelly fish, sea horses, and sea-snakes?  Because Carter's project made us both sing the Sesame Street Song:

"One of these things is not like the other."

This was HIS project:

Oh yes.  MY child didn't settle for a simple drawing of a sea-creature.  No No.  He took it the extra six miles and displayed the food chain!  Which the class hadn't even talked about, Ms. Jensen pointed out.  That's how awesome our little Carter man is, in case you were wondering!

(Ms. Jensen pointed out that Carter told her the green stuff at the end was plankton but he had run out of room so didn't want to write it.)

My dating life

I surprised Steve last night and took him out to dinner.  The logistics to accomplish such a task was kinda fun.  I texted a babysitter (wow...so convenient), pretty sure she'd check her phone at lunch.  success.  I coaxed him to come home on an earlier train.  I left the house in time to try to meet him at his car at the train station and kidnap him there.

And that's where the plans failed.  I got EVERY red light, and funeral procession, and duck crossing imaginable.  So it got to the point that I was searching the oncoming traffic for his car as I drove...when I saw him --flying at 50 mph-- I laid on my horn...to no avail.  So I did a legal u-turn, got every red light again, and knew he was going to beat me home to find the kids with the babysitter.  Sometimes the best laid plans....

...well, due to our mad indy-500 driving skills, I caught up with him a few blocks from our house!  I flagged him down and motioned for him to follow me.  At which point I passed our street, pulled over to the side of the road, and hopped into his car. 

"Let's Go!  You're taking me out on a date!"  He thought the kids were in the car with me (of course) so I got to make up all kinds of excuses there, which was fun, of course!  But then I straightened it out and off we went to one of our favorite restaurants: Biaggi's.

It was just really really fun to be spur of the moment like that.  And to be on a date in the middle of the week.  And to be home by 8. 

Carter's Piano Recital

Beethoven would have been very proud.  Very proud indeed!

And so were we!  This was his first recital and he performed just right.  He played "Ode to Joy" by Beethoven and a folk song called "Lightly Row".  Carter has been taking lessons for a year.

We had a video-taping malfunction...I started with one camera and it quit right at the beginning!  YIKES!  So I quickly snatched the camera Addison was using to try to catch the full 45 second performance :)  So, sorry about the arm in the way, and the distance.  But it's the best we could do!  *sigh*

He has always had such a great ear and has loved music.  He prefers the classical pieces more than the kiddie folk songs, and it's no wonder -- he's grown up listening to them at home, and with Little Einstein's influence (we {heart} that show!)  He surprises us as we listen to songs on the radio, classical or pop, and he pulls out the instrument parts that he hears behind the main melody.  Steve and I often look at each and think "How did he HEAR that?"  And it's been that way since he was a baby. 

It was also fun that in the early morning, Carter and I made sugar cookies together, decorated with white frosting and sprinkles to take to his recital, too.  We took some extras to his soccer game, too.  It was a "Carter-Talent" day, that's for sure.

The thing we call Mother's Day

 Sweet and refined?  Yes, at times, but catch Alana at her rawest form and you might see this:

Well, at least she ate all her peas.

She LOVES dressing up as a Princess, dancing as a Ballerina, and going to watch the Ballerina Princesses at the Park District.  This has been her newest fave outfit...

Last night as I checked in on my sleeping kids, I found her PJs on the floor next to her bed.  That's when I noticed she had changed before falling asleep into her wedding dress...and snow boots.  Boy, was she thrilled in the morning that she was already dressed and ready to go!

Her current line that's making me laugh?  After we rinse her hair in the bath, she cries out in utter despair "Towel for mine eyeballs!"

Addison is my hugger!  ALWAYS telling me he loves me, even mid-activity, sometimes even mid-thought.  He'll be telling me something and in the middle just add in "Mommy, I love you."  He is great at saying Sorry, Thank you, Please, and all those other magic words.

What phrase does he say that I am loving right now?  He finds anything and everything that remotely resembles BYU and points it out...and yes, that means every "Y" he finds on signs or in books.  At church he opens up the program and reads BYU by circling all of those letters, in order, as he reads and finds them. 

Phrase that made me laugh?   When he asked me if I wanted a glass of water at breakfast, he asked in an unconventional way:  "Mom, are you in a water mood?"

And, though it will embarrass him when he's older, I must tell you that I love that he calls his drawers "undie pants".

And Carter?  Carter, Carter, Carter...doesn't this picture say it all?  He's such a HAM!  We see more and more of Steve's show business and entertaining ways in this kid as he grows up!  I walked by the bathroom and saw this ... and about 12 other proud poses!  Steve and I chuckled when he came downstairs and systematically announced that he was "no longer fond of Halloween".  He just said it in such a grown up way!

But nothing made us laugh harder than when we were at church and behind us was a girl he'd never met before (she was 17).  In the middle of the meeting, the row behind us started to laugh -- really laugh.  We turned around to discover that Carter had passed her a note that said, "Call me XXX-XXX-XXXX" with his phone number right there!!!

Yes, Mothering these kids is a handful, and as EVERY stranger likes to point out, Yes, I have my hands full.  But it's life. It's what I signed up for.

from Alana

Addison and Carter gave this to me at church!

Carter's Mother's Day Crayon Art!

They're all so sweet!  One just had to take a potty break...