Our Summer in a Nutshell

After spending literally 5 hours arranging all of these photos and taking a few days break from it I am ready to catch up on the goings on with our family. By the way, does anyone else wish that there is a way to select the location that you want to place a photo on a post and have it actually work?

Anyway, now that I have a couple of kids back in school and I am not playing full time referee,
I can get us caught up in the blogging world.

May 17th I turned 29. It has hit me this year that I am not yet old but I need to stop pretending I am still YOUNG.

My birthday fell on a Sunday so I spent most of the day at church and with the kids. Jeremy got home from his bishopric duties without a moment to spare and we headed up to my parents to share cake and ice cream.

This is the only picture that I feel comfortable posting. Apparently I make a funny face when I blow out birthday candles ( too bad.....it has been erased, never to be seen again).

Father's Day

You know how kids are convinced that their parents NEED to buy every device that they see on infomercials? You know...the "Bump it" for hair, the "Pancake Puff," etc.? Well the kids didn't know that I bought Jeremy the "Iron Gym" pull up bar until he opened it. Gavin was so excited to see it in real life and he talked about it all day.

We also gave Jeremy a shirt and shorts to excercise in (We are going on a cruise in a couple of months and he wants to shape up a bit).






I love and live for summer fruits to be in season. One week I couldn't decide which fruits to buy since they were all on sale. So I bought all of them! For lunch one day I just cut up a whole bunch of fruit and topped it with whipped cream and had a summer fruit feast. The kids were in heaven.

Before the summer heat really invaded our lives we had a few days of really pleasant weather to enjoy.

Takin' it easy.....

On the move....

Oooops!

Reese's "fish face"

Gavin loves to pose for pictures........silly boy.

Andie putting together a concotion of yellow flowers in a bottle of water with a flag on top?

CAMPIN' FOR THE FOURTH

I was having a moment of de-ja-vu when I noticed that the kids had made an amusement ride out of a small crooked tree. My cousins and I would spend endless hours doing the same thing when we were little.

Bubbles and dirt don't go well together, but it was fun anyway!

Fire and babies don't go well together either. This is a picture of Reese in the Payson E.R. at One in the morning on the 4th of July. Her hand doesn't look that bad yet in this picture but a couple of days later all of her fingers were double the size around from all the swelling and fluid. She was a trooper though and actually slept through the night allowing us to stay the rest of the trip.

The kids wanted to see some crawdads so I cought a few for them. It was fun seeing their different reactions. I have 3 girls and 1 boy. As it ends up, my boy is the one that is scared of anything crawly.......and of the dark.

Reese is a good sport. She was nervous at first at the sight of this strange thing with claws but soon found them humerous.

It started to rain so we sought temporary refuge under a tree. I couldn't resist using this time to get a few pictures

This is why Uncle Jeremy is a better person than I. If there is a job to be done I tend to want to be left alone so as to accomplish the task more quickly. The cousins approached the tent while Jeremy was trying to take it down and I shouted, "Don't go in the tent, Jeremy's trying to clean up." Then I hear Jeremy kindly tell the kids that they are welcome to come in as long as they take their shoes off.........I love this man.

Back yard visitor.

We saw this Roadrunner in our backyard a couple of weeks ago. He was not at all shy either. We all stood at the back window as he came right to us to check us out.

He ran off and we thought he was gone, but he just went to catch a lizard and brought it back to the porch to eat it. I have never seen one that close up before, it was cool.

You can't see it very well but here is a picture of Reese's burn about a week after.

We have been watching the lizards in our backyard get bigger and plumper as the summer rolls on. I decided to go out there and catch one so the kids could see it.

Once again, the girls were interested and Gavin wasn't.

These girls have no fear of creatures. I have been told that they inherited it from someone. I wonder who?