Friday, September 30, 2011

FHE Activity AND Treat

Last Monday, for family home evening, our activity was decorating sugar cookies and our treat was eating them. Well, some of them. Even our desert loving children had to save some for lunch on Tuesday. Here are pictures of everyone's most beautiful cookies.


Rachel



Naomi



Heather


Michael


Gwen


Kelly
(more candy corn than cookie)

Family Reunion

This past July, we went to the annual family reunion on Stan's side. Here are his parents. I sure lucked out in the in-law department. They are as nice as you get :)

There were a lot of people there!

Jeff took twenty (?), thirty(?), a hundred (too many to count) nieces, nephews and grandkids fishing. He let every single kid have a turn, some even got second and third tries. Almost every kid caught a fish. Well, probably every kid caught one, but some kids, who will remain unnamed, lost one or two as well.

There was lots of teenager fun...

...and singing at the campfire.

There were marshmallows and some jaw dropping marshmallow feats performed.

We saw lovely blue dragonflies...

...humongous moths...

...and lots of deer.

It was a great trip :)


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Funny Mo

My friend Kristin and I trade off the school pick up responsibilities. It is fun to have her daughter, Sydney in the car. Apparently Naomi agrees.

Sydney emailed me this from her phone -

Monday, September 26, 2011

Gwen the Adventuress

Gwen did the same math program this past July that Heather did two years ago. The kids spent the first four days of the week learning in the classroom. On Friday the parents were invited to come for an awards ceremony and the kids got to go on the ropes course. Gwen was amazing! She climbed a telephone pole and jumped off -

She pulled the release when she was suspended in the air and went into freefall -

Out of maybe 50 boys and girls, she was the first up to the top of the climbing wall...

...AND the very first one to make it ALL the way across this whatever it is (help here would be appreciated) -


She didn't want me to put up the video of her going all the way across, but she let me put up this little bit of her at the end. Listen to all that applause! That's my Gwen :)




Sunday, September 25, 2011

Gwen's Birthday Party

I am still playing catch up with the posts. I think I will have July done by the end of the week.Rachel looked over my shoulder at the pictures I was uploading and asked, "Why are you blogging about that? It happened forever ago!"

Anyway, just because, here is a post from August. Gwen turned twelve!

Happy (belated) Birthday Gwen!!!

Now we have three girls in Young Women, three kids in Primary and one big girl in Relief Society(!).

Gwen invited some friends from school and some from church and we all went to a lovely little botanic garden for games and hiking.

The turtle pond was a favorite with all.


After a while, it was back to the house for cupcakes and presents. It was fun to hang out with such great girls :)

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Our Summer - Part 1

I have piles of pictures to sort and blog about from the past summer. I'm trying to catch up!

Last June, we traded a couple of our kids for a couple of their cousins. Brecken took the same sailing class that Rachel, Heather and Gwen took last summer (and Heather and Gwen took again last month).

We went with Brecken and Natalie to Chinatown...

...and out for dim sum. Yum!

During the week they were here, our ward had a camp fundraiser auction. I made and donated some cakes. Rachel promised peanut butter cookies and Heather and Gwen auctioned off some babysitting. The auction made enough money to pay for camp - whew!



While we were having fun down here with Brecken and Natalie, Heather and Gwen were riding horses and...

...catching snakes :)

Saturday, September 10, 2011

It was NOT my day.

Last week, I was making myself a lovely hot fudge sundae, scooping the ice cream, heating the hot fudge in the microwave, and watching the hot fudge explode all over my kitchen. It splattered from the ceiling to the floor and everywhere in between.

I guess wiping up all that hot fudge up got me in a mood, because I decided to clean out my fridge, including taking the shelves out, washing them in warm soapy water and watching two of the four explode...self destruct...and fly all over the kitchen. Poor Michael even got hit and cut (just a tiny bit) by flying refrigerator shelf shrapnel.


Ugh.