Sullivan's Chores

The girls thought it was time for Sullivan to have a turn at gathering eggs.

The girls have really been into painting their fingernails lately. They wanted to paint Sullivan's nails for the longest time, but I kept telling them "no." I really doubted Jeff would appreciate that. I caved though when Sullivan was getting cranky and I was trying to cook dinner. At least they painted his nails blue and it gave me more than enough time to finish was I was doing.

Pioneer Day

On July 24, 1847 Brigham Young struck his cane to the ground near where the Salt Lake Temple now stands and declared "Brethren, here we shall build a temple to our God." I can't tell you how many times I said that on my mission, probably a million! This year we celebrated with our ward doing traditional pioneer games and eating yummy food. My kids were in shock when they realized that these were the things pioneer kids did to have fun.

Fireworks

My Dad

One of my most favorite memories from this 4th of July would be playing spoons with Jeff, my siblings and siblings-in-law and my Dad. (My Mom was watching all of the kids play outside, thanks Mom!)

We used to play spoons all the time, so playing this game after we haven't played in years was so much fun. I don't know what started it, Monte's talk about radiation and Danielle admitting to staring at the microwave till her food was done, or the way she shuffled cards (sorry Danielle, it was funny!)

But, we'd all start laughing and then we couldn't stop. My Dad has 2 laughs, one is a curtesy chuckle and the other one is a deep, wheezy, from-the-belly laugh. So, once we started laughing...the deep belly laugh appeared and we'd laugh some more, we laughed till we cried. It was so good to see my Dad laugh like that again, a laugh that I haven't seen for awhile.

After the BBQ/Swimming at me brother's home, we went shopping for some fireworks. I was slightly disappointed in the selection vs. the price, but since we were all pitching in we ended up with a load of fireworks!! We then went to my sister's house and swam and ate snacky type foods.



Marco, Polo...

Halle.


Jason and Mayzi.



Marley, Landin, Sailor.

Our niece was baptized over the 4th of July weekend, so we headed to see my side of the family. My brother had us over for an afternoon BBQ. The kids had a load of fun!

Noel and Sullivan got a turn on the trampoline, though I think Sullivan's bounces kept knocking Noel down.




Monte and Misty had like 5 different kid pools out so I made Sullivan wear a lifevest most of the afternoon. He mostly played in the sandbox.



Baby Gwen.

Kammi, Marley and Sailor.

When your kids get super cranky because they are going stir crazy from being inside all afternoon because it is too hot to go outside and explore, a Mom will do(almost)anything to relieve some of this crankiness. It just happened to be on the day that Percy Jackson was coming out on Blu Ray. We planned a blue dinner party and the girls made lightning bolts and hung them up around the house. We ate blue colored baked potato soup with blue rolls, blue jello with a whipped cream lightning bolt on top and drank blue Gatorade. We literally had blue tongues! Then we watched the movie together. It was a fun afternoon and kept the kids entertained for a bit. Oh, and we all wore blue clothing, except Dad because he was at work and didn't know.

T-ball/Coach Pitch

I'm so far behind on my blog, ugh. This was London's first t-ball season ever and she did AWESOME!!! She happened to have a really great coach (the high school girls softball coach) and he really knew how to teach these young kids how to play ball. I was slightly worried (after a bad experience with soccer) that London wouldn't like sports and not want to participate, but she proved me wrong and really loved it. I'm thinking we *might* need to try soccer again sometime. Her team this year also won the sportsmanship award which is pretty cool, again I think her coach had a lot to do with that in how he made the kids have so much fun, not like a competition at all.

This was Kamryn's first year at coach pitch. She played t-ball previously, but is now old enough to be bumped up. As soon as the season started, Jeff was outside with the girls on a daily basis practicing. Kamryn got to be really good at bat thanks to those extra practices. She tends to scoot away from the ball when it is thrown to her, but I'm sure more practice will help her gain the confidence she needs. I don't have any pictures of her because they were taken on the disposable camera...Boo!