The perfect picture...

I decided to take some pictures of all 4 kids together. It's quite the feat. But the kids and I set off after dinner to get some pictures taken! The first one fired off was pretty great! I swapped Mikayla's head because she smiled better the second shot. Hooray.

Here was another good one, except for Jack. He was done by now and didn't want to participate. He was swapped out and looks pretty good.

The kids wanted to take pictures of me and Mikayla so I agreed, mainly to keep them cooperative. I like this one.

The overall experience was good. Even without photoshop, I would've had some pretty decent shots.

No wonder people didn't smile in the old days; it was just too hard when you had 19 kids.

Juliet's Dance Class...

Ever since the summer Olympics, Juliet has decided that she's a gymnast. A flyer came around for the community center and offered ballet classes for $18 a month. Jules was all over it. She begged and begged to go. So I signed her up, bought all the cute ballet clothes and she's in love. This is from the first day of class.

She's been living in the ballet clothes ever since. I just have 2 rules, she can't wear them to school or eat in them.

She's also gotten really good at cartwheels and surprised me by doing backflips on the trampoline! How did she get so big?!

Hula hoops and 500th blog post! Wahoo!

Juliet got a hula hoop at the dollar store yesterday. She's been having fun practicing!

Hiking Oak Grove...

Merril and Ryan R. took the kids hiking up Oak Grove trail.

 I remember hiking it and thinking it was pretty steep but the kids did great!

Ryan and his kids brought stuff to camp out but Merril turned around with our kids after about a mile.  Good job kiddos!

A new robe...

A few months ago, Maxine and I scored some reduced price fleece for a sewing project: a robe. Maxine wanted a blue robe and we already had the pattern from a previous sewing project. The plan was to sew the robe during the summer. That didn't really happen. On Saturday, Merril took Juliet to a car show, Jack went to a birthday party, Mikayla took a nap, and Maxine and I sewed.

Maxine sewed some and I sewed some. To be honest, the fleece was kind of a pain.

But it turned out great!




I got to use my rotary cutter and mat from Christmas! Yippee! It looked like it snowed blue fleece at our house afterwards. We had blue floofies everywhere.

We cleaned up and Maxine wore the robe almost all day. And the day after that. Thankfully she can't wear it to school. :)

Wahoo back to school!

I had a great time this summer. The kids were good, we had reading and writing time almost everyday, the kids did chores and we had some great vacations. Then I went school shopping about a week ago and ever since then, I'm totally ready to kick the kids out the door. The kids were excited to go to school too! First Day: Maxine is going to 4th grade, Jack to 1st, and Juliet in Kindergarten.
Technically, Juliet didn't start this day but still rode the bus since I was going to the school to meet the kids and help them to their classrooms.

This is Juliet's first day of real Kindergarten. Her friend from Primary, Lauren, is in her Kindergarten class.

Every day Juliet comes home happy from school. Maxine's already bored. Jack is adjusting to the all day thing. He comes home and seems to unwind for about 10 minutes with a fit or two. Then he relaxes and everyone is happy again.

I'm really loving the mornings to myself. I play with Mikayla, clean up while she's napping and I've started some projects. Nothing fun yet, just organizing closets and ridding my house of the clutter that accumulates while I'm pregnant.

Mom's playdate...

My best friend from high school, Emily, now lives in Massachusetts. She called me last week and said she was flying out west for her sister's wedding and wondered if I'd mind driving for a few hours to meet her and visit. I immediately accepted and planned a road trip. We met in a podunk little town for dinner. My friend Emily is in the blue strips, her sister Laura is in olive green and Emily's cousin Andrea is sitting next to me.

We all brought our little girls. The moms chatted and the kids ran around and played. Luckily the restaurant had a back room that was completely deserted. Otherwise we might have alienated the whole restaurant with our kids. I'm always amazed how Emily and I can fall right back into old rhythms like I just saw her last week. We chatted for a long time in the restaurant and then for a while in the parking lot. Then we had to leave. Bummer. Thankfully, Juliet and Mikayla were super good the whole time and I was grateful for good kids!

Lemonade Stand on the Last Day of Summer!

Every time I see a lemonade stand, I pull over and support the young entrepreneurs of America. It was a goal of Maxine's to have a lemonade stand this summer. I said we'd do it over and over again until Monday night when Maxine in tears said, "Summer's almost over and we didn't have a lemonade stand." I said, "You're right and tomorrow is the last day of summer and we'll do it!"

Merril wanted the opportunity to teach the kids about small business and made them buy the supplies. Jack bought lemonade packets, Maxine bought cups, and Juliet bought poster board with their own money. Mommy donated sugar and water. They were super excited! (Jack's pulling another cool face.)

We set up a shade tent on a busy street. Jack and Juliet got bored after 45 minutes and Daddy took them home. They received their share of the profits, $2 each. Which they seemed happy with.

Maxine decided to stay for another hour and a half and her total profits for the day were $12, since she didn't have to split with Jack and Juliet anymore.

Maxine was super thrilled as we took down the shade tent.

Maxine said she was very grateful to me and paid me 50 cents. :) I gave it back. Hee hee. Later that night, I found a note on my pillow from Maxine saying she was so happy with the lemonade stand and that she couldn't have done it without me. Occasionally, doesn't it feel great to know that we're raising good, responsible kids?? :)

I'm loving peaches...

We've been eating peaches like mad because our peach tree has produced beautiful peaches. I prefer peaches fresh versus bottling them so I made a peach-blueberry tart the other night. Oh so yummy!

Don't you just want to eat it?!

I always feel so grateful when my plants produce food.

And as a total change of subject, can you tell where Juliet is?

She's sitting on top of the fridge. She loves it. The ledge isn't that big and she's the only one who fits. She's always asking Merril to set her there. Weird kids. :)

Lake Powell 2012

We went to Lake Powell with my family and we toured the Glen Canyon Dam.  This is the top next to an old turbine:

This is down at the bottom.  The guide said there's a reason for planting the grass.  Something about a lot of vibrations and the dirt and grass helps dampen them.  They mow it too.

These are the generators in the bottom of the dam.  They're made by General Electric, which I found to be amusing for some reason.

Julie fell asleep in this chair.  She was sleepy from too much sun.

Back at the beach, we just tried to keep Mikayla happy.  She was sick and cutting teeth.  The first night there, she kept waking up and crying.  I tried to nurse her and keep her quiet but we were in a tent, nestled in with 5 other tents.

I ended up walking with her up the beach.  She kept crying and the rangers came out to investigate.  When the rangers found me walking, they said they just wanted to make sure a baby hadn't been abandoned.  Apparently it happens.  *eyebrows raised*  I ended up getting the boat unhitched and driving around with her in the truck until she fell asleep.  When she'd fall asleep, I'd pull over on the road and park.  When she woke up, I'd start driving again.  I just kept praying for 7 a.m.

The second night there, I didn't even try to go to bed in the tent.  I just loaded Mikayla in the truck and away we drove.  While getting gas in my sleepy stupor, I lost Merril's wallet.  It was mailed to us a few days after we got home.  Unfortunately, the $120 cash was missing.  Oh well, at least the wallet and driver's license made it home.  :)  Crazy.

24th of July Parade...

Our ward had the Primary kids decorate bikes for the Pioneer Day Parade. Juliet was excited! She's standing by her friend Ayzie.

Jack had red streamers and wanted to look like he was going fast.

Maxine tried to get a red, white, and blue theme going and I think she did pretty good!

Mikayla was great and happy and then fell asleep.

Merril was able to take the morning off and come help get bikes to the parade.
At the community center, Juliet and Maxine got their faces painted and we all had sloppy joes.
It was cloudy and really pleasant, bordering on cold with the wind. But we had fun and then came home.

For dinner we made tin foil dinners and baked bread. :) Then we lit sparklers!

Maxine's cookies

Maxine broke out the Easy Bake oven and made these super cute sugar cookies. She made the 2 batches of dough and cut a heart out of the middle and swapped the center.

She really loves to bake and even got her own apron at a family reunion auction this summer.

Rice cereal...

So we started Mikayla on rice cereal and of course it's mostly everywhere except her mouth.

But she seems to like it and it's been fun. She gets a bite and then sucks her thumb, like she can't figure out how to make it go down without the thumbsucking.

What a mess!

Swim lessons and bacon...

So I put Jack and Juliet in swim lessons this summer. Maxine naturally wanted to swim and so I barely had to do anything and she was an avid swimmer. Jack and Juliet like to play on the beach when we go to the lake and so they needed a little encouragement. I've tried a couple of times to get them to swim this summer and it just wasn't happening. So I decided to throw them in some swimming lessons, mainly to force us to get to the pool on a consistent basis for practice. So on the first day, they pretty much took off because a "teacher" told them to put their head down and swim instead of Mommy. Here's Juliet on the first day.

I'm wondering why I had to throw down $60 for that but whatevs. They're having a great time! And today I tried my first maple donut with bacon on top. Oh yummilicious!

Freezing in San Diego...but still had an awesome time!

We drove down to San Diego area Tuesday during the day. We ate dinner at a taco stand where we were the only white people for miles. We got drinks called watermelon agua fresca that had little pieces of watermelon in it. Totally the best drink I've had in ages! So delicious on a hot day! We got to our hotel in time for bed.

The next day we got up and went to look at the beach and FROZE! It was around 65 degrees, cloudy and windy, and I forgot to pack jackets. Maxine packed her own, smart girl. We went to Walmart and found jackets for Jack and Juliet. The only size we could find for Jack was 5T so the sleeves were too small but it worked. There was nothing in the women's department so I ended up going to fabric and getting a yard of pink fleece cut and wrapped myself in it. I was going to have fleece cut for Jack and Juliet and make some poncho-type things but Merril said he'd pony up and buy real jackets instead of my poncho creations. We went to see the San Diego Temple. It was closed for the 4th of July but we still looked at the outside.


One of the sister missionaries at the temple suggested we go see the Mormon Battalion Museum, which turned out to be really fun for the kids. Jack got dressed up like a Battalion recruit and they panned for gold. They were able to take 2 pieces of gold home. We really liked it.

We ate dinner and drove up to La Jolla Bay to watch the fireworks, which were pretty spectacular. I heard the San Diego fireworks had a technical glitch and the whole show went up in 15 seconds. Glad we didn't hang around for those.

The next day we got up early and went to Legoland, Jack's pick for a family vacation!

We rode in some boats!

Drove some cars!
Mikayla and I hung out and had a good time in the aforementioned piece of pink fleece. :)

Maxine got eaten by a Lego shark and Juliet spied land with a Lego sea captain.

Jack rocked out with some Lego characters.

Mikayla rode around in the stroller and was spectacularly good, which is her nature lately. She is super mellow and hangs out. She's 5 months old today and I really can't believe it!

Yep, we all had a great time and stayed until closing time. Then we drove the 7 hours home and didn't pull into the driveway until 4:30 a.m. Then we all slept in until 10 a.m. the next day. Ahhhhh!