Ready or not, here I come!

So one of the things that has gotten me all stressed out this week is preparing for GIRLS CAMP! We leave on Monday and it has not been without the usual last minute drama! But despite all of that and all of the stress it has created, I am getting SOOOO excited!!!! I absolutely LOVE Girls Camp! Some of my favorite memories growing up are from Girls Camp. Good times! When I received my call as Young Women’s President, that was one of the first things I thought of was that I’d get to go to camp. My first experience last year as a leader turned out amazing! I was 7 ½ months pregnant, but I was very blessed and felt great and loved every minute of it. I always slept in tents during my days as a YW and that’s how it was last year (only I actually slept in my car!), but this year we are actually going up to a new campsite that I’ve heard is the Marriott of all Girls Camps. It has cabins, hot showers (you only get 1 during the week), and fridges for the food. There’s also ropes courses, canoeing and all sorts of other crazy activities. I was a little bummed to be honest when I first heard that that’s how it was going to be this year because that’s not Girls Camp to me…..but I’ve gotten over it and decided that it’ll still be fun. I love the smell of campfire and always want to be at Girls Camp every time I smell that smell. Woo hoo Girls Camp, here I come!

Welcome to the world , Jonas!

I got a new nephew this week! My sister had a little boy on Wednesday morning. They named him Jonas, and I believe I heard that the middle name they've decided on is Dylan, although I have no idea if that's how it's spelled. He was tiny! He was only 6 lbs. 3 oz. and was 19 inches long. When Bonnie called me to tell me she'd had him, she said he didn't look a whole lot like her other two kids who are both dark complexioned (it's true, my nephew actually gets mistaken as being hispanic sometimes), but anyway, she said he actually looked more like one of my babies. I got to go visit her that night and see for myself. Sure enough, he looked very much like one of my babies. He is so cute! He is seriously one of the cutest babies I've ever seen. Most babies are NOT cute at first....let's all admit it.....but he is. I'm sure it helped that he was born by c-section, which meant no cone-head syndrome. ;) And Bonnie looked gorgeous for having just given birth. Again though....c-section....thus, no sweat stained face from all the pushing! Lucky! Actually, despite all that, I'm still glad I never had to do a c-section with any of my kids. Yikes! Anyway, congrats and good luck, Bon! Call me when you freak out because you realize you and Travis are now outnumbered. ;)

Peyton enjoying the attention as the "big baby".

The picture doesn't do him justice. He is so cute!

It's un-jacked!

After a few weeks of having our yard all ripped up, it has finally been put back together. Between the crazy weather and having to keep coming back to fix problems they created (such as fixing three sprinklers they broke!) it has taken a little longer than expected. They poured the concrete for the patio, and then filled in all of the holes from the Bobcat tracks with topsoil. They originally were going to put sod down over the topsoil, but it would end up making it really uneven, so they put seed down. So our yard still looks a little crazy and will be that way for a few months (or a couple years) until the grass grows back! It’s nice to go out and sit on the patio (on the patio set that we bought and have stored in the basement for TWO YEARS!), but it’s hard to be out there with Logan because he just wants to play in the dirt piles all over the yard! All in all, it’s just nice to have it done. We love it! And even after all of the problems with the people we had, we really liked the people who did it and would totally recommend them to anyone.

Happy Birthday, September!

So like I said, September turned 8 on Monday! Just last week I was bringing her home from the hospital, and then bam, she’s 8! It has flown by way too fast! She is such an amazing girl and we are so lucky to have her in our family. She’s super-smart (I wish I could take credit for it, but it’s all her), a great helper (we call her the “second mother” – I’m not kidding, she’s a better mother than I am), and she’s a great friend. She’s the absolute best “first child” you could ask for!

To start off her birthday I took her to get her ears pierced. She has been begging me for months and I’ve been telling her that she could do it as soon as she was willing to take care of them by herself, since the thought of it makes me sick. Yes, I still have virgin ears and always will….that’s how scared of needles I am!!! So anyway, in the past couple weeks she’s been telling me she’s ready and I figured her birthday would be a fun time to do it. I thought she’d chicken out, but she was so brave and hardly flinched.

Then in the afternoon, we took the whole family, and 6 friends she’d invited (that’s the max we could fit in our cars), to Boondocks. It was a lot of fun and only got chaotic right at the end when all of the kids were trying to pick what they wanted to buy with the tickets they’d gotten from the arcade games….”Hmmm, do I want a bouncy ball or a sticker?” We were about an hour and a half later dropping the kids off than we told their parents we would. Oops! But September had fun and all of the kids seemed to enjoy themselves. It turned out to be a fun day and the weather actually cooperated and was beautiful!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEPTEMBER!!!

Showing off her new dress from Dave & Kenia. They always pick the cutest clothes!

September and her new best friend....her Ipod Shuffle! She's a little obsessed with it! :)

Trying out her new hula-hoops from Kalun & Kristi.

Getting ready to cruise on the slick track!

The Party Crew

A crazy week...but full of firsts, seconds....and an eighth!!

The past couple weeks have been a little crazy at our house. It's officially summer vacation for the kids and while they're enjoying it, I don't know that I am. Having four kids home ALL day gets a little hard. And the weather has not been all that great....until the past couple of days....finally!! There are pros and cons though to having them in school and having summer break, and I'm just trying to focus on the pros.....such as not having to deal with homework! So yes, even though there has been a lot of chaos and stress in my life over the past couple weeks, there has also been a lot of fun and exciting things. Peyton has had a couple “firsts” and one “second”. After rolling around, scooting on her back, and army crawling for the past month or so, she finally took her first real crawl up on all fours. She’s done it a couple times since, but it’s still so much easier to get around in all of her old ways that she doesn’t really do it much. She also finally learned how to sit up from laying down, which is the only other milestone that I encourage besides sitting in general. If you think about it, those are the only 2 milestones that have nothing but positive things about them. All of the others….crawling, walking, talking, etc….also come with all sorts of trouble! So anyway, that’s an exciting one. And then on Sunday she got her second tooth and has been able to start eating so many more things, all thanks to one more sharp object in her mouth….it’s great! And speaking of teeth….Kya lost her second tooth today. So far her and Pey are following a similar pattern of losing and gaining teeth. It’s kind of funny how coincidental it has been!

Then, on Monday, September turned EIGHT! When on earth did she get that old?!? We had a really fun day, but I'll save all the details for another post.

Fire Station Fieldtrip

Our neighborhood does a little playgroup and goes all sorts of places for field trip type things. They just happened to be going to the fire station on the last day of school and since Ember and Kya got out of school early that day, we decided to go. Our friend’s little boy had just had a “fire truck themed birthday” a few days earlier and I thought he’d have a blast going, so we took him with us. It was Ember’s and Kya’s second or third time going, but they all still enjoyed it. What child gets sick of sitting in a fire truck???

I love this picture! Tate and Logan are so giddy about their hats!!

See ya later, Kindergarten!

Well, she did it! Kya passed kindergarten and was allowed to graduate. ;) Some people think that kindergarten graduation is such a lame thing, but I’m one of those that actually thinks it’s pretty cute. They had a nice little program, sang some cute songs, received their diplomas, and just like that…..Kindergarten was over! They just opened a JCW’s by our house so we took Kya out for ice-cream to celebrate. It was a little selfish on our part, I’ll admit. ;)

Do you remember these???

I came across something tonight that not only brought back memories, but brought tears to my eyes.....from laughing so hard. I just HAD to come and post about it. O.k. who remembers making the "thing" I have pictured above? You know them....the things that you make and then write special messages on the inside that participants will be revealed once they have been through the whole "pick a number" and "pick a color" stage. What on earth are they called??? Anyway, September has started making these lately and tonight I found one laying on the end table. It had one of the flaps laying open so I could read the inside message. They were kind of funny so I read them out loud to Matthew. Then, I opened up the other flaps. Oh my gosh, I laughed so hard reading them to Matthew I couldn't even finish the sentence!! So I just had to share them with all of you so you could all have a laugh as well. Here they are in the order that I read them:

-You'll do good in school next year! (Normal enough, right?)
-Somebody loves you. (Oh, how sweet.)
-You'll be a good mom or dad! (Getting a little strange for a 2nd grader.....but just wait!)
-You'll break an arm on Christmas.
-You'll get a bloody nose on Valentine's Day.
-Your toenail will fall off on St. Patrick's Day.
-You'll be blind on your birthday.
And last but not least....
-You'll be what you've always wanted to be on Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!!

What on earth is wrong with that girl? I'm a little nervous. Well, I hope you've all enjoyed my daughters morbid thoughts!

How many of there are you???

My friend just sent me this email with a link to a website that you can enter your name and it will tell you how many people there are in the US with your name. Try it out....it's kind of interesting. It gives other details as well. And in case you're wondering, there are 9 of me....but only one "ME"!

Go to this website http://www.howmanyofme.com

Last day of dance

Here's some pictures of September's & Kya's last day of dance plus some random pictures we've taken in the past couple weeks of them in their costumes.

Baby...it's all jacked up!

O.k. imagine that line to the tune of Elvis' "I'm All Shook Up". That's the tune and line that's been going through my head for the past few days as I think about our yard. So here's the long story short of why:

We've been wanting to do some kind of patio out back for a LONG time. Originally we wanted to do a deck but had major sticker shock when we got a bid. Obviously it would be the cheapest just to do cement....BUT it would be too hard to do as big of a pad as we wanted because you'd have to do it by wheelbarrowing the cement to the back a little at a time. But after much thought we decided it was at least worth a shot to get some bids and see if someone would be willing to do that. So last Monday I called about 15 different places and found NO ONE that spoke English very well. I tried to get a rough estimate from them over the phone since I didn't want a ton of people coming out and giving me bids....but it was too difficult to explain to them exactly what I needed done because of the language barrier. So finally I agreed to let a select few come and give bids. There were supposed to be two that were going to come out that day....they didn't show. So the next day two more were going to stop by and their appointments were within a half hour of each other. Well, the first one showed up, looked everything over, gave me a bid that seemed pretty reasonable and I felt pretty good about him and since no one else had showed up, Matthew and I decided to go with him. He said he'd bring in a Bobcat to come dig out the sod from the area and the old, small concrete pad. I was worried that it would be too heavy and he swore that they'd done it a bunch of times without problems....so I ok'd it. Um, the ground in Lehi sucks! It's either too soft or too hard depending on whatever you don't want it to be. So in this case, it was too soft. The Bobcat totally sank into the ground and left tire tracks about a foot deep in some places, through our side yard. Yikes! I was really worried because this was just a tiny company that is basically working to put food on the table....not some huge company I could yell at and make them fork out tons of money to fix the mess they'd made. There's a little more to the story, but I won't bore you with the details. The end result is basically this.....they have agreed to fix it. They'll have to bring in some fill dirt and new sod and will probably end up making nothing on our job. I feel so bad. It's not their fault, but it's not ours either. I'm glad they stepped up and were willing to fix their mistakes. I didn't want things to get ugly and thank goodness it never came to that.....well, if you don't count what our yard looks like right now. ;) So hopefully by the end of this week our yard will be back to normal and we'll have a nice big patio in the back. I'll be patiently waiting...

These pictures just don't do it justice!

September & Kya's Dance Recital

September and Kya had their dance recital last week and then had their final day of dance for the term a few days ago. Their teacher actually decided to discontinue teaching so it was kind of a sad day. I don't know if we'll continue somewhere else. The girls had a great time and learned a lot....the extra coordination has been helpful. ;) But I think we might try to find somewhere for them to take gymnastics in the fall....we'll take a break for the summer from anything, other than piano lessons . Or I think we might do soccer. That could be fun. We'll see....