Hi all!
Well, it's been another crazy two weeks gone again!!!
Time seems to just fly by so fast! We've been busy with friends and family and lots of fun stuff to do.

I began a project... There's lots of background to it, so stick with me! years ago we filled in our garage and built a room when sister and her hubby came here to live with us. Sometime after that (long after sis moved out) we had a leaky roof in our master bedroom and we grew mold in the wall! So Scott and I moved out of the master bedroom and into the converted garage room so we could remediate the mold...

Since we had no garage at the time, the master bedroom slowly became a dump all room, or a "garage" or anything like that your imagination could congure up... I wish I had a picture of it all piled up with stuff, but I don't. Scott and I had been sleeping in this dark garage room that wasn't well set up as a bedroom at all and weeks turned into months and months turned into years and we were still there!!!

Well... Two weeks ago Scott left to go to our ServiceMaster Convention in Orlando Florida (and unfortunately we didn't get to go with him this year.) The first day he was gone I started cleaning out the room... Carter was a trooper and helped me without complaint and we got things organized and moved over to the real garage. I went through TONS of stuff and cleaned and cleaned. We got so far the first day I started obsessing about it. I thought "Oh my gosh, I can really do something with this!" So I set a plan and really got to work!

Things that had to be done included the cleaning out, scraping the popcorn ceiling, textureing and sanding the ceiling, washing the walls, removing old carpet and pad, painting all the walls, getting new carpet installed and then moving in furniture. I had little angeles the second day, named "missionaries" and they did the hard part of scraping and texturing the ceiling! It was awesome!

I kept the whole project a secret from Scott and when I would talk to him throughout the week I had to make up little white lies about what I was doing so he wouldn't really know what was up! I wanted him to be shocked when he came home! So, it was done! It worked and it is awesome!

My neighbor, Nanette made the comment that what a great thing it is to "reclaim the space" and she was totally right! It is "reclaimed"! It is really nice to have a bedroom back and have a real place to just be! I love it. Scott was so grateful for all we had done. He really loves it too.

So I don't have anything on the walls yet, I know what I want, but haven't had time to work on that yet.

These are the angeles that showed up to help...



This is the one dark wall, I love the color. The circles in the picture are just my dumb camera having a moment!



And this is part of the awesome ceiling the angeles did! Just thought I'd add it. It is awesome! I hate popcorn ceilings!!!



Well, right on the heels of my project we had my sister Stephanie come visit with her kids!!! I love her and she is my bestest friend in the entire world!!!



(ya, this wasn't taken this week, but it was a few weeks ago at the cabin... we are all natural (which translates to mean "don't we look great without makeup?")

She stayed a week and we had tons of good times. Also in the picture are Tom and Tammy's kids cause they came on their way back to AZ and stopped by again. That was fun too!



I had to add this pict of the kids playing video games. I'ts not the greatest picture, but it is a lot of what they have done this summer, thank heavens for the Wii!



And just wanted to mention the garden... my sunflower are sagging. Just about the time the flowers bloomed they started getting so heavy they began sagging. This was last week and they are worse now, but they are still quite cool. I don't know how to grow small headed sunflowers that are 10 feet tall, but that would be cool for the back of a garden!

We are still getting tons of squash and everyone who comes over forget's to take it away!!! So come back ya'll and get it! I started shredding it and freezing it so in the winter I can make tons of zuccini bread! I have still given lots away (those poor ladies at the office are probably sick of squash too!) and we still eat it several times a week. We have some beautiful fruit growing and are now getting lots of tomatoes. I'm not sure when to harvest my egg plant, but I better figure it out before it is too late. I don't know too much about the corn either... I guess I better start studying this stuff!



One more week till school starts. I can't believe it, I look forward to the structure that school brings and the kids are looking forward to seeing thier friends!

K, if you read this leave me notes or email's, I love it! Hope everyone is having a great summer!

In my lovely garden...

Ohhh, I'm so excited to put pictures of my garden on here!!! It is growing so big! So yesterday we went down in the sprinkling rain and took pictures.

We are getting crooked neck squash and zucchini every day now and giving it away to lots of people. We are pulling tiny carrots and I actually used them in our salad last night. Also we have small green onions. They just came out small because we planted too many and didn't thin them. So we ate them anyway and they were good. We have beets that we give away and no one eats. We have cucumber that we ate with the salad last night and it is REALLY good. I have also given some of that away too. We have little squash bugs that I am sucking up with the shop-vac. That was Scott's idea and we spray bug spray into the vacuum to kill them. Wasn't that smart?! I hate those little suckers so I like to go suck them up! They eat my squash!

Let's see, we have Watermelon growing like weeds and several little watermelon on it. We have cantaloupe that looks beautiful, we should have plenty of those too. We have huge red chili peppers that are still green so I can't pick them yet and we also have jalapeno peppers. We had radishes, but we ate them all. I have some beautiful purple egg plant growing and I think that is really cool! We also have 3 kinds of tomatoes, cherry, big ones and Roma. They haven't ripened yet, but they will, they look good. And last of all we have corn that is looking pretty good! I hope it turns out so we can eat it! I have never tried corn before and I didn't expect much from it, so it is doing better than I thought. I also planted sunflowers in the back and they are getting huge, but no flowers yet!!! They are like 10 feet tall!!!

I get really excited about the garden so sorry to write so much, but it makes me happy! Next year I am definitely going to have to make it bigger, not to put more in it, but to spread out what I have! There really isn't enough room for everything! It's kinda all growing on top of each other and it is hard to get to lots of the things!

So that's it, I hope you like the pictures!!!

Just a reminder...

Double click on the pictures if you want to see them bigger. I'ts worth it! You can see them way better.

I'M BACK!!!

Well, I think I'm back! I've been back for a week and a half, but we've had sickness in our house and I havn't gotten on the computer long enough to do this big post! I knew it would be big so maybe it was a brain cramp I was having! Anyway, here I am and I'll see if I can't get something posted here!

I'll begin with the recital which came at the end of the last week of school. The kid have been taking piano lessons for five months and they were practicing hard for the recital. Each one of them had a song from a movie and also a classical song. Since we were all dressed up we decided to take them out to dinner before the recital and they enjoyed that. Baillie and Brodric were both nervous to play in front of people. I didn't think Brodric was going to do it, but after a breif delay he got up there and did great!! Baillie kept saying how much she didn't want to, but when it came time there wasn't even a delay, she just popped up with a huge smile and did awesome. The other kids did wonderful too and they all enjoyed it. The Smithons gang were also part of the recital and in total the "cousins" made up 10 of the 17 students in the recital. Here's some pictures of during and after.


How cute is he?????


Clara Baillie and her cousin Shelbie

I didn't put one of Kendahl's back (playing) but I thought this one was so beautiful!

Carter is really a good piano player after only 5 months. He shows real promise. Too bad he doesn't see any of that.

This is kinda Carter's usual face! If I could only get him to smile more...

All the kids after. My kids are never happy about picture time, so this was amazing to get them to even half smile. They are awesome kids though!!!!


The week after school ended and we had the recital, Scott took the kids to the cabin in Arizona and Kendahl and I ran off to girls camp. I got to go this year as a unit mom and Kendahl was a fourth year. We were in seperate units (we thought it would be better that way) but we ended up in the same cabin that housed 3 units. It was a new building that was built due to the California fires burning several buildings at our camp. It is an awesome addition to the camp and we got our own huge bathroom with several stalls and showers. It is NICE. So that was cool. Camp and the girls didn't wear me out as much as I thought they would. I had a really good time! I don't have too many picts, but here's a few.
These are most of the girls in my unit. I didn't get a goup picture! Lame huh!

This is Kendahl and her friend Jennifer. This a normal hair style for camp. For some reason everyone rats their hair... I don't know.

Well, we weren't home from camp for an hour (literally) before were running off to Arizona. We came home, showered, changed out some luggage and we were off.
We went to Williams where Scott and the kids along with Tory and their kids were for the week while Melanie and I were both at camp. So we met up with them. We had a mini family reunion with the Thomas gang. At one point we had My Mom and Dad, Melanie, Billie, Marci, Staci, Stephanie and Rick and most of their entire families. We went to church in Williams with 38 people or so! So 38 people in one cabin was... well you can imagine how that went for yourself! If nothing else, we could add the word "interesting" and that would cover most of it. It was nice to get together and when I look back on it I am glad for the experiences. The cousins will remember these times forever I hope!
During that weekend the favorite thing we did was go to the Lava or "Ice" caves near Flagstaff. It is like a hole in the ground that had tons of rocks that you just climb down into. It is 32-40 degrees year round and the tunnel or cave is almost a mile long. We went about a 1/3 of the way into it and had a little "devotional" with everyone. It was pretty cool. Then some of the group came back and the rest went to the end and back. Everyone LOVED it and I'm sure it is something we will do again! Here's some picts of that!
I wanted to put a few pictures of the hole in the ground. There's actually a 2 foot wall around the opening. The one above of Brodric is at the opening of that little wall. There are a few steps and then you are into the part that is shown below. That is my nephew at the opening of the cave. You just climb down the rocks.

This is looking back at the opening. Carter is standing, looking in. Freaky huh?

This is Carter and his friend climbing down the rocks.


I think this one is just a bunch of the group where we stopped for a while. When you turn off all the flash lights it is pitch black! And freezing! It is pretty awesome!

This is Brodric and I with the lights out. We shut our eyes cause we didn't want to see the flash of the camera!

After some of the kids got out they were up around the little wall, I thought they were so cute.

And this is the kids walking back up the path to the cars. They were so hyper after leaving the caves, it was hard to contain them! But aren't they great?


It wasn't long before we were sending the teenagers off to EFY in Flagstaff at NAU. We had 7 teenagers from our extended family, plus Kendahl's friend Jenny was with us too. They had a great week and EFY and the ones who stayed at the cabin had a nice time there too. My parents, Rick and Aleena, and our husbands all left, but the 5 sisters stayed with the little kids. The week went pretty fast. We rode quads a little, and the kids jumped on the tramp, watched movies, played video games and enjoyed each other a lot!
Just a couple pictures of the cute kids! These are all the 4/5 year olds.


Isn't that peaceful? Wouldn't you like to be out there jumping in the forrest?

Let's see, we decided to come home a day early after the kids returned from EFY. We were supposed to stay till Monday, but we packed it up and came home Sunday. Good thing, because the kids were already starting to get sick. It was kinda going around at the cabin, and we brought it home with us. So we've been dealing with that. I hope were done dealing with it now.

The other thing I didn't mention is that Carter broke his arm at the cabin while I was at girls camp. He flipped a quad trying to keep up with Nathan. He got it splinted in Flagstaff and we had to get it set and casted when we came home.

Again, he wasn't too happy about that whole thing. He is now at Scout camp with a broken arm, I hope he is doing well with the whole cast thing. He had to change some of his choices, like swimming and archery, but hopefully he will come home with tons of merit badges that he could do with a broken arm.

That is the end of my story for now! I probably have tons more things I could blab about, but it's not easy to put one month into a page. So, maybe you'll get more later.
C'ya!

M.I.A.

I know, I know, I've been missing for several weeks... It's been so busy in my life... I'll have to post pictures after I get back to California, because right now I'm still in Arizona at our cabin. But get ready, because there was the piano recital, a week at girls camp and a week and a half at the cabin. I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures and stories to share. Stay tuned. We'll be back at the beginning of next week.

For those who care, Scott's parents are going on a mission, (most will know that) and they left today to drive the 5th wheel up. They report to the MTC on the 30th. I have added their blog to my list of friends. They are going to keep a mission blog. I'm glad about that.

Soo...... I'll see ya sometime!

never too late

So it was more than "yesterday" before I got back to post on here. I'm telling ya, life has been busy!!!

Anyway, here's what happened last week.

These are the Joy School kids at the graduation at our house. They are cute! I was a stress mom so I had Melanie do the talking. I just cleaned and cleaned for it. Melanie is good at heading up things. She did good!

Brodric kept saying "when can we throw our hats?" so finally when he got to throw his hat, this was the picture I got. Not really the hat, but I thought it was cute anyway.

So here he sits in the corner. He is like that, always shy at the moment of spotlight being on him. We've seen him in the corner many times at Joy School things.

This is Carter and his friends at their 6th grade pool party. The morning they were going Carter called me and said, "Mom, we don't have any chaperone's from our class, can you come?" So I made arrangements and I went down to the pool for a few hours. It was actually really nice being there. I got to talk to Carter's teachers and listen to them just praising and praising our son because he is such a great all around kid! What a wonderful feeling. I feel blessed to be his mom!

These are the teacher gifts I made for the kids teachers. I stole the idea off a blog I saw. But I thought the idea was so cute! I had the kids write thank-you notes to their teachers and we put them inside. I thought they came out really cute.


So now we're down to the last week of school. I have a crazy busy week. 4 Dr. appointments, a day and night in Long Beach with grandma, last day of school stuff, a teenager pool party at our house, piano recital, scout camp out, Grandma and Papa's "fair well" talks, and then immediately after that, Girls camp for a week then straight to Arizona for a family reunion of sorts and the teenage kids going to EFY. So this week I have all the prep for those two weeks too. It all has to be done this week. I'm pretty organized, so we'll see how it goes.

Well, if anyone reads this, sorry about the log of events, but I really like sharing on here. It gives me an outlet. So thanks.

I hope everyone has a good week!

You've got to be kidding me...

What kind of person buys crickets with money? Actual US dollars!! I guess I do. I did it once before and swore I would never do it again... But I did! ARRRRGGG
Carter brought his green anole home from his class room at school. We are now the proud owners of crickets, to feed the anole (a green tropical lizard). Did you know you have to feed the crickets too? Just crazyness...

Stay tuned tomorrow for the high points of our week!

Here we go...

It's a new week and it going to be a busy one!!!
I wanted to add some pictures from the past few days.
*please click on the pictures to see them big, some are small.

Today is my baby's 5th birthday! I can't believe it! He is getting so big. It makes me sad and I tell him all the time to stop growing, but he doesn't listen. We had a little family party for him yesterday and he got some presents. I made a cake, but it ended up falling out of the fridge, where I had it cooling, and it smashed all over the floor. Tons of glass, cake and frosting. So Papa ran down to the store and purchased a yummy cake for him. Today Brodric said to me, "Mom, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings but why did you only get me 7 presents?" Oh, golly, I forgot I was supposed to spoil him even more than he is already spoiled! Our kids have way too much stuff these days!


Don't these kids look so happy? I thought it was a funny pict of them waiting for the cake and icecream. I guess we just don't work fast enough!


On Friday Baillie had a "Oregon Trail" treck and hoe down. She sewed her own bonnet and I made her skirt from a very rudementary pattern the school gave us. She was cute and really had fun. They took a real trek down to our river and back. Cute, cute, cute...



Tomorrow we have JOY school graduation (pre-school) so I have been making hats for it. I thought they turned out so cute! The party is at our house tomorrow with pot luck lunch and swimming! Fun times! If anyone wants to come, you are WELCOME!