What You've Missed

Here's the thumbnail version of all the things I meant to blog about but didn't.  Even though this is the short version, it's still about 5 months worth so it's long!

Spring:
I created a huge garden in my backyard with the help of a few friends from church.  They live in apartments and were excited to garden with me.  We brought in a truckload of compost, put up a little fence to keep the kids out, and had fun planting lettuce, spinach, peppers, zucchini, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, pumpkins, tomatoes, and corn.  Some things turned out great, others not so much.  Some things I'm still waiting to find out.  It has been my job to water and their job to weed.  It's been fun to have garden playdates all summer with all the kids playing in the yard together while we gardened.

For Aiden and Bryan's 2nd Birthday I built a sandbox in the back yard.  I put it under the playhouse my dad built.  It's screened in to keep the cat out, with a little spring-loaded door and all.  It's been a favorite play spot for the little kids and their friends.  But it sure makes the house dirty.  It's worth it though.  :)  For their birthday I made them an excavator cake.  They LOVE anything construction!  It was a pretty cute cake if I say so myself!  They loved it too!

 Aiden and Bryan got their first big haircuts on their birthday.  I gave them different hair styles and I found that it greatly reduced the number of twin comments that I got whenever we went out.

And here's a pic from my birthday.

And here's a picture of Amy with her preschool class (plus a few of the kids' siblings) on her last day of preschool.  She was the only girl!  It's been such a great little class and we're lucky that her teacher wants to do it again next year.

Summer:
Summer is my favorite time of year.  I love being able to keep our back door open all day long.  (Our house is cooled with a swamp cooler so the door open works.)  Our living space doubles as we spend lots of time on the deck and in the yard.  I love having the kids home from school.

Dan's Father's Day card.

This summer wasn't much of a break though as freshman football practice for Aaron started by the end of June, with some weeks being 2-a-day practices.  Jessica went to Sylvan everyday for math help.  But of course, none of their activities matched up, meaning 4-6 commutes across town everyday.  We also got seven peaks passes and tried to go often.  Also, sandwiched in there somewhere Jessica went to girls camp, Aaron went on a pioneer trek youth conference, and we enjoyed visiting with family.  Jenny and her kids were in Utah for a few weeks so we got to see them a lot.  We went to Seven Peaks a few times, toured BYU campus, went to the Tracy Aviary and Trafalga, and had fun watching our kids play at my house.  My parents came to Utah for a week and while they were here most of my other siblings and their families came to Utah for a weekend, which we spent at a cabin in the mountains.  It was super busy and intense, but of course we all had fun! I guess I was so busy hosting everyone (even though most of it wasn't at my house, I was the only one from Utah, so I felt like I did a huge part of the organizing and coordinating) that I didn't get pictures!!!!

 

 Jessica turned 12 this summer!  She had a water party birthday party.  (We had lots of fun with water balloons and have had a few family water fights since then just for fun!)  Jessi has some great friends that I hope she keeps!  How much she has grown up since the little girl missing her two front teeth when Dan and I got married!  Now she's almost as tall as me and has even started shaving!  But she is still just as sweet as ever, fun to be with, a great help, and the best big sister to Amy!  They are BEST friends!  She had a fun flip flops cake.

Amy turned 4 last week.  She keeps reminding us that she's big now and doesn't need our help with things anymore.  She willingly gave up her bottles on her birthday.  (I know.  It's long overdue, but I never pushed the issue with her.)  She mailed them to her cousin Kate to give to her new baby.  (At least, that's what she thinks.  I never really mailed them as I'm sure Mandy doesn't really want a bunch of old cheapo bottles!)  Amy had a pony birthday party which was really fun, as 4 year-olds have such great fantasies about horses.  The kids decorated cardboard hobby horses that I made.  They played giddy-up whoa (red light, green light), bobbed for carrots, and rode their horses all over the playhouse "barn."

 This is a silly looking cake!  It's supposed to look like Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony.

Did you notice Amy's gorgeous hair in those pictures?  It was so beautiful, but caused so many arguments when it came to brushing it (and so she looked like a hooligan half the time!)  So a few weeks ago I cut it shoulder length.  It thought that if I cut it, it would be even curlier since it would be lighter.  Sadly, the ringlets didn't come back!  It's a lot easier to brush and she's still cute with wavy hair as you can see in her birthday picture, but how I miss those ringlets!

Also this summer the boys gave up their morning nap, which was nice (it gave us more time to be out and about) and sad (because less mommy time and they are exhausting!)  Amy gave up her napping a few weeks ago, but fortunately is still good about quiet time because "Mommy needs her work alone time!"  I've found that if I want more "mommy time" I just have to get up earlier.  Hard to do, but worth it!  Especially in the summer when I can get things done before it gets too hot.  Now we're working on getting back into a good school routine, which will probably be the next post.