Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Making Up For Lost Time

Fourth of July Fun! (on the 3rd)

This summer Matthew participated in summer band so that he could be in the 4th of July parade. He sacrificed sleeping in many mornings (so did I!) But in the end I think it was all worth it. We enjoyed watching him in the parade and he had fun marching in it.


We even had some of the guys from Star Wars come.



After the parade we went straight to the park for Matthew's concert in the park.

The kids got to play in the jumpy castles and slides.



After the park we enjoyed lunch at Eric and Lynne's and lighting off our fireworks in the backyard then sitting on the back steps under blankets and watching what we could see of the county fireworks. Oh, how I love the 4th of July in Rexburg. I'm practically in tears posting this. Hopefully, we can go there every year to celebrate!

Monday, August 16, 2010

It's Been a Busy Month...

It all began on July 17th when we fed the fish at Warm River
trying to take advantage of some of
our favorite scenery in Idaho

luckily the fish were happy to see us

and we're gonna miss them and the
beautiful drive through Ashton...

The next day we celebrated my (ahem) 33rd birthday(it's ok, I'm not sensitive about my age but sometimes I think, wow, it's kind of weird how old I am!)

and also my wonderful sis, Michelle's birthday (she's lucky- she's only 23!)

we miss these guys! (a whole bunch!)

On July 19th we took one last trip to Yellowstone for awhile (sniff, sniff)

and had a perfect day
we visited my favorite part- the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

and did something we'd never done before-
swam in the freezing river by the hot (really, really hot)
springs and created our very own hot tub!

and had so, so, so, so much fun!







(here's the part where we moved back to Arizona and it was so stressful and crazy and total mayhem for about a week that we just want to forget most of the things that happened (like cutting my toe and having to get stitches or leaving a day and a half later than we planned on) and I didn't take any pictures the whole time and we're just glad it's over so we can forget the whole thing except for the part where we had so much wonderful help from all our lovely ward members and friends (but I'm kind of still embarrassed they had to see our home in such a state.) We were only in that ward for 10 months but it is going to be hard to beat!)






Moving on to AZ...




The kids built a Lincoln Log town (they took about a hundred pictures and it's pretty funny to see them from their vantage point, like looking out the windows from inside the buildings, etc. But we don't have time for all of them here...)

chilled (as much as we can in this heat) with Grannie and Otter Pops

Rex' went to his first day of preschool
(his shirt was all wet cuz he got toothpaste on it:)

Gracie celebrated her 9th birthday
(seriously, is she only 9?!?!?)
(Krispy Kreme's was a huge splurge and that won't be
happening again anytime soon, but it was seriously so good!)
She received all things girly,
which included tons of earrings that she has been coordinating
with her outfits and wearing to school every day.
(Those flowers are for her hair, not her ears.)
played at the splash park to have a little fun before the first day of school
(All five of them are in this picture, can you spot them? It was the best I could do.)
had their first day of school
(Thankfully all went well.)
and played in the sprinklers!
Whew! Now, I bet you'll agree we've had one crazy busy month and this wasn't even all of it. We also had a visit from my sister Tara and her family, cousin sleepovers, too much school shopping, family dinners, played in the wonders of the irrigation, AND Kris went to Rexburg and back to retrieve the rest of our belongings that wouldn't fit in the giant moving truck in the first place! I'm exhausted just thinking about all of it. Hopefully now things can calm down a bit around here and I can get back to blogging!