After sleeping in this morning (Wow! What I feeling! I sure needed it!) and a few hours of cleaning up the house, we packed a picnic and headed up to Cunningham Falls. We used to go up there a lot….back when Taco was a baby and before. We haven’t been back in years. I was shocked how much the lake had changed. I had a picture in my mind of a tiny beach with a curb at the water’s edge (I have pictures of the girls sitting on a curb …

School is back in session! When I walked the kids to school this morning, I felt like I had just done the same thing last week. Was the summer really so short? Wow! It flew by. BTW–be sure to see all of my following posts (I did a bunch at once today–trying to catch up!)
Kiwi headed to her bus before any of the other kids were awake. She’s happy to be a 7th grader this year and NOT the youngest in the school anymore. I love the time that we …

I got back home by shuttle on Sunday afternoon. Peanut Butter and the kids were still at church. This is what I found in the living room when I walked in the house:Isn’t that so cute that the kids decorated so nicely for Daddy’s birthday? The colorful links and the letters were hand-colored with crayon. That’s not colored paper. Thanks goodness crayons, paper, and staples are cheap.
Even more impressive was the fact that Kiwi made Daddy a cake…..Not a cake from a box. NO! There were no eggs in the …

Aunt Andrea is the best! Noodle and Reese had a blast at Cousin Nessy’s house while I was in Utah for the last week of summer. Noodle had been dying to try out a special cake recipe before I left, but since we ran out of time, they made them with Andrea. Yum! I’m sorry I missed those. Here are a few of the highlights of the trip (or at least the things that the girls LET Andrea take pictures of). I hear that they spruced up their hair …

On Sunday the 17th, I boarded a plane by MYSELF and headed to Utah. I left PB with all five kids (my sister Andrea took Noodle and Reese to her house for the week later). I read the entire way there. What a relaxing few hours! My Brother in Law picked me up from the airport and we stopped by their house for a few hours. I got to know my sweet niece who I haven’t seen in a whole year. She was surprisingly affectionate with me!
On Monday morning, Mom …

On the Friday before I left for Utah, my sister came over to have a 2nd birthday party for Vanessa with the cousins. The kids LOVE any time that they can spend with their cousin and Aunt. We made cupcakes for her party, and I put two different frostings that I happen to have recently made. The marshmallow frosting was good, but the caramel frosting was heavenly. YUM!Nessa liked it!We took the kids in the back yard for a big bang!Apple was very determined to make his bottle explode, but …

I’ve been putting this off because I always have a certain amount of anxiety before I leave on a trip out of town…and I leave on Sunday to visit my mom in Utah and attend Education Week!! It’s one of the things I now look forward to the most through the whole year.
My friend, Krista, tagged me the other day and I figure I’d better get it DONE before I leave and take a big blogging break. Don’t miss me too much!
So here are the rules: List 3 joys, 3 …

Oh boy! The County Fair! We love to go every year. Peanut Butter thinks I’m crazy (at least he used to!) to take 5 kids to the fair all day, but we love it. It’s something we look forward to every summer. Today we went with our friends, Safire and kids.Some of the things we did: milking cows (we didn’t make it to the real cow-milking, but the kids thought the wooden cow was great!)Petting ponies — Apple made a face at this pony and he blew right in Apple’s …

That’s what Noodle said about the last two weeks spent at summer camp. Our friends from church own the most amazing summer camp, and they invited my four older kids to camp for the last session to fill in some empty spots. We were happy to help them out!
Before camp started, though, we had no idea just HOW MUCH FUN they could possibly have during a two week period. I told Joe, the owner, that he has ruined every subsequent summer for my kids because NOTHING else …

Last night, I got to tag along on a photo shoot with a very cute girl in my ward. I had so much fun taking her pictures. For more photos, see my other blog.By the way, I am still willing to do any kinds of pictures for ANYBODY….and if you’re my friend, I’ll cut you a really good deal! I just want practice, and I have so much fun doing it!