New Posts Coming!!

That's right.  Today I'm sitting down to do a little blogging.  We had an unexpected turn of events yesterday. Our air conditioner quit working Tuesday night.  We didn't realize until we were going to bed.  I always turn our thermostat to 80 while we sleep.  I went to check on it and it was already 82!  It should have been 79.  It was almost midnight and too late to do anything.  Tory checked it out Wednesday morning and thought he discovered the part it was.  He has become an expert A/C man with this "lovely" unit we own.  This was an EASY fix compared to some others he's had to figure out.

The broken part. 

He picked up the part on the way to work and the kids and I hunkered down for a long, hot day until he returned at 8:00 pm.  It was already 89 degrees inside by noon.  The boys had a library program to go to at 1:00 so we got to cool off there until 3:00.  We came home and I made everyone run through the sprinkler.  And I ran through, too!  It was way past nap time by this point but Claire and Beckham were so tired.  I put them down after they were all cooled off from the sprinkler and it helped a lot.  The boys and I hung out under the ceiling fan.  Felt good on our wet clothes.  Before long it was just too miserable.  It had reached 91 INSIDE!!  103 outside.

I didn't think it would get any hotter but it actually got up to 91 degrees inside after I took this picture.

We loaded up and cooled off in the van.  We came home around 7:45 when Tory normally gets home.  He ended up not getting home until almost 8:30.  Ugh!  It's always a long wait for him to get home but it was torture this time!  He quickly put the part in and a couple hours later it was down to 84.  Just getting all the humidity out of the air felt better than anything.  So glad the part worked and so glad Tory was able to fix it.  Thank goodness for Google and YouTube!  The whole fix only cost $35.  Nice.

Claire's getting blown away by our ceiling fan!  She would take wet washcloths and rub everyone's legs and arms with them.  Felt good!

Sooo...anyway...we're all hanging out inside the nice air conditioned house today.  No one feels like venturing out in the triple digits today.  So that's why I'm getting the chance to do a little blogging.  Yeah!  Check below for new posts.  I'm posting them on the date they happened.  Starting with May 1.

Ok...I've got the month of May all finished.  Here is a list of the posts if you want to check them out:

May Day
Freedom Play Day
Austin in Austin
Student Council Dance
"Basket" Ball
Mother's Day
Growin' It Out
Play Dough
Arizona!
Hiking Carr Peak
Auntie Kir and Uncle Nick
Last Days of School

Getting Crafty

Today I got a little crafty itch.  Since the 4th of July is the next holiday I googled some 4th of July decorations and came across this cute star board.  I sent Coen out to the garage to see if we had a piece of wood the right size.  Bingo!  Then I called Tory to see if I could use it.  (You never know what plans he has for his wood.  Plus it looked like it was oak ply which is a sin to paint...according to Tory.)  He gave me permission to paint away.  And so I did.

I ran into a few obstacles in my enthusiasm to charge right in.  First of all, I barely had any white paint left.  I had to thin it out BIG TIME with water.  Then the only tape I could find was my roll of masking tape from the dollar store.  It doesn't stick.  At all.  (Don't buy masking tape from the dollar store!)  I used it anyway.  And, surprise, the blue paint bled under the tape.  Of course I was out of white paint to touch it up so the stripes are a little "fuzzy".  Oh, well!  Adds character, right?  :)  My star was much smaller than the one I saw online (I didn't want to spend $25 to get a bigger one) and the red I had was a little darker than I'd prefer.  But it all worked and I do like the result.  Very patriotic.  I used a red, white, and a blue bandanna for my mantel cover.  Then I folded some scrapbook paper into circle fans.  I just added a few decorations I already had to fill in in.  Austin says it looks like Texas patriotic.  It definitely has a rustic country feel to it.  I love it!  Nice for a change and it was fun to craft again.  It's been awhile.

I also made a little wreath for my front door.  My spring/summer wreath is missing.  I took it down in the fall and then winter came and now it's missing in action.  I don't know where a big wreath can go...but I've got my suspicions.  So, tired of having a blank door, I decided to whip this one up.  I already had all the fabric.  I just cut it into strips and tied them around an embroidery hoop.  I put all the blue together and then it has red and white stripes to look like a flag.  (In case you couldn't figure that out.  Austin didn't get it.  I had to explain it to him.  So you never know!  Ha, ha!)

P.S.  Wishing my Dad a very Happy Birthday today, June 26!  He is 60!  I sure miss him and wish we could see him more often.  When I called him he said he was coming to Dallas the end of July for a business meeting.  We're so excited we get to see him!  I've seen him at Grandpa Mac's funeral and at my brother Levi's wedding but the kids haven't seen him since my sister Kirsten's wedding in Dec. 2008!  It's been way too long!  We tried to see him when we were in UT last summer but he was gone to Idaho during that time.  So this will be super fun.  See what a fun Grandpa he is?  Check it out:

 My favorite picture of him with Austin and Dallin-August 2006.

 This picture is totally my dad.  He's most at home with a fishing pole out in the mountains away from people.  He ties his own flies and everything.

Look how little Dally Boy is!

 Austin loved following Grandpa Mac out in the FREEZING cold river!  They were so cold when we were hiking back out.  Grandpa was nice and carried them on his shoulders and warmed up their hands for them.

 My dad is a dentist and we've all grown up looking into people's mouths. :)

Here's Austin checking out Dada's mouth.

Oct. 2007

 Grandpa and Austin Oct. 2007

Another of Dad's favorite past times. 

 I'm a pretty good shot myself.  We lived on several acres in Kansas and grew up shooting guns.  10 was the magical age when we got our own .22.

Dallin 4-wheelin' with Grandpa Mac

See what I mean?  Lots of fun!  Wish we didn't live on opposite sides of the United States!  

Happy 6th Birthday/Father's Day!

Coen's birthday landed on Father's Day this year so Tory and Coen got to share the day and we got to celebrate twice as much!  We snapped a few pictures of Tory and the kids after church.

 I couldn't decide which picture I liked better so I put them both up.

What a cute family I have!

 Dada and Coen ready to celebrate together!  I love this picture of Coen looking at his Dada.  He's a little miniature Tory.  They are quite similar.

 Coen requested a squid cake after he saw the cool cake his Aunt Wendy made for his cousin Heather.  So I attempted one.  I'm sure it would have turned out much better with fondant but I'd never worked with it before.  I had a "great" idea one night to make cake pop batter and then mold it into squid legs instead of balls.  I pictured smooth red chocolate covering them perfectly.  Well...didn't turn out smooth at all.  Probably one of the most frustrating cakes I've ever made.  But it did TASTE good!  And he was happy with how it looked so I guess that's all that matters.  Just so you know...cake ball batter should just be used for balls. ;)

 We decorated with an ocean theme.  Blue tablecloth, blue drinks, green seaweed streamers, bubble balloons, and crab plates.  (All ideas from Aunt Wendy's party.)  Tory and Coen chose taco salad together as their Birthday/Father's Day dinner.

 Here's a close up of the crab plates.  Austin made them all.  They turned out cute and very fun!

 Lighting the candles!

 How can this little boy be SIX already?!

 Make a wish!

 Time for presents!

Trying out his cool new green scooter!

Dada's turn!  Running shoes!

Happy Father's Day and Happy 6th Birthday!!

We sure love these two guys!

Cub Scout Camp

June 11-14 was Scout Camp for Austin and Dallin.  It was Dallin's first time going and Austin's last year.  It was a dinosaur theme and the boys loved every day of it.  I think we were all glad it was only 4 days though.  By the end they were pretty tired.  They had to get up early and were outside in the heat all day long each day.  But they didn't complain.  I could just tell they were slowing down by the end.  Each boy has to have a parent volunteer.  I had two boys going but they let me do just one day.  Thank you!  I decided to go with Austin's group since I've never got to go with him and I figure I'll have a couple more chances to go with Dallin since he's just a Wolf.  It ended up that Dallin's group did everything right behind Austin's group so I got to see him, too, and sneak a few pictures of him throughout the day.  Here are a "few" of the fun things they got to do on the Tuesday that I went.

 This is the Webelos group from our church that I was with.  They were a little really obsessed with the grasshoppers everywhere and were constantly chasing and catching them.  Drove me crazy!  I'm still finding grasshopper legs in my van.  Ugh.

Austin, Tyler, Kai, and Gavin

 Austin showing off his catapult.

 Dallin building his catapult.

 Lunch time!

 Dallin came over and joined us for lunch.  It was fun eating with my boys.

 Austin at the shooting range.  He loved this part and is a really good shot!

 Dallin at the shooting range.  He's the second gun that you can see.  He loved shooting the BB guns, too.

 A little basketball time.  This is the only time we were ever indoors with AC.  Heavenly.  I would have been happy to watch them play for a couple hours.  :)

 Dallin and his friend Nathan.

 Making dinosaur tracks in the sand.
See the lady in the blue shirt?  She was one of the parents in our group and signed up to be there every day. She would bring the boys' red bandanas home every night and wash them and IRON them for the next day! Wow!  That's one dedicated mom/leader!  I was wondering why Dallin's always looked so scrunched up and well-used.  Ha!

 Digging up real dinosaur bones.

 Obstacle course.

 Bows and arrows.  Austin said this was his favorite activity.  They got to shoot BB guns and bows every day.  Lots of fun!

 Austin at the camp entrance.

Dallin and Austin showing off their cross bows and metal bowls that they made on the first day.  They also got to do all kinds of other little crafts and activities.  One of their favorite was digging through owl pellets and finding tiny little bones from animals.  Boys...

They had a great time!

Right Around the Fence

I'm back online!  Our computer is up and running and I've downloaded all our pics off the camera.  Now...I just need a little free time to do some posts.  That's hard to come by now that school is out.  But we're working out the kinks and finding our routine.  I'm just so glad summer is HERE!

We have a few birthdays in our family during the summer.  Coen's is June 17, Claire's is Aug. 1, and Tory's is Aug. 20.  So lots of fun!  Claire is getting really excited about hers already and has been saying the funniest thing.  She keeps saying, "My birthday is right around the fence!"  I just about die laughing each time she says it.  She's trying to say "right around the corner" but just doesn't quite have it right.  Ha, ha!  

I was thinking about the funny sayings we all say while I was cleaning up the laundry room today.  Tory always makes fun of some of the sayings I say.  One of them is "hurts like sixty".  Who knows where it came from but we all say it in my family.  It basically means it hurts A LOT!  Stub your toe so you say, "Man!  That hurt like sixty!"  When we were first married Tory would always ask, "Hurts like sixty what?"  Ha, ha!  Funny guy!  Now he just joins in and says his own version, "That hurts like twenty-five!" or "fifteen" or...well you get the idea.  He just picks a random number.  Crazy guy!  

Good thing I love him like sixty, too!

Just Savin' the World

The kids are still getting good use out of their capes I made them.  They had them on and I thought I'd take a video of them in action.  Pretty fun.  You can get a little taste of how wild and crazy it gets over here!  Definitely not quiet that's for sure!  And you can see Claire upside down...as usual.



Of course after all that flying around and saving the world the super heroes had to stop for a quick popsicle break to cool off.  We tried a new kind and they loved them...of course.

Bye Friends

Right when we got back from our trip to Arizona at the end of May, our next door neighbors moved.  I think they had officially moved everything out while we were gone but were so nice to come back so the boys could say goodbye and so we could take a few pictures of them all together.  We both moved into our homes in 2005.  We moved in October and they were a few months before us.  They had one little boy who was two.  We had Austin who was almost 4 and Dallin who turned 2 just a couple months after moving in.  In the next six and a half years we each added three more kids to our bunch!  And they are all boys except for Claire!

Here is the whole bunch except for their baby, Jonathan, who was just 4 months old at the time.

The back row boys are the "original" kids we all had when we first moved in.

Back: Austin, Dallin, Aidan

Front: Coen, Beckham, Gresham, Claire, Owen

These kids have had so much fun together.  They are all boys (and a girl) with big imaginations and it was so fun to see some of the things they'd come up with.  Sometimes they played in our backyard, sometimes in their backyard, sometimes in the front yards, but a lot of times they just played OVER the fence.  So funny.  They'd play and talk and call for each other daily.  They'd toss balls back and forth and all kinds of games.  There was always a fort being built or big plans for one.  They loved riding bikes, too.  They were great neighbors and we are sad that they are gone.  Luckily they didn't move TOO far away so we can still see them sometimes.  But boy the backyard sure has been quiet for the last couple months!