August Summer Days

My kids fight with the best of them, much to my chagrin.  But they are also best buddies and I love capturing the happy moments.

 

The best kind of dog to have is someone else's dog, because you get to pretend she's yours for awhile, and then she goes back home.  My kids were in heaven for a few days. 

 This was a bumper year for all tree crops in the area. During our nectarine harvest the fridge and armoire were covered with trays of fruit, waiting to be dried or frozen. The house smelled super yummy.

We have friends with an orchard. They have graciously shared of their abundance, so I made plum fruit leather. And we ate these by the bagful.

Had to capture Emmie's sense of style.

 Thanks to Aunt Barbara's help, my vision for this picture finally materialized.  It is fun to have a bit of family history on the wall.

A night out with my favorite man in one of our favorite places.

Once school started I got to go there with a friend and walk.  Emmie loved that the water was foaming.

 This did the heart sooo good:

Cousin Jonathan is serving his mission in Paris, and he ran into one of Callie's friends from high school, also serving there.  So happy.

Switcharoo

My good husband pointed out several times that it would be good to separate Drew and Camden as roommates, but there were other fires to put out, so to speak, and I never did anything about it. 

Until it was time for school to start.  Just days before school began, I was tucking Emmie into bed and had the thought to ask her if she wanted to move in with Camden.  Her answer was a resounding "yes!"  We picked up her pillow, blanket, and I tucked her into Drew's bed.  Drew got to sleep in Emmie's room, and after one night of a trial-run, I decided it was as good a time as ever to switch their belongings.  This was the Friday before school started.  It was wonderful to have my boys home to move furniture, belongings, and to wipe down baseboards and vacuum under things.  It was a bigger process than I had anticipated.  We had to move bookshelves since Emmie's was too girly to leave for Drew, and the boys already had one in their room.  We had to move dressers since Emmie isn't tall enough to use the one Drew has.  And then there were all the books and toys!  I did request that they leave everything on the walls in place, and I was able to change those a couple of weeks later.  The three children involved are thrilled with the result.

I am, too.  It feels like a good thing.  But I still had to take pictures so that I could remember Emmie's sweet little toddler room.

The reality is, we didn't stop to make her bed or pull up the blinds or anything - everyone was too excited to start the moving process!






 

And here she is, sooo excited to be playing in her new room.

She's an Aggie!

Monday was the first day of school for Camden, Drew, Jacob, and Hannah.  The boys got out at 2:30pm, and when they did we were waiting in front of the school with our van all loaded up with Callie's stuff, ready to head up to Logan.

By the time we arrived at her dorm over 2 hours later and took a load up, our boys were ready to release some energy.  Dad took the boys to get some Pepperidge farm discounts and us girls helped get Callie settled.

Afterwards we walked over to the Marketplace and had a really fun family dinner.  

  

Everyone behaved themselves - Tyler and I determined that was a first! As we left the cafeteria I totally saw a guy check Callie out.  He followed us for awhile before stopping her and asking for her number. Friend Ashlan from home met up with her, and even though for weeks Callie insisted that we all needed to cry as we said our "see you later's", we left a pretty excited college freshman ready to check out her new surroundings with no tears.  It was a very fun family day, and a great way to begin this new chapter of our lives.

Valentine's Day redeemed

For Valentine's Day, Callie and Hannah got tickets to go see Josh Groban in concert with their mom.  This turned out to be our last hurrah together before dropping Callie off at college.

We left a little later than intended.

Traffic. Was. Horrendous.

We missed most of the openers but that was okay.  The girls weren't too impressed by the two songs that Sarah  McLachlan sang while we were there.  

The good thing about getting there late was that there wasn't much choice of where to sit - right at the back by the entrance.  And that meant we could make a fast get-away.  Which Callie insisted that we do, while Josh was singing his "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" encore.

His voice is incredible.  He is also really funny.  But Josh Groban has a potty mouth and even though he apologized to the kids in the audience he wasn't sorry enough to stop it.

The outdoor concert venue was pretty cool.  We watched the moon rise over the mountains which was spectacular.  Overall the experience was so-so, but thanks to Callie's antics we laughed a lot (you need to share all of the crazy selfies), and we can chalk it up to memories.  I can never complain about having an evening out with my girls.

Watch out, World!!

This gaggle of girls is about to fly the coop and they are ready to make their places in the world.

5 of the prettiest,

 most fun,

smartest,

 sweetest girls I know.

 So many personal jokes, so much fun, so many memories.

And now they are ready to take on the world.

It was a privilege to have them in our home over the past couple of years and a privilege to be their photographer on this night.  So bitter-sweet for this mom.  I heard them laughing, remembering, and hoping for the future.  I thought to myself, all of that will be here sooner than you think.  The sun has set on the high school days,

but there are great things in store for each one of these fabulous ladies. I can't wait to see them make their marks in the world.

A week at camp

The Spirit works on us in as many details of our lives as we will allow.  I had never considered sending Jacob to the school district's summer camp, but the day before sign-ups, I had the idea to check and see if his neighbor buddy, Cale, was going.  It was enough to get my mind thinking, so when Cale's mom texted me and asked the same thing I thought why not?  

It is a big production to get signed up for the same week as a friend and almost all of the spots are filled in the first 30 minutes that registration is open.  There were some frantic texts and some phone calls, but when it was all said and done, Jacob was signed up to go with not only Cale, but a handful of other super good friends, and they were all bunking in the same cabin.  We were feeling pretty blessed.

Then there was the matter of paying for it.  I offered to pay for half and he was a great sport about doing lots of jobs around the house and yard to earn money for the rest of it.  My favorite part of the prep work was when he was packing.  He looked over the list, gathered things on his own, and then came to me saying "so, I guess they want us to shower every day".  A bunch of smelly tweenagers running around all day in the outdoors?  Go figure!  He said his cabin was woken up every morning at 6:30am and marched as a group to the showers.

Jacob had a great time.  He's a pretty independent fellow and was happy Monday morning to ride down with Cale to meet the buses and offered us a hasty and happy goodbye.  

He learned some neat things, ate well, had fun, and we were all happy to see him on Friday afternoon when he got home.  The camp director was great at sending home pictures, so credits to the photos go to him.  

This is what Jacob looks like when he is king in the game and then gets dethroned.

Silas and Jacob setting their critter traps.

The Pink Group. Jacob came with buddies Silas, Andrew (back left-right) and Isaac, Cale, Eli, and Tyson (front left-right)

Identifying leaves.

Watching the volleyball game.

Hot dog night!

The awesome counselors.  Jackson is on the right - he was Jacob's favorite.  Other things about camp that Jacob liked:  the treasure hunt (they finished first but were sent back to redo part of it, and Jacob got stung by stinging nettle and used lamb's ear to make it better), the game where you closed your eyes and got tapped (Jacob was tapped 4 times for "the person that is most likely to be famous someday"), and swimming in the creek.  He also learned some really cool historical things about the worst mining disaster in Utah's history.

Ready to head back home!  Hooray for a great week at camp.

Couldn't resist

I don't make a habit of taking pictures in reverent settings, but this was just too sweet.

I wish I still had a copy of his talk.  When I got the reminder text for Emmie to give a talk the following week, the Primary secretary wrote "This is just my opinion, but you should have her give the same talk that Camden gave. It was that good." Guaranteed it had that one and only Camden flair to it.

7 is a lucky number

Does Camden have a great birthday bedhead or what?!?

Dad made him a cool bow and arrow set, but the best part of his birthday?

Getting birthday money from so many different people that love him so that he could go pick out his own Legos.

It was a tough choice, but he came home with a fire engine and an off-road vehicle, plus some extra cash still in his pocket.  One lucky seven year old, and we are lucky to have him!!! 

This was a family party year, and the kids really wanted to go to the pool at dinnertime, have a picnic, and swim until close.  What a better day to do that than on his birthday?  We were lucky enough that some friends met us there to swim and have cake, too.  The pool is always more fun with friends!

I think it is so funny that Camden and I are doing the same thing with our tongues here.  You can tell he thinks it's going to be yummy (I don't get to have any).