July 3, 2009 Bear Lake

July 3rd happens to be my little niece, Phebe's birthday. We were invited to go to Bear Lake with Josh and his family and of course, we jump at any chance we get to see them!

It turned out to be nearly a four hour drive! We thought we'd never get there. Once we did, we discovered that the lake was so high that the beach was almost totally covered! Josh had found a skinny sandbar to set up the sun shade.

We had a great time floating in the boats and just hanging out. It started getting chilly when the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the wind picked up. The little boys lips were blue and their teeth were chattering. We decided to head to Logan to celebrate Phebe's birthday.

Beautiful, Blue, Bear Lake (root beer lake, as Connor calls it). Alex decided to stay home so that he could go to his friend's birthday party. It turned out that he got to spend the entire day on the 4th with his friend and previous prom date, Celeste, and her family.

Josh and Susanna and their Popsicles, er, uh, children.

Seems like Connor was the only kid we photographed on this trip. He is cute, though!

Connor was freezing so he decided that we could build a fire. He gathered some wood but couldn't understand why we just couldn't light it for him.

What a cutie!

True Love!

Phebe's shells

Row, row, row, your boat!

Leaving the beach is so deflating ;)

July 2,2009 Hope of America

During Rigby's Celebration of Liberty, they put together a huge children's choir. I love that they rehearsed for over two months for it because it gave Emily something fun to do!

The program was cute and the songs were great, but they used a dubbed over tape and so you really couldn't hear the kids singing, just the cheezy voices on the tape. I understand why they did it, but it would have been better without it! It was a great experience for Emily and she made a bunch of new friends!

June 28, 2009 Kids Parade

At the end of June, Rigby goes into Patriotic Action with parades and programs galore! As like last year, we participated in the kid's parade. I mistakenly thought that the parade was the week before, so we got the kids all decked out and headed on our bikes with a bunch of neighbor kids to the meeting spot. Well, it turned out that we were the parade! It was a little embarrassing, but we got some good exercise out of it. It was also a good dress rehearsal except that we lost half of the costumes during the week.

After the parade, the children were able to hang out at the city park and get blasted by the fire trucks (it was way too cold for this and the kids that got soaked froze). Then they had fun games and face painting at the park.

Someone called our primary president and asked if we would host a game at the park. Being the party animal that I am, I volunteered the quickly went to family fun.com to find a game. The game we came up with was a popcorn relay. I had Hannah and Alex pop up a garbage bag full of popcorn and the kids had to attach paper cups to their shoes with rubber bands and race to the end and dump the popcorn into bins. It was great fun! Some kids ate the smashed popcorn on the ground and some kids smashed the cups. It would be a great game to do at a family reunion.

Whoops! Wrong day--lets have Popsicles!

Check out those parade contestants!

So, for the parade, they switched costumes, and we couldn't find the star cape.

Super Hunter!

Since all of the kids and their parents were in the parade, there were practically NO spectators!

I love face paint!

Cute Hunter!

The popcorn relay!

June 18, 2009 Primary Temple Activity

As soon as we got back from Va, we had a primary activity at the temple. I was recently called as the second counselor in the Primary Presidency, so I was able to have a first hand experience with the kids at the temple. They were a little irreverent on the grounds, but for the most part, it was a wonderful experience; especially being able to see the children surround the Christus and touch Christ's hands.

June 2-14, 2009 Trip to VA

Not long after the final school bell rang, we left Hannah to care for the house, and headed south to drop off the 3 younger kids at Josh's house and head to the airport for Virginia . It was the best feeling in the world when we landed and could feel the immediate heat and humidity of Virginia. Even better, we made it just in time for a week of severe thunder storms! I love those storms! We slept like babies throughout the storms! Unfortunately, that first night we were there, two local boys were struck by lightening and one was killed.

I really should break this up into 3 different blog posts, but you'll just have to plan on a lot of time for this one!


We started off the trip at Jean's house. Always a fun and comfortable place to hang out! When the weekend hit, I and a few of my best VA friends headed to Williamsburg for girl's night at the condo. We ate out and then hit the hot tub inside the condo. It was hilarious when all 6 of us well-endowed women got into the tub and immediately overflowed the water! Thanks to Marcia for bailing us out!

We stopped at Rita's (about 5 times throughout the trip) for some Gelati. YUMMY! It has ruined ice cream for me! Then, being the frugal shoppers we are, we hit some yard sales! I found a Rainbow vacuum attachment that made my heart sing! Then we were off to the potter outlet for some very scary shopping. It was so much fun spending that kind of really close time with my friends!





Jean's flashy ring she got at the yard sale. I was able to get souvenirs for the kids from the yard sales!

We spent a lot of time going to Busch Gardens. We went ahead and got fun cards and went about 5 times!

Alex got picked out of the crowd to dance with this sweet little Dutch girl in Oktoberfest.

James and I had some much needed us time at the condo. We went to a movie Wolverine, and at at Captain Georges all you can eat Seafood Buffet, and just relaxed and ate banana splits in the condo. We really enjoyed ourselves!

Captain Georges! We had the waiter demo how to eat everything.

We ended the trip by going to Virginia Beach. It started pouring rain, but as we drove closer and closer to the beach, we saw this beautiful rainbow and by the time we hit the beach, it had cleared completely up! We ate a ton of seafood and had just the BEST time ever! My hair and nails and skin were great. I really miss that, but I miss the people most of all!

We found this sandcastle that some kids had made earlier and James and Alex spent the next hour watching the tide wash it away.

Ahh, texting on the beach!
The food was the best in VA. Here we are at Rudees on the Pier.

Special thanks goes out for those we left behind: the kids, my brother and sister in law who took the kids for several days, my parents who took the kids for a week, and the Adams who kept Hannah happy. Also all of those people who "would have" mowed our lawn for us if it had stopped raining in ID for more than a few hours!

Also, special thanks to Mandy for letting us use her van, and Jean for letting us stay free of charge, Marcia for arranging everything and the Pugmires for taking us to dinner!

It makes me teary eyed to think of all that was done for us and how much we'll miss everyone. Hopefully we'll take the entire clan back next summer for a visit!

May 28, 2009 Last Day of School!

Hi, it's me--Mom Extraordinaire; cookie maker, pool filler, sunscreen swabber, corn dog server, temper diffuser, peace keeper, mess mopper, fun time organizer! That must mean that it's the LAST day of school, and a half day at that!!!

Bring on the summer!

We have an over-filled houseful of kids today, and it is so much fun! We are in the process of doing an entire summer's worth of activities in just an afternoon! The kids are in hyper mode and I'm just hoping I can keep up--especially after staying up way too late working on an over-the-top project for Hunter's 1st grade teacher: a 12 page 12X12 scrapbook chronicling her very first year as a teacher. I'm sure she'll treasure it forever ;) so that makes it worth it, right?

The kids and I agree; we are soooo happy not to see those dreaded homework folders for at least 12 weeks (enter: adrenaline and stamina). We'll see just how long it takes for us to be wishing and waiting for that inevitable first day of school to return.

May 15, 2009 Rigby Lake Field Trip

During the final week of school, Hunter's class got to go to Rigby Lake to pick up trash for his field trip. I got to go along. It was a lot of fun! I took a million photos of his classmates for a scrapbook for his teacher. It was Mrs. Brown's first year and she was an AMAZING teacher! I will post the scrapbook over on my cards blog {eventually}.