More summer happenings

There are plenty of things that make summer a little crazy, but overall I truly love summer. I love going to the pool, I love flip flops (and cutting down on my sock load of laundry), I love snow cones, watermelon, corn on the cob, more laid back schedules, all that stuff. I love spending time with my kids and doing fun things with them. I love that Kate can jump into the pool 50 times in a row and never get sick of it. I love that my 3 oldest can go to the pool by themselves. I love riding my bike to Maceys with Kate in the great bike trailer that our generous neighbors gave us. I love that Landon can babysit Kate so I can run errands...and he wants to because I pay him a little and it is so worth it! Here are a few random summer pictures.

On the way home from a family reunion the boys found a roll of duct tape in the car and kept themselves occupied!

I know this is silly to post, but I love this picture because the flash caught my earring and I think it looks really cool!

WE ARE GOING TO SEE HARRY POTTER TOMORROW AND I CAN HARDLY STAND IT I'M SO EXCITED! Kate isn't coming, but doesn't she look cute?

I had a great birthday and that evening we celebrated with three other people in our ward who all share the same birthday. I am the youngest, and I still think my birthday is the best because of the year! 7-7-77! Our friends were so nice to have a fun BBQ for all of us!

Travis, Jenny, Julia and Eric

Last weekend Voice Male sang at Abravanel Hall with the American Heritage Chorus and Orchestra. It was a great, patriotic program and very neat to be a part of! This is our family with Phil, another Lehi-ite who sang in the chorus!

On the list for this week:

Painting my kitchen table and chairs, singing with my band, Kate getting tubes, having a family pool party/BBQ, attending another family reunion, seeing Harry Potter and lots of swimming!

Happy Fourth!

We had a fun fourth of July and spent it with the McAllisters this year. Richard dropped the kids off in Mt. Pleasant to spend the night with their cousins on Sunday and to be able to go to the city breakfast in the morning. Richard, Kate and I made it down a little later in time for the parade. (I did not want to sleep over because Kate has had ear infections and I'd rather deal with her in my own home!) My pictures are chronologically backwards, but here goes!

The kids had way more fun with 100 glow sticks than they did with fireworks!

After breakfast, the parades and a few other festivites we headed up to the cabin for a BBQ. The weather was perfect and it smelled so good up in the mountains. We had a fun time!

Kate and Amelia...I gotta get me some of those boots!

Jenny and Richard

Landon and Daniel

My Patriotic children

Trying to make Kate smile, but really just being silly!

Landon and Riley

Daniel and Grandpa McAllister

Cute sisters!

Aunt Lori did all the girls hair so cute and they loved it!

The parade is under way! Bring on the squirt guns and the sticky taffy!

The boys were soaked!

Kathryn, Amelia, Emily and Jenny watching the parade

Last week we went to Seven Peaks (formerly known as Raging Waters) in Salt Lake with our friends, the Huffs. The boys mostly took care of themselves and went on almost all the slides. Layne and I and our little girls spent a good part of the time in the Lazy River, which was fine by me! Days like that are so much better when you can share them with friends!

John brought us pizza dinner and slurpees from 7-11. He bought 10 slurpees for all of us!

We sure had a fun day!

My cute kiddos! Landon did not like this pose idea but he was a good sport anyway!

Last week we....

We had a fun and busy week last week. It was Lehi Round-Up Days and we had a lot of fun activities to be a part of. We went to a late night movie in the park (that got over at 11:00 and took another 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot!), spent a day at the Discovery Gateway museum with our friends the Shepherd's, went to the family BBQ in the park, attended the Horse Parade, rode in the Miniature Float Parade and the Lehi City Parade on Friday night and Saturday morning and went to the outdoor pool (a block from our house and I don't know what we would do without it!) as much as we could! Here are the pictures from this fun past week.

These are just some cute pics we took in our backyard.

This is such a "Daniel" face!

Super cool..and sweaty Landon

Sweet Emma on her scooter. I love Richard in this picture because that hat is so small for his head!

Kate and her buddy, Roy "Grandpa" Littleford. She loved sitting on the float by him and she was so cute waving to all the people!

This is our ward float The theme was "Memories of....." and our ward did "Grandpa's Farm...Udderly delightful!" I helped a little with the float and it all turned out so cute!

I love this picture of Kate enjoying the horse parade with the flag a blowin' and her cute little maxi dress!

Here we are enjoying the horse parade. Part of our ward lives Main Street so we usually have a great spot to sit on a neighbors lawn!

Kate at the children's museum

I loved watching Emma help Kate with her groceries and checking out

There was a new exhibit called "Play It" with larger than life game pieces like these giant foosball men. When you put your head inside it had a voice changer that the kids thought was really fun.

Kate especially got a kick out of it!

There were other things like human dominoes that the kids enjoyed and these ridiculous pool balls!

What a day!

Yesterday was awesome. And when I say awesome, I mean it sucked. Landon started the ball rolling in the middle of the night with much throwing up. I started about an hour later. In the morning Kate joined in on the fun. Then Emma. Then Daniel. 5 of the 6 of us were throwing up ALL. DAY. LONG. I don't think that has ever happened! Richard had to go to work, so the rest of us watched a lot of TV, moaned and groaned and ran to the toilet about every hour. I was lucky enough to be feeling better (not throwing up, but still pretty miserable) enough to comfort each child as they took care of business. I rubbed a lot of backs yesterday, held hair out of faces, wiped down toilets, rinsed out bowls...it was pretty intense! I think the best moment was when Daniel was running to the bathroom with cheeks full of barf and couldn't help but spray it as he ran. When he got to the toilet Emma had not flushed the toilet and she hadn't quite made it to the toilet either. Moments later Kate barfed on my bed! We all had chocolate frostys for dinner because that's the only thing that sounded good. Today we are all still a little weak, but feeling much better and trying to eat- mostly toast and soup. All three of my brothers, one nephew and my Dad ended up with the same thing. I promise we were not kissing, and I don't think it was food poisoning because we all ate together on Sunday and it hit us 2 days later. Weird. Here's to better days!

A great weekend in St. George

This weekend was my nephew Carter's baptism in St. George. Although we wanted to go down as a family, we just couldn't make it work, but Richard suggested that I go with my Dad. I decided to take him up on the offer and we had a wonderful time. Thank you so much, Richard for letting me go and for keeping the kids all safe and sound and alive! We listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on CD's and loved it. My Dad hasn't read any of the Harry Potter books and that made it extra fun! We stopped at lots of gas stations and drank lots of Coke! We had dinner with the Wests on Friday night at Outback Steakhouse and my Dad stayed at the Ramada Inn right next to the outlets. I got to stay at Heathers, which was so fun because we got to stay up late and just talk! We haven't done that for years! It was so great- I love my sister! On Saturday, Heather and Brent were busy getting ready for the baptism and their Lake Powell trip that they were leaving for on Sunday. So my Dad and I went shopping at the Outlets and he bought me a dress! We had a great lunch and then he wanted to rest a bit before the baptism. While he rested I got to shop by myself. I didn't really even buy anything, but just wandering and being able to look at everything and take my time was a real treat! Then I got to lay out by the pool and read a magazine for about an hour. Heaven! I can't remember the last time I did that! The baptism was that evening and was so nice. We had a great dinner at Wests afterwards and another fun "sleepover"! After 9:00 Sacrament meeting the next day we headed back home. It was a short trip, but so nice and I loved being with my Dad and sister!

Here we are at Heather's house after the baptism

Heather, Carter and Brent

I did have one little panic moment on the trip. Richard called me while I was busy shopping and said, "I don't want you to worry, Jenny, everyones okay. Don't panic- everybody's fine, but all the kids are in an ambulance right now." A thousand thoughts raced through my head all in a matter of a second, until he said "yeah, there's a Health and Safety Fair over at the park and.....blah, blah, blah." I yelled into the phone right in the middle of the store, "You JERK!" The kids were indeed loaded into an ambulance and having a great day! Love you, honey!

Docking 2011

I'm pretty much going to let the pictures speak for themselves. If you don't know what docking is, see if you can figure it out from the pictures. If you think my boys look stinky....seriously, you should've smelled them in real life! Holy cow! I mean sheep.

You better believe they are proud of every speck of blood!

I can still smell it on them even after their showers.

The whole crew. And yes, that is all blood, not paint.

Daniel and Crosby (Dave in the background) and some of the tails of the day. They did over 900 lambs!

Just in case you didn't see this in the last picture. If you don't know what these are....you probably don't want to know what these are.

That's Landon and Daniel at the top there

They just happened upon this lovely snake on the way home.....yuck! But I still think Richard looks cute- blood and all.

And they loved every minute of it!