Mom's birthday celebration

Swimming

The waterskiing king

Tubing

Boating

Love this girl

Summer hail

More often than not

More often than not, when he has a choice to watch TV or to go and jump on the trampoline with the kids, he chooses to jump.

More often than not, when it is the hour to get on the train to come home in time for dinner, but he has more work to do, he gets on the train.

More often than not, when the Tooth Fairy needs a reminder late at night to replace a tooth with money, he is the one that remembers.

More often than not, when one of the kids is sick in the night, he is right there, wanting to know how he can help.

More often than not, when he has to choose between taking more time to explain what was just read in the scriptures or getting the kids to bed quickly, he chooses the scriptures.

More often than not, when he has a choice to have some free time on Saturdays or to coach one of the kids' soccer teams, he chooses to coach.

More often than not, when he has to choose between getting the work done fast or teaching the kids how to work hard, he chooses to teach.

More often than not, when I walk into our bedroom at night, he is on his knees in prayer.

Happy Father's Day to the greatest dad I have ever known.

We love you.

Making new friends

And making new t-shirts while you are at it.

Thank you!

If you can't tell, we LOVE our trampoline!

Thank you Grandma and Granddad!
We love you so very much!

Checking in

Our summer technically hasn't even started and it has already been a good one. But is seems to be getting better by the second.

For starters, Jacob has been gone eleven of the last fourteen days and he is coming home tonight. We can hardly wait!

And tomorrow, the World Cup begins. The World Cup people! Have you filled out your bracket? I sure hope so. I married into a soccer family and you'd better believe there is great excitement, trash talking and many a game being watched.

Tomorrow is also Matt's last day of Kindergarten. Our little guy will be in first grade in a few short months and I can hardly believe it. It has been a very happy year for him.

And then one week later Annie and Cam are finished with school. I can hardly believe we will have kids in first, third and fifth grade. How did they get so old? How did I get so old? The kids are super excited for school to be over.

And then the rest of summer is ahead. Swimming, vacations, jumping on the trampoline, watching movies together, reading books, playing board games, hiking, doing chores, practicing piano, weeding, relaxing, playing together, laughing together.

Oh man, I'm a fan of summertime.

Still shivering

This lovely guy was photographed while walking on a wall in our basement. Oh my creepola.
We have since found out what kind of bug it is, but I don't think the name does it justice.
So instead, I'm choosing to call it "May I never see another one of you again."

Yuck.

Summer

For many of you, summer has begun. Not quite the case with us, because the kids still have three weeks left of school. But school or not, in my mind, summer is here! And one of my goals for this summer is to have all of you, see less of me. (No snide remarks please.)

I'm serious, I want to enjoy summer with our kids, and that means blogging, checking email, reading the blogs of others, will lessen greatly. I really don't have a specific goal, except to spend much less time on the computer (or indoors for that matter), and measure my success by the number of days this thing doesn't even get turned on. I still want to blog when I have extra time, I still need to check email to keep it under control and I definitely want to know what you are all up to, but all of that can happen a lot less, because as of this moment, I'm stamping a huge old "FAMILY TIME" right across the summer months.

So Happy June to you all! School still in session or not, I'm declaring it officially summer where we are. Here's to hoping your summer is as fabulous as ours is going to be. I'm planning for happy, calm, exciting, wet, warm, peaceful, lazy, loud...full. Full of fun, full of family, full of memories.

I can't wait.

Would you rather?

I love this game. And I love playing it with each of our kids because their reactions are so funny and sometimes thoughtful and so them. And the options they think up for me often make me laugh hard. But I don't think any question has made me laugh as hard as the question I just posed to Matt. Well, maybe it wasn't the question that got me, but the look on his face.

"Matt, would you rather...have a My Little Pony birthday party with all boys invited or a Transformer birthday party with all girls invited?"

He still refuses to answer me.

There is truly a TV show for everyone

Last night, I handed Jacob the remote because I was tired of trying to find something to watch
when there was literally nothing on TV. Jacob started flipping through channels and stopped on
a television show that was about loggers (I believe the actual name was Swamp Loggers, but I
could be wrong). He never watches shows like that and I sat there wondering if it was some
kind of joke. When I truly couldn't take it anymore, after approximately 92 seconds or so,
I had to ask. "Are you sure the name of this show isn't A Camera Man is Punished?"

Ninety-six

What kind of a person mows the lawn in 96° weather (okay, so on my walk home from dropping
off the van at the repair shop, the thermometer of one bank said 94° and the other bank said
98°, so I'm splitting the difference) and crazy high humidity? Obviously an awesome one.

Or someone who is truly insane. After having to take a
second shower today, I'm going with the latter option.

(And don't let the photo fool you folks, this was taken awhile after I finished the front
and back lawns--not to mention getting the van to mechanic. Those shadows were
most certainly not there while I was mowing. Believe you me.)

Random ramblings (aka nothing new)

My head feels so much better this morning. I cannot stand migraines, but good gracious, they make you appreciate waking up and having your head not feel like it is going to implode slash explode slash fall right off. Today is a good day, if only for that reason.

Speaking of reading (we weren't?), I just started The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Have you read it? I'm only two chapters in and I think I like it, but seriously, don't know where this could be going. So far it is clean, so I'll keep going, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is I'm reading.

Speaking of weird things that come out of your mouth (what? whatever), the following things came out of the mouth of someone that lives in our home in the last little while.

“Cam, if you keep eating that way, they will mistake you for a rat and you will be taken to a laboratory to live for the rest of your life.”

“Matt, you’re going to have to put the snake down to unload the dishwasher.”

“Ben, please stop licking the trampoline.”

“Annie, if I fall asleep before you, you owe me ten dollars. And you only wish I was kidding. Now go to bed already.”

Come to our house. We entertain, we threaten, we apparently need a refresher on manners. It is great fun.

Cam had strep throat this past Saturday. If my calculations are correct, this is the eighth time our children (collectively, not each) have had it since December. I give up. No more fighting it. We are going to start rewarding the kids when they get strep throat. We will be partying on a daily basis. With antibiotics as a refreshment.

Our two oldest kids still have about seventeen days of school before summer vacation. Seriously? Seriously? I think we are all ready for summer. The teachers at the top of the list. Lucky Matt is finished with Kindergarten a week earlier than the others. Oh boy does he use that piece of information to torture certain people in our household.

If anyone offers to buy you a trampoline (specifically your parents) as a combined birthday gift for the whole family, do not hesitate. Do not think about it. Just say yes. It will be one of the best gifts ever. In the past three days, I am not exaggerating when I tell you the kids have spent between 10 - 15 hours on it. And Sunday they aren't even allowed to jump on it, so just sat and talked and crawled and laughed on it for a couple of hours. This morning, they all got up and got ready as quickly as possible, so that they could go out and jump before school. Trampolines are the best.

  For those still in shock from a previous sentence in this post, it was a plastic snake. It's like you don't even know me.

Love these kids

Surprising Annie

Tonight is the annual father and sons' camp out with our church. And Jacob is taking Cam and Matt. They are so excited they can hardly stand it. And I get to (happily, I am not a camper thankyouverymuch) stay home with Annie and Ben. Annie and I have been trying to plan a girls' night out, but with darling Ben, there were some limitations.

When I asked Annie what she really wanted to do, she told me she wanted to visit the American Girl store in the Boston area. We had just found out that there was one here and if you had seen the look in her eye when she asked--hopeful, but trying to be good about the answer I gave--you would have done everything you could to figure out how to make it work. We talked about how we could do it and I just couldn't see a way because she really wanted to go just the two of us and she never asks for that. I tried to think of every option I could, but couldn't come up with anyone who could tend Ben, so I told her we could definitely do it on a day her dad was available to tend.

But then this morning, her sweet dad told me that he was going to work from home. Because he could, but mostly so that I could check Annie out of school early and surprise her by taking her to the American Girl store before the boys left on their camping trip. I was giddy and anxious all day with the thought of how she would respond.

Finally, 2:00pm came and I went to the school and checked her out. She looked completely confused when she came to the office. I put my arm around her and on our way out the door, told her what we were doing. She just kept hugging me over and over. That child is so sweet.

The store was pretty amazing. We spent a good hour or so looking around at each and every doll, outfit and accessory. Annie has an American Girl doll that she was given years ago, as well as the American Girl horse that she asked for for her birthday and paid half of in order to get. But otherwise, we just haven't bought any clothes or accessories. She has three outfits that were given to her by others (so nice of them!), that aren't technically American Girl brand, but are just as cute. It was so fun to see how pleased Annie was just to look, she didn't once ask for anything. She knew we were just there to be together and see all of the darling stuff.

It was such a fun afternoon! We finished looking at everything, even got some tips (that worked great) from the girls who are paid to give your doll a hair makeover and started walking towards the exit. It was then that I told Annie the second surprise of the day. And her excitement was even greater than the first time. I think she must have thanked me and hugged me approximately 37 times. If I haven't mentioned it, that girl of mine is so sweet.

And by request of my mom, here is a photo of Annie, with her doll Annie, in their soccer outfits. Our Annie has had her eye on that outfit every time an American Girl catalog comes to our home. She can still hardly believe it is hers. It was just a great day for both of us.

I'm so grateful for sweet Annie. The taller one.

Tooth collection

Last night at dinner, corn was served. We had a couple of young visitors, whose mom needed a rest for the day. I assume the presence of others was what caused our kids to feel the need to do something strange, because they definitely are never strange otherwise.

Someone, I believe Annie, decided to pretend that the corn was a tooth. (C'mon, you know you did it as a little kid.) And soon everyone joined the club. And then this little exchange.

Annie: (holding up a piece of corn), "I'm going to add this tooth to my collection."

Cam: "You don't have a tooth collection!"

Annie: (without hesitation and without looking up), "Yes I do, it's in my mouth."