Locks of Love

This sweet girl got a haircut a couple of weeks back.

And received this as a thank you in return. 

Ten inches of her hair gone. And yet, as always, our Annie is beautiful inside and out.

More tubing fun (oh, and the baby drives the boat)

Few things make me happier than seeing my kids having so much fun together! 

Ben loved this new "sitting up" tube so much, he talked to me about it for hours after he got home.

This picture makes me smile. A lot.

As does this one. Can you blame me? 

Apparently there was a break in boat drivers and Nate decided to take one for the 

team. He is considerate that way. It was also considerate of him to stay off to

the side while steering. You know, so he could actually see where he was going.

More waterskiing fun

How awesome is Jacob Allen? Very, his wife thinks. These pictures make me a little sad that I

missed him skiing this summer. He is amazing and I love to watch him on the water. There is one

more photo, my favorite waterskiing picture that has ever been taken of him, that I will share soon.

Seriously, the wall is pretty unbelievable. Plus, one more bonus photo of a picture I just love of him.

And this picture with the train in the background just looked cool, in my opinion.

And more evidence that Cam is becoming a great waterskiier. 

Good grief, I love his face in that second photo. This boy is fabulous.

Annie got up quicker and stayed up longer than last time. She was pretty thrilled. 

And that last picture just makes me smile. Love that girl and her happiness. 

And even if Matt's life jacket was driving him crazy, he still got himself up and stayed up

for longer than the first time. How proud is this mom? Incredibly proud. What a darling boy.

The first of many

Annie titled this post. And picked this first outfit for her little sister. Annie's mom 

isn't a great shopper, so the title will hopefully not be too deceiving. But considering

how excited we both are, it probably won't be too far off. I cannot believe we are

down to two months or less. We are all a little excited to meet this little one. What a
crazy feeling looking at pink, purple, yellow and flowery things after so many years

A photo or eight hundred

Jacob and the kids spent the day out on the boat today, with Jacob's parents and brother and sister-in-law. Good news is that I am still expecting a baby. Bad news it that I still can't go anywhere near a boat.

Apparently the water was pretty great and everyone had plenty of turns waterskiing and tubing. (Don't you fret, of course pictures will be coming.) So Jacob was glad he grabbed the camera on his way out the door.

He handed it over to the kids to make sure and get some photos of everyone in the water.

They took 872 photos.

No, I am not kidding.

And for the life of me, I can't imagine where they would learn such a thing.

Some photos of this boy who is growing up too fast

And as much as I love these pictures, my absolute favorite photo of this boy coming soon...

Sometimes being obsessive compulsive is exhausting

And yet, this morning, I am loving it.

Several months ago, I decided that I wanted to make the photos on our blog bigger. I just personally like how larger photos look and feel like it makes viewing blogs easier. So I changed a few of the most recent posts and then got the opinion of my good friend who I completely trust (hi Lorri!). When she agreed with me, I was happy as can be, but immediately had a new problem on my hands.

You see, my personality wouldn't allow me just to starting using the larger size photos from that moment on. I had to go back through the past five years (approximately 1200 posts) and fix each one. So I did. Each day, when I had some time, for months. And last night, I finished the very first post on our blog.

And not only are all of our blog photos now a bigger size (I hope), but a majority of the posts required the fixing of font spacing, as well as changing the links on any post, so that the link would open in a new window. And in going through each month, I also adjusted the dates on several posts because if there is more than one post assigned to a certain day, the template I chose makes those look funny and my heart couldn't handle it.

So there you go.

Now if you think this post is just about showing all of you fine people one more example of my craziness, you would be wrong. (Although if that is what you get from it, good enough. I'm okay with that.) But the real reason I mention all of this is just to say if you are on our blog and notice I've missed fixing the photos or font or dates or links on any of the posts, I sure would appreciate knowing.

No, I'm not under the illusion that all of you spend large amounts of time reading past posts or clicking on links that take you to previous posts, but if you happen to find yourself somewhere and see something looking not like you think it should, please just leave me a comment or send along an email. I truly would be grateful to know. I've caught mistakes more times than I can count now (some places where I just skipped over several posts somehow), so I know they are there. But I've done the best I can and will now just let things be unless I come across them or you lovely people come across them and let me know.

Thanks a lot in advance.

And I have to say, as painful as it sometimes felt, I really loved going over the whole blog five years later. Because there were so many posts I had forgotten about that made me laugh and cringe and even get a little teary at times. I'm trying so hard to truly "find joy" in this journey of ours. And when I look back and see a record of our life, I realize I haven't done that perfectly, but it has honestly been such an incredible journey.

I'm so grateful. I'm so blessed.

And sweet chicken, I'm so glad to be done changing the size of blog photos.

You say potato...

This morning I was working on the computer while the kids were playing some kind of pretend game all together. I was only half paying attention while they asked each other what their job would be within the "town" they were creating. Until Matt asked Annie what she was going to be.

"I'm going to work in a saloon," Annie told him.

And as I turned around to see if I had seriously misread Annie's personality for the past eleven and a half years, she continued...

"I do people's hair."

Summer boating trip

Campbell got up on skis and stayed up quite a while.

And then Annie got up and was pretty thrilled.

Matt actually got up also, but no one got a picture of it. He said it was because

 he was only up "two seconds," but up is up, so who cares how many seconds?
(How sweet is Jacob's mom, there in the water helping the kids with their balance?)

And Ben is just so cute it is ridiculous.

Tubing fun, as always.

Later in the day, Uncle Danny and Aunt Camie, as well as some of their friends, joined the party.

Love these kids. And I cannot wait until next summer when I can actually

ride on the boat without worrying about complications during pregnancy.

Summertime is the best!

I dreamed a dream this awkward moment was over

Today I was playing the piano and it reminded me of a story I've never shared on this blog. And it is one Jacob's favorites (and possibly mine, when I can think about it without blushing), so I wanted to have a family record of it.

A few years back, my parents decided that as a combined Christmas gift for our whole family, they would give us a piano (or at least a good chunk of money toward a piano). We were so excited and started taking a look at used pianos in our area (Boston at the time). We found a couple that looked promising and I called to schedule a time to take a look at them.

The next evening, Jacob and I drove a few towns away to take a look at a Baldwin upright that I was excited about. The woman I made the appointment with answered the door and took us right up the stairs to the piano she was selling. It looked like it was in good shape, but we were definitely curious as to how it sounded. She offered to let each of us play.

Now a little explanation...

Jacob plays the piano really quite well. He can definitely sight read much better than me and often accompanied during church meetings when we lived in Massachusetts.

I, like most people I know, wish I played better. I took lessons for a few years and progressed quite quickly, but didn't do the work I needed to in order to have a better foundation for piano. I can play a few of the hymns very well and a few more with great mediocrity. I accompanied in church during our time in Boston more often than I would have liked to, but it was definitely due to a lack of pianists in our ward (we had three for most of the time we lived there, including Jacob and myself), rather than my skill. In addition to my poor hymn playing, I also know four or five other songs that would be familiar to many people. And by the word know I mean I can play three or four lines at best of them.

I'm a skilled performer as you may have gathered.

So when this woman offered to let us play the piano, Jacob sat down and played a few lines of several different songs. I could see in his eyes he wasn't incredibly impressed with the sound of the piano, but he wanted me to play to see what I thought.

So I did.

And for some unknown, now regrettable decision, I started to play I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables.

Do you see at all where this is going? I did not. Boy howdy. I. Did. Not.

I played the few measures of the intro and then started into the part of the music where the words begin. I don't have the entire song memorized, but I was only planning on playing a few lines anyway. And yet, as I started into the part of the song with lyrics, something happened. Something a tad (read hugely) unexpected.

From the next room, the kitchen I believe, came an older woman. Maybe the aunt or mother or even grandma of the woman selling the piano? And she didn't just walk into the room to be friendly or say hello or even to listen to the beautiful song that was being played.

She came in singing.

Singing, folks.

With what appeared to be every part of her heart.

Oh help us all, now what do I do?

She not only seemed to know every word to I Dreamed a Dream, but it also appeared to be a favorite song of hers. One that she felt very passionate about.

And not only did I feel close to as awkward as I have ever felt in my life (and sweet waffles, that is saying a lot), I was quickly running out of notes to the song that I knew.

And from the look on this woman's face, that was not going to do, because she was into this song and enjoying her self quite a bit.

(And I'm not sure it helped that Jacob seemed to be almost turning purple in an attempt to refrain from hysterical laughter.)

I continued to play, she continued to sing with all of her heart and my heart continued to race with panic about how I was going to stop this thing without crushing the dreams (pun intended) of this older woman.

So I handled it with as much grace and tact as anyone could have hoped for.

Or I abruptly came to a stop and mumbled something about not remembering the rest of the song.

(Might as well have stomped on the woman's heart and told her she had no hope of making it to Broadway.)

And then we quickly told the woman who was selling the piano that we would get back to her after we had seen some others, if we wanted to buy her piano. And made our escape into the cold night.

Where Jacob at least had the decency to wait until we were in the car to let loose on his laughter.

And I sat mortified and wishing I had nary taken a piano lesson. Or at least pretended like I could play the piano better than I can.

Now I can laugh about it. Mostly.

It was traumatic enough that I still get this kind of awkward pit in my stomach just thinking about it.

And the worst part is that the piano sounded too tinny, so the trip was a bust because we didn't even buy it.

Which actually may have been a blessing, because the thought of facing the singing woman again was a little too much for me to take.

After all, I only had two or three more options of partial songs to accompany her and I'm not even positive there are words to Pachelbel's Canon in D.

From the driveway of my parents' home

I didn't even realize I had caught an airplane in there until I uploaded the photo.

 Desert sunsets are truly amazing.

Some photos from Julys past

 1999

 2000

2003

2005

2007

2008

2009

2012