Summer FUN!

Jax and Eva loving the slip n' slide-- If you notice Eva on all fours she never did get down all the way to her stomach. funny girl just crawled up and down it a few times then went and jumped on the trampoline to get "dry" ( even though she was barely even wet).

Jax and Eva by the Garden.

Unfortunately Carter slip n' slides like his silly sister. Poor Jax tried to teach them the 'proper way' to do it but to no avail-- walking/ puppy crawling was all the closer they got.

Jaxson, however, in his typical fearless 'nothing held back' manner went all in every time!

I tried uploading pics for this post like five times. I actually have quite a few more I was going to put on here but now I'm tired of trying and I'm just glad that a few finally worked:)

What a fun day, We love summer!

First Day of School!

Eva's first day of kindergarten

Jax and Evy

Handsome Jax on his 2nd day of 2nd grade

Hooray Farrell came out to wish them luck at school! They love him so much:)

This is my new favorite picture! Eva has Jaxson's old teacher this year and he was so excited and proud to take her to his old classroom and show her around. She was so happy for hiim to be there and requests for him to walk her all the way to her class every morning. Cute kids.A very excited princess Kindergartener. She was so excited to be big enough to go to school:)

Jaxson's first day of second grade! I can't believe he's getting that big! He got up at six am and was all ready in about 15 minutes because he was so excited and he loves school so much. School doesn't start until 8 so as you can imagine that was a very long two hours for him!

Pretty Girl and Pretty Funny Boys!

This was so fun for me to do, Eva has the best hair!

Pretty girl (front view of hairdo)
She loves to have her hair done and I feel so blessed and lucky to get to play with it all the time. It's awesome :)

Funny Jax the Zucchini-goat. He picked these out of our garden and thought he was so clever and funny. (I did too, so I got out the camera)

Sharkey the pull-ups terrorist! He is soooo funny there is no telling what this boy will do. I was talking on the phone with my brother Nathan and Carter came out of bed this way and proceeded to do all sorts of funny Carter stuff.

What a silly kiddo! I had him pull down his turban so I could see his face and check out that grin!

Dave did it! Before and Afters

On Monday Dave took the dreaded GRE (grad school entrance exam )! He aced it of course and then he came home and worked on prepping the kitchen to paint. We all helped out for a few hours when it became evident that the kids and I were not very productive help. The kids were so excited and willing to help but it was being harder than it needed to be so Dave suggested that I take the kids for a sleepover to Mommer and Papa's house and he would finish prepping/ painting the Kitchen. So the kids and I packed our bags for a fun night at Mommers. The kids had a great time up there. It was uncle Nay-nee's last night home before going off to Kiev Ukraine to teach English until Christmas. We were extra blessed to spend more time with him before he left, we will miss him tons! Poor Nathan- I think Carter was literally attached to him (in one form or another) the entire night!

The kids each picked a movie at the redbox, stayed up super late (almost 10pm-- which to them might as well be 2 am because they are in bed and asleep by 7:30pm 99% of the time) and ate lots of Mommers yummy pizza, soda and snacks. We adults had fun playing 'Ticket to Ride' and laughing about everything and nothing into the wee hours. It was really a fun time.

In the morning my pregnant body rebelled though! All the junk food and staying up late came back to haunt me all the following day. (My kids definately go to bed 'on-time' for a reason and I was very keenly reminded of that all the next day as well. They tried to be good of course but they were so very very tired and cranky! ).

Dave called us when he had finished all the painting and I cried. I was so happy to hear those words! We came back after it had dried for a while to see it and I cried some more. I am so grateful to Dave for working so hard for our family! We cleaned up all day and set up the table and chairs that night and I think everyone was happy when it was finally bedtime. What a productive day! The Kitchen is completely painted and the new dining room set is actually being put to use (instead of just holding up the wall in our room and stubbing our toes), Hooray hooray! We did it!

Dining area with new table and chairs

Another view of the dining area/ table set

I guess I didn't take an after-shot of the far end of the kitchen but it looks great too.
We obviously still have our work cut out for us-- we need to do trim and touchups/ paint doors etc, but I honestly couldn't be happier with the progress we've made thus far and the way it's turned out.

Far end of the Kitchen before paint

Dining area before

PAINT. . . almost

We bought paint and primer and all the necessary fixings to paint the kitchen today! hooray hooray. We're hoping to rent the paint sprayer on Monday which would be so wonderful. I really can't wait! It'll happen soon enough, there's no denying that now :)

Bear Lake!

Busted Knee uncle Nay-nee ( had knee surgery one week earlier and he got some funky tan lines)

Jax the beach master
Vercein, Alexus and Eva making a Ginormous sand castle-- they had all the adults helping at one point in time but I didn't get my camera out fast enough to catch that.

Vercein and Carter having fun.

For my family reunion this year we all camped at Bear Lake. The weather was great and we had a really fun time together. Barton and his family, Brandon, Nathan, Krista and her friend Kim Hoffman, Sofia (my parents Korean exchange student) and her boyfriend Jesse (Nathan's best friend) and my parents and us all went. (pretty much everyone except Chewy and Adina made it :(We missed you guys):

The weekend was scheduled to be from Thursday to Saturday night or Sunday morning but we had some comflicts with our campsite so we ended up just sleeping over Thursday and playing all day Friday then going home late friday night ( we were sad at the time-- but based on sunburns and heat exhaustion I think it ended up being a really decent option).

We had a great time and the kids loved it. The sand and waves were perfect but it was a little windy that day so we lost our canopy a couple times and had to chase someblow up toys and umbrellas down the beach.

Funny Summer Kids

Misquito bite face Eva with a necklace from the 24th of July Parade.

Jax blowing up a really hard balloon.

Carter laughing at Mommer blowing up the really hard balloons.

Funny kids going to play in the water with friends

Sharkey Carter

NEW BIKES!

Sharkey

Jax

Princess Eva

Carter and Daddy patiently setting up the diego bike ( the other two came assembled)

We did a garage sale a few weeks ago to get rid of all the extra baby boy stuff we won't be needing as well as all the other stuff that's been sitting around our house taking up space and not being used. I went through all the kids' toys and clothes and eliminated anything they don't actively use. As you could imagine this was a little traumatic for the kids at first but I explained to them about how other kids would love to use the extra toys blah blah blah like a good mom and then Dave and I were talking about it and we decided that if the kids helped out with the sale and were good sports ( and didn't try to keep everything we were getting rid of)-- we told them that we would use any money we earned from the garage sale to buy them all new bikes. This was very exciting for them because it's been a few years since they've had bikes at all. Well the sale went pretty well and we made just enough for each child to pick out a new bike of choice. Jaxson's is orange and black, Eva's is disney princess ( of course) and Carter's is Diego ( he didn't really have a choice it was the only one his size that wasn't girly). They've loved their bikes and have put lots of miles on them already and many more to come!