not too far from home

The other day I had the boys and most of the usual neighborhood friends over playing and eating dinner (pancakes--another breakfast dinner, at the request of Ben, when Daren is gone working at the fire station). I have been trying to take more pictures of the everyday things that happen, and this day was definitely one of them. We end up feeding the neighborhood more often than not, but I don't mind because I love that they like to be here.

So I tried to get them all together on the slide for a picture, and you can see how well that went over. From top to bottom: Danielle, Jaycie, Jake, Gregory, and Ben. I couldn't get Will to sit with the rest of them in the picture, but if you look close in the first one, you can see his feet in the top right corner, sliding down the fire pole. He's not the most social one, you know. The third picture shows a typical day of play for them, including Ben tackling Will to the ground on the right. These kids are so dang cute, and they play quite well together most of the time. I love the look of pure joy and fun on their faces as they race around the fire pole!!

These guys are like the three musketeers--Jaycie, Jake, and Gregory (formerly known as Craig--it's a long story!). They love to play together as much as they can.

Wednesday afternoon we had a bunch of mulch (Will to me: "Mom, is that turkey poop?") and rocks delivered so Bart could put it all in the next day. Wait a minute, that may have worked if he and Daren hadn't been golfing the afternoon away!! I'm kidding hun, I don't care! Bart and his crew showed up on Friday and worked most of the day away putting it all in, and the following pictures are the final results. It's looking good!! Bart is amazing--he has such a great eye for landscaping.

The front yard final results--our grass is slowly but surely coming back; it's about time!!

This is what the backyard looked like 7 years ago when we first put the grass in. The cement curb-edging lasted about a month or so and then Daren couldn't stand it anymore so he ripped it all out. Our yard has come a long way since then!

Our tomatoes and pumpkins have done well this season--I won't have enough tomatoes for my salsa this year, though, but that's ok--I still love you Jake, even if you do try to help me pull the weeds and pull up my tomato plants instead!!

Will escaped down to Danielle's house after church today, and this is the usual means of transportation she uses to bring him back quickly. We are still working on the password thing with him--he has to tell them (at Danielle's house) a certain word so they know he has permission to go down there. The first letter of the password corresponds with the day of the week it is, so since yesterday was Saturday his password was snake. He'll get it one of these days, I hope!

Much of our week has been dealing with school stuff. I am a parent rep in Jake's class this year so I had meetings to go to, Ben met with his teacher and class one day, and Jake met with his teachers and class one day. School officially starts on Tuesday and Ben said to me today, "I can't wait for school to start!!" I love that he is excited for school.

For our Young Women's mid-week activity we had all of them over here for kind of an "after-camp" party. We ate lots of yummy food and watched the DVD Megan and I made--it was lots of fun. Daren took the boys fishing that night to keep them away from here. It sounds like they had a good time, and it was a dream come true for Will, who has been a wanna-be fishing junkie.

All the boys spent Thursday over at Gma Train's house, which was very brave of her. Daren picked up Ben that day to take him to his lacrosse practice--yes, you read right, he is playing lacrosse this season with a bunch of school friends. Somehow we talked him into trying it, and he seems to like it so far. It's still just practices right now with games starting in a couple of weeks. I'm excited for him. Ben went back to Gma's after practice and stayed overnight while Daren brought the twins home. Ben stayed there until Saturday when Daren picked him up on his way home from the fire station, only to find that Gma and Gpa's basement had flooded, so they spent the better part of the day hauling stuff out of the basement to help. By the time Daren got home he only had a short time here before he left to go to a concert at Deer Valley with his brothers and mom and dad to see Dwight Yokam. I don't mind a lot of Daren's old country music, and I've even learned to like Johnny Cash and Randy Travis, but I have drawn the line at Dwight Yokam, so they went without me and had a great time. Well, that's about it for this week.

checkups and a mountain picnic

We all had dentist appointments this week, but for the twins it was their first real checkup.


As you can see, they didn't seem bothered a bit by it!! It turned out that Jake was the first one of the boys to get a cavity. (He has already had it filled now, and he was very brave!!) The boys all did so well considering we were at the dentist office for 2-1/2 hours, so we stopped by Paradise Bakery on the way home to get some cookies--you can go ahead and nominate me for Mother of the Year!! Some role model I am. :)


On Sunday I had to give a talk in church on the Young Women's program/Girl's Camp. I began by saying how it would have been much easier to do a slide show with all my pictures, but I'm not so sure about that now. Megan, our camp director, was so nice to help me put a DVD together of a few of our over 1,000 pictures (once we got everyone's pictures together--seriously!). Monday I spent all afternoon over at her house just deciding on the pictures, and then I went back later that night to do the rest of it and ended up staying there until 1:30am! As soon as she shows me how to put it on my blog, I'll do it. We showed it to the girl's last night and they loved it!

Later that day we decided to go to the mountains for a picnic, so we loaded up and off we went up to Alta. We hiked for a while on Catherine Pass Trail, and somehow Will manages to always find fun, even in the most simple ways. He has always had a mind of his own and a pretty good imagination, so when we happened on this small stream he reached for a long stick and said, "ummm Mom...this is my fishing stick." He dabbles it in the water and thinks he is fishing--life's simple pleasures! We ate our picnic along the way and then hiked some more. It was a beautiful evening and it was fun to walk on and see some of the trails we like to ski in the winter.

When we finally reached our turn-around point (Daren tells me it was only about a mile in that we hiked, but it sure seemed longer than that!), we stopped for our treat, Chips Ahoy. Ben wanted me to take this picture and he said, "Mom, you can put this picture on your blog and name it 'Cookies Galore!'" So here is Cookies Galore and a photo of three dirty boys, although this picture doesn't even do it justice. Will would walk along, pick up handfuls of dirt and throw it around--they were all filthy, but having fun.

Three cute boys!! (Will is carrying a bunch of little "fishing sticks" rolled up in his shirt)

By the time we got back to the bottom of our trail, Will was completely pooped out...and that's all I have to say about that!

We made it home and got all the boys into bed. When I went in to check on Jake a bit later, he was sleeping like this, and it reminded me of this other picture I had of him sleeping as a baby. He has always slept like this, with his hands behind his head, and I think it is the cutest thing. He is almost 4 months old in this other picture. And that's about the extent of it this week for us. School starts next week finally!! I think they are more than ready to get back into it--we all are!

Ben and Bella sittin' in a tree...

We've had some funny sayings around here the past few days:

Today was the day Ben had been looking forward to all summer long--he finally got to see Bella, his girl-friend since they were in the same kindergarten class. We met up with her mom, Lise, and her sister, Tilly, for lunch at Thanksgiving Point. When Ben and Bella spotted each other across the way, they ran to each other and she jumped into his arms as he swung her around. They were screaming they were so excited to see each other again--um, should we be worried?! Lise told me she had a talk with Bella this morning about kissing; the whole thing makes us smile. After lunch we went to a nearby park so the kids could play. They found almost every piece of junk that was around the playground and called them their treasures. Too soon their time was over, but school will be starting in a couple of weeks and they can resume their friendship. It wasn't until a few hours and a few errands later that Ben finally fessed up:

Ben: "Um, Mom--guess what happened with Bella today" (sheepish grin)

me: "You kissed!"

Ben: (incredulous look) "How did you know?!"

me: "I could tell by your smile"

Ben: "We kissed two times--one on the cheek and a quick one on the lips. Maybe someday we might smack kiss."

me: "Smack kiss...what's that??"

Ben: "It's when two people smack their lips together."

By this point I had to work hard not to drive the car off the road because I was trying not to laugh outloud. For further clarification, he later explained that they only did a soft kiss, but a smack kiss is a hard quick one where their lips smack after the kiss. Ahh, young love!

Jake also had a winner line the other night. We were having dinner at Brett and Honnelore's house (better known as Sydney's house around here), with some other members of Daren's family there too. Jake was eating his dinner at a separate kids table when Susan said to him across the way, "Jake, I need to apologize..." and was quickly cut off from whatever she was going to apologize for by Jake replying, "Apology not accepted!" We all burst out laughing at such a comment from a four-year old, and found out that is a line from none other than Spiderwick Chronicles!

And not to leave Will out, he is walking a thin line with our nerves here at home. He is the biggest tv junkie, and wants to always be watching anything. Whenever I turn off the tv, he immediately will look for the closest door to escape out of and heads down the street to Danielle's house. They keep their front door unlocked, and he hasn't learned the courteous act of knocking before entering, so he goes right in, sneaks up on whoever he can find, and scares them!! They get a kick out of him down there, but it has gotten so out of hand the past few days that he is driving all of us crazy. Jeanna makes him call me when he gets there, because she knows 99% of the time I don't know where he is. Although that's not entirely true because if I can't ever find him I always know where he is. What do you do with such a cute runaway?!!

p.s. Saw Mama Mia for the second time with friends I was at girl's camp with, and I laughed even harder this time. Love it!

girl's camp

I think I wrote this before, but this blog is taking over as my journal/scrapbook/family newsletter, so yes, there are a lot of pictures this week because I want to remember it all. As I wrote last week, I was only home for one short night from Bear Lake before leaving to girl's camp. This year was a stake camp and we went to the Heber Valley Girl's Camp. We loaded up Monday morning and off we went...

The last time I went to girl's camp, which was 20+ years ago, we were sleeping in tents and it was pretty rough. Boy how the times have changed!! We got to stay in these really sweet cabins; we had a pavilion with a pantry and a fridge/freezer; and we had bathrooms and showers. We were in Camp Sariah, if that means anything to anyone (several people asked me before we left which camp we were in). Our ward had a pirate theme going, and that was a blast because there is so much to do with it. Morgan ("Hey, that's our babysitter!" Jake said) drew our door poster and our camp flag. She is a great artist (she drew a black-footed penguin for a report Ben did in kindergarten), and she looks just like the main girl in Mama Mia that is in movie theaters right now. We got our eyepatches, sashes, and picked out our pirate names the first day--I was Captain Shipshape:)

Tuesday morning we woke up to chocolate dipped strawberries which Shandra brought up for us-YUM! Ya, we didn't have those back in the day either!! I got to go on the third year hike with Lexi, Mikaela, Mackenzie, and Hailey (not pictured). We got lost right off the bat when our leader took a wrong turn, but we eventually made it to Timberlake Lookout. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful view at the top of the mountain.


I let Mikaela use my camera for most of the hike, and I'm pretty sure she took close to 100 pictures--aren't digital cameras the best?! These are some of the pictures she took along the way. She was so excited to use my camera she said, "I feel like Dora the Explorer!" Then she gave each of us names--Mackenzie was Boots, Lexi was Backpack, and I was Map.

Our view of the mountain areas from the top of the mountain. The lake on the right is the lake we went to on Thursday, which you'll see below. When we finally made it back to camp there were foot baths and also hand and feet waxing going on, as well as making bead bracelets. I have quite the collection of bracelets from camp this year.

In the second Pirates of the Caribbean, Capt. Jack Sparrow had his eyelids painted to look like eyes, so Mikaela thought she would try the same thing--it caught on like wildfire and soon there were 10 or 12 girls getting their eyelids painted. It's kind of freaky looking if you ask me! That afternoon was the pirate photo shoot, and here we are with Jack and all the other camp leaders.

The whole group of scallywags!! There were a few little tiffs during the week, but all in all we had a great group of girls and had the best time--even if there was a fun cabin and a boring cabin, at least in the beginning!

I couldn' resist a picture of all the girls who got eyes painted on their eyelids--crazy, eh?!

At night there were all kinds of things to do: We had the "snap jar," which is from the movie Legally Blonde 2, and so every day you could write something nice about someone in camp and put it in the snap jar to be read that night and then you would snap for them--the girls got more creative with them every day. Also, there were plenty of card games going on, and one night we were jamming to ABBA in the cabin and eventually took it out by the fire. Good times!! There were plenty of late nights this week!

Our big activity on Wednesday was the Challenge Course. There were 6 stations, but I don't really know what the other stations were doing because Lynette and I got to work at the zip-line with Elder Felter, who is one funny old guy! Each girl had to get harnessed in to climb up the pole, walk across the log, and then get hooked on to the zip-line, and finally jump off onto the line. Sounds easy enough, and I thought it was really fun (short, but fun), but there were plenty of girls who were scared to death, but eventually overcame their fears and did it. It was one girl's birthday that day, Rachel, and she was so scared at the top she was crying, but with the help of all the girl's singing Happy Birthday to her, and another girl at the top helping her, she finally made it across and onto the line. We all cheered for her--it was a good day. The second picture is just a very cool picture of Madi R. (not to be confused with Madi E.), one of our newest beehives.

On our hike back to camp I took this picture of Lynette and her two girls, Breanna and Jessica. They were always so cute with each other, at least most of the time:), and I said to Nan, who also has all boys, that it was times like this that made me a bit sad that we didn't have any girls.

After the challenge course I helped the third-year girls get certified. They wanted to boil dirty water to get it clean, and here we are trying the finished product.

Thursday was stake crafts in the morning, and then going to the lake in the afternoon for canoeing and games. Remember the lake in the picture from our hike--this is it. It was beautiful there and the girls had a blast. Technically they weren't supposed to get wet, but what do you do when a water fight breaks out?! Fight back!!

After the lake the leaders got together to come up with awards for each girl, and we had the best time! I haven't laughed that hard in forever!! Here we are: me, Charlie, Lynette, Nan (YW president and one of my running friends), and Megan, our AWESOME camp director, holding the snap treasure chest. Megan did an amazing job with the whole camp, and is so creative and is so much fun. Shhh, don't tell anyone that Megan, Charlie and I left camp one night to "make some phone calls" down in Heber, and happened to get some shakes at Granny's!!
The girls got some arm wrestlings going, and Nan and I ended up pitted against each other. I was able to hold her steady for a while, but Nan is strong and eventually I couldn't hold any longer. We had a great evening with the bishopric there--our bishop did a magic show and then we had testimony meeting, and just like that camp was over the next morning. It was so nice to get to know the girls better and we had so much fun, and believe me, I have plenty of pictures to prove it--I think I took close to 600 pictures!!

In the meantime, Daren was home with the boys all week, and I think for the most part they had a good time. It was so great to be able to go to camp for the whole time, and it was so nice of Daren to take the time off from work. They all took the trailer up to our property in the Uintah's and spent the night up there one night--that was brave! On a sad note, one of Daren's high school friends, Dustin Kitchen, died in a car accident last Sunday night, so when I returned home Friday morning he was gone to the funeral. Everyone: BE SURE TO BUCKLE UP!!