June

 Need to play catch up on this old blog.  I decided to quit posting on Instagram a few months ago, so this might be the only place my family can see what we've been up to (albeit in the distant past).  

My baby girl turned 10!!!  Time is flying by too fast.  We had the end of school, family visiting and just our buys lives, so I didn't get around to making a cake.  I haven't done Noah's either, so this might be a no-cake year or maybe I'll do 1 cake for all 3 sometime.  She picked Leatherby's for dinner and dessert on her birthday.

 Traditional breakfast, candle and singing.

 

She got a little safe, an MP3 player, head phones, and a bike helmet.  Unfortunately, due to a bad choice she lost all those presents and more as punishment.  She's been working all summer to earn them back.  Life lessons are HARD!!

 

Entertaining themselves.  Noah (Grant joined later on) spent a good week making sun-magnifying glass art.  He thought he could sell them on the corner. :)

I have about 10 of these lining my fence.  Pretty creative.

 June garden.  My garden this year was VERY fruitful. Grateful my mom taught me to love gardening, even though I hated it as a kid. 

 Our friends that moved away came back for a visit, so we met at the park and played for a few hours.  Man, we miss these guys.

 Spent a lot of time working on the backyard this year.  Got the kitchen pretty much done and counter tops in.  Just need to hook up the sink and paint the counter tops.  They are steal, but they get really hot, so I think I'll paint them white. 

 Afternoon swimming at friends house.

 Birthday party at another friends house.

 One of our friends, also a past babysitter, used our yard for a senior graduation party.  The kids had fun helping them decorate.

 They decked out the whole yard.

 They had a taco bar and we just got to sit around and chat with everyone.  Nice not being in charge.

 Cute little frog that lives in the garden.

 Ava made some zucchini bread in the sun oven.  She did a great job.

 Sold my car.  Bitter-sweet.  I really liked this car, but it was expensive to fix and seemed to need to be fixed a lot.  Also learned that these cars DO NOT hold their value like other cars do.  Expensive lesson to learn.  I'm driving the truck now and we got Adam a little commuter car.  Much more practical.  He's getting 40 mpg now vs. 12-13 mpg that the truck gets. 

 Our summer was very mild this year.  Temperatures were amazing, so we went on lots of walks and outings.  Mainly to the creek by our house.

 The boys made Adam this sign for his office with their new skills.

 My mom gave Adam this awesome Treepod for Father's day.  The kids LOVE it.  I ended up buying one for the house too. 

Noah's finds at the lake this trip.

 My mom has a couple broken pots in bags from my grandma.  She gave me one to put together.  It was hard.

 The whole time I just kept thinking how amazing it was that my grandma found all these pieces to pots and then pieced them together.  She had lots of pots that she found every piece to.  Whenever I felt like giving up I knew she was nudging me along to finish. 

 

I was so happy when it all came together.   A little bummed that most of one side is missing, but happy I was able to get it together. 

Adam and Noah went to scout camp, so the babies and I stayed at the cabin for a few extra days. 

Noah LOVES the outdoors and scouting.  He did wilderness survival and had to build a shelter to sleep in.  It amazes me how brave he is about sleeping in something like that (this wasn't his final sleeping quarters).

Got this nice email from his scout leader afterward: 

"I just wanted to let you know how great Noah was at camp. That boy is 100% old school boy scout and I love it. I don't think any boy in the troop seems as natural in scout camp as he was. I loved watching him build his shelter and climb right in to go to sleep while other older boys fretted over it all week. He's a great friend for Preston and I'm really grateful they were able to enjoy camp together. I wish I had been able to follow them around more and get video of them canoeing and doing archery and all the things that their summers ought to be filled with as young deacons. And many thanks for Adam being at camp as well. It's a huge help and keeps me from going crazy." 

 The babies and I went paddle boarding a few times at the lake and enjoyed exploring at the cabin.

 

 My tiniest fisherman.

 Adam spends a lot of the summer with the youth these last few years, so I'm getting used to just loading up the kids and exploring on my own.

 When you go out of town for a few days and the zucchini grow out of control.

 The kids tried sleeping in the Treepod at home, but not sure they ever stayed out the whole night. 

 Grant's moppy hair.  Pretty sure he got a haircut after this.

 Aunt Erika, Amanda and her kids visited us for a weekend.  It was fun to catch up with them and let the kids swim ALL DAY LONG.  I don't think I've ever sat outside and done nothing for so long.  Hopefully, they were OK with that.  :)  They didn't seem to mind.  This is the only picture I got that whole weekend.

 Tested out a waffle cone recipe.  Taste testing is hard. :)  Looks like we had shaved ice as well.  These kids have it so hard.  Seriously, they live the best lives.  Don't ask them though, they will tell you all they do is chores.

 This boy is pretty good at coming up with things to do.

 Trying another sleep out.  Pretty sure this one lasted about 5 minutes. 

Our friend, Emily Jensen, passed away in June.  She battle colon cancer for about a year.  She is Adam's high school friends wife.  We've spent some time with their family over the years and it's been pretty sad to watch this happen to their family.  Adam took a VERY quick trip to Seattle to be with his friend.

 

I can't figure out how to flip this easily, but I loved the excerpt on the program from her gratitude journal.

While Adam was at the funeral I took the kids to Truckee to walk thru the graffiti tunnels. 

 

The kids had lots of fun babysitting a cute little girl in our ward.  They pulled out ALL the toys and made a huge fort for her.  

I know I say this every month, but June was fun and BUSY!!  I think we had something going on pretty much every single day.  In some ways I love it that way, but sometimes I like to have nothing to do.