More From Our "Summer Fun List"...

We designed and built a SLUSHIE stand...

Sophie was such a good "helper"...

We did lots of coloring...

It's way more fun if you do it in a blow-up tube...

We turned our house into a library and had a reading day. (Have you ever checked out 75 books from the library? Bring a wagon!)...


A reading day complete with book-worm treats...

This wasn't on the list, but Hayden sure is funny sometimes. He chased the girls around the house while they screamed at the top of their lungs that a monster was after them. Good kid fun...

We had LEGO playdates...

And of course, took trips to the zoo...


Made s'mores indoors (during the rainy weather)...


Man, posting all these fun times makes me smile remembering them. But, more from the "list" will have to wait for another post...

California With the Clarks...

From Utah, we headed out to California for the Clark Family Reunion...

Can I just say, I love my in-laws. It was a week with some of our favorite people in the world...




Our kids had a blast! We spent a couple of days at Disneyland...









And then we headed to Huntington Beach for the 4th of July...





Rob and Wendy, Thanks so much for the fun trip! We had such a great time being with you guys!

Yippee, Sophie's 3...

At the end of June we headed to Utah...

We went out there to see Rob's sister Callie, who just returned from a mission to Chile. It was so fun to be with her and hear all her awesome stories...

We also happened to be there over Sophie's 3rd birthday. And what a birthday she had! Her Nona loves to throw parties, especially Tea Parties...

Sophie was treated to the most perfectly pink birthday she could have ever dreamed of...


All her sweet cousins were able to be there, too...




She got to blow out her candles with her cousin, Katelyn, who turned 3 that month, too...






Bubbles, sidewalk chalk, pink teddy bears, and kisses from Papa. It was the perfect day...





Happy Birthday sweet Sophie!!

Rocks and Butterflies...

The summer is dwindling to an end and I feel like I haven't posted about any of the fun things that we have done here at home. One of my favorite things to do with the kids when school gets out in May is to make a list of all the fun things that we want to do over the summer (and the supplies that we'll need to do them), and then we just start doing them and crossing them off...

So this summer one of Ana's contributions to the list was to make rock necklaces (something that she had seen in Family Fun Magazine). They were super inexpensive to make (thus the reason they made "the list"), just wire, leather cord and rocks (from our backyard of course)...

 

Hayden twisting up his design...

 

The finished product. They turned out super cute...

 

Next on the list was one of Hayden's ideas. He had read about how the Monarch butterflies start to migrate south to Mexico and pass through Colorado in August, so he wanted to catch some and "observe" them for awhile. So here are our homemade butterfly observatories...

 

Also super inexpensive, just paper plates and tulle netting...

 

More from our "Summer Fun List" to come...

Elders...

Our kids had a sad day on Sunday, it was the last day that we had missionaries in our ward for awhile. Because Rob works from home and has had time to help out the Elders with rides and lessons a lot, our family saw them quite a bit (OK, that's an understatement, they might as well have lived at our house. One of them even asked if they had to knock on the door anymore?!! He was kidding of course). But we loved it, especially the kids, it gave us the opportunity to be so much more involved in the missionary work going on around us. And the missionaries that were in our ward in recent months were so great. But the Elders were sent of to different areas on Monday, so this picture was taken at the "Last Supper" that we had with them on Sunday...

 

Good luck Elders!
(If you want to know what the missionaries from our church do, you can check out www.lds.org or www.mormon.org to find out more)