4th of July

We had a really fun 4th of July weekend. We started out with a really fun breakfast with our ward at our Bishop's house. Later that day Alisa and Ryan met up with us and we went to see Monster's University. After that Matt and Camie joined all of us for a BBQ, water kickball, and fireworks. It was so much fun. The dads took the older kids to see the fireworks but just after they left we realized we were getting just as good of a show by staying home. The fireworks in the neighborhood were pretty amazing!!
Everyone spent the night and then we woke up and spent the next day together. We exercised, had a pancake breakfast, went hiking up into a waterfall, went on a pic nic and ended the day with Nelson's ice cream in still water. It is the BEST ice cream every not to mention the portion sizes are HUGE!! It was a GREAT4th and unfortunately it was our last Harrah with Alisa and Ryan before they moved!!

Olivia going to town on the corn!!

Olivia, Adelle, and Jane

Yeh Ryan - sliding into home base during our water kick ball game!

Adelle doing her monkey crawl

Off to Deleware!

I keep feeling like Lucy and Ethan are getting BIG and growing way too fast. I was reminded of this as we put Lucy on an airplane by herself at the start of the summer! She was not nervous one bit but I sure had butterflies in my stomach! Besides what would I do without my little shadow around for a whole week!! Lucy tends to follow me everywhere and look over my shoulder constantly! When I run an errand she is right there by my side. She hates to miss out on a shopping trip - even if it is just to the grocery store!! Anyway, she got on that plane and left us for a week and would have been fine for another week if possible. 

She saved her money to put toward part of her ticket. She was so excited to go visit a couple of her best friends from Indiana!

Elder Holland pays a visit to Minnesota

 So, our Stake was lucky enough to have elder Holland come visit in June. Andy was helping with traffic and took Ethan along with him. I got the kids ready and we had to be in our seats for quite a long time before the meeting started all the while Andy and Ethan were out directing traffic. Right before the meeting started Ethan and Andy came and sat by us. Ethan was all smiles. He leaned in and told me he saw Elder Holland. Ethan and Andy were hanging up their orange vests when and Elder Holland happened to walk right by them. He patted Ethan on the shoulder and said nice job with the traffic.
It made Ethan's day!! It was  a very special meeting and at the end he let all the kids come up and shake his hand and say hi. It was a very special meeting and the kids thought is was really cool they got to talk to him and Ethan felt especially happy to have him talk to him before the meeting started.

Who wants some juice?!!?!?!?

One Saturday after going for a run I came home and decided to make some juice for breakfast. I wanted to do it quick because we were in a bit of a hurry so got the brilliant idea to mix it in the blender. So I pulled out our awesome Blendtec and dumped the juice and water in and hit the button. Right away I saw the liquid was pretty high and seemed like it was getting really close to the top. I came very close to the blender to take a look and was peering right over it just as the top burst off and juice - sticky juice went flying EVERYWHERE!! It was such a mess and took me by complete surprise. My head had juice dripping off of it. We found sticky juice spots for days after!!

Check out my shirt. You can see juice all over it!

kindergarten graduation

Well Lucas did it! He finished Kindergarten and learned quite a bit along the way! What a sweet boy! I will miss him when he goes to school all day in the fall. Oh and by the way he had me cut off all his curls. This is one of the last times he had curls. I think he finally got sick of everyone saying how "cute"the curls are so he had me chop it all off!!

Here he is with Ms. Eull

Mr spring was his gym teacher and he loved going to gym class and thought Mr Spring was a pretty cool teacher

Jane turns 4

So hard to believe that my baby is turning 4!! What joy Jane has brought into our lives. She is just so darn cute and has such a large personality. We love Jane and she is growing too fast!! She had a great birthday. We celebrated with her on her birthday and we loved giving Andy a hard time that it was his first birthday he would get to celebrate with Jane. A couple weeks later we had her party. It was her first party and she loved it. 

It was definitely a Lego year for Jane. Given she has older siblings she is very interested in Legos. All the kids were excited to help her build everything before they left for school

On her birthday we also had our last day of Joy School and they brought balloons for Jane

We had a garden party but it of course rained the day of her birthday so our party ended up being inside. Each of the kids got a garden apron when they arrived

Family Reunion Planning

Alisa and I spent many hours and days together planning every detail of our Family reunion. It was always a good excuse to get together. We'd try and busy the kids and then our brains would hurt as we started trying to calculate just how many bagels a group of 50+ people might eat for breakfast or how many hamburgers we should plan on. Who knew how much work mom put into each reunion!! This has given me a whole new appreciation for all the reunions mom has planned for!! (And food was just one aspect of the planning!!) Here we are at our (fingers crossed) last planning session until the reunion!!

We like Father and Son Campout!!

We were not feeling sorry for ourselves as the boys left to go camping with Andy for Father and Son's campout. We went out to eat and Lucy chose Smashburger! Hooray! We had a fun night hanging out and spending some quality girl time together!