Busy, Busy, Busy

This summer seems to have been unusually short, we didn't even do soccer or T-ball!! We like to mix it up and do sports in the summer, since the rest of the year we are doing things like dance and tumbling. I want my girls to be girly yes, but not sissy! :-)

Tumbling and Dance 2008-2009

Shortly after the girls' preschool ended, their dance and tumbling classes came to a close as well. We didn't sign the girls up for soccer this year because it started the week that our dance and tumble classes were wrapping up. Just too many activities and not enough down-time. This same week, Kasey, the girls, and I went to Oregon (a 12-hour drive and 4 states, with 2 small kids and an infant!) to celebrate Gage and Chloe's highschool graduation. We stayed for a few days and when it was time for us to come home, we went the longer way home and went through Craters of the Moon National Monument. I have never been before, so it was neat seeing something new...plus the girls loved learning about 'hot lava rocks', hiking trails, and exploring lava tunnels. Not even a week later, Mikenna had her dance recital, and Kasey had his graduation ceremony and is now a journeyman electrician. We are all so proud of him, it has been a long 5 years of work and school and has finally paid off!!

Two weeks later, Mikenna turned 5!! I cannot believe that our baby is 5!! With the weather not cooperating and so many things going on every weekend thus far, we had to postpone her actual party but we did have a small family celebration.

With barely any time to recuperate from all this chaos, we all packed up the car again and drove 7 hours to Utah, for the Cook family reunion (Kasey's mom's side of the family). We stayed at the Cherry Hill Campground, went to Lagoon, the camp's waterpark, and visited with family we haven't seen for a couple years.

Cherry Hill Campground, getting ready to swim

The kids at Lagoon

Cook Reunion: Dinner and a Show!

The next weekend was the Fourth of July, we spent it at Alcova Lake with some of my family that I haven't seen in 6+ years. It was great to see you again Bob and Ardell!! Then we were off to Worland to see Kasey's sister Kristy and her family since they were visiting as well, and also for our neice, Meagan Bertsch's wedding, which was beautiful and so much fun by the way! Last weekend, we had our first camping trip with just the 5 of us (which is just unheard of!) It was a very nice and relaxing time away... Then we saw Melanie (my little sis) off, as she starts a new beginning in Florida; We will all miss you Melly!!

And here we are now with only 2 weeks left of our summer vacation, because our oldest is starting kindergarten, yes KINDERGARTEN, we want to fit in a trip to South Dakota! I guess we will see what happens... I just hope that it slows down a bit!

Happy Homemaker's Club

I just joined the Happy Homemaker's Club last week. It's a great place where I and others post recipes, cleaning tips, craft ideas, money-saving tips, etc... I have only put on a couple of recipes that my family enjoys so far, and I am always looking for new ideas in all of those departments. So check it out if you're interested in a good read, or joining yourself! The link is: http://happyhomemakersclub.blogspot.com/

Where is Life's Pause Button?

Isla Ann Brown is the last little member of our family, The Brown Family is finally complete. She is now about 9 1/2 months old. Isla has 6 front teeth; 4 tops and 2 bottoms. She has more hair at this point than both of her sisters, I actually got a ponytail in already! She can get anywhere she wants to because she has been rolling around for almost 5 months; for about 1 month has been getting on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth; and in the last week or so has started the army crawl stage. And here in the near future, she will be done with the crawling stage altogether and will be on to bigger and better things...WALKING!!

Isla is funny because when she was first starting to laugh, she would giggle here and there, but I was thinking maybe she would have a more serious personality because it was quite a feat to get the big belly laughs; you basically needed to be overly ridiculous! Haha! But now it's the opposite! She says mama and dada, along with all sorts of other "words"... And I think she may be starting to distinguish which is which :-)

Other funny things she does starting with the most recent: She growls, I don't know where she got it but she does it all the time! She just started blowing spit bubbles and laughs when they pop. During long car rides (there have been quite a few this summer) she will grip both sides of her carseat and shake her whole body back and forth. She clicks her tongue louder than both Kasey and I combined. She shakes her head as if she were saying "no" so hard, I did it back at her to keep her doing it and gave myself a headache!! She breaks silence with a brief, random yell just to get a smile and then may continue with longer ones to get a laugh. She twirls her hands and feet while bobbing her head, this doesn't happen as much anymore which is too bad, because it was so cute to watch her syncronize all of her movements :-)

I find myself a little sad when she grows out of a size of clothing and although I am so excited for her when she accomplishes a new milestone, it can be a little bittersweet. Bittersweet only because I didn't realize that it would be so hard to let go, once miss Isla has outgrown her clothes there isn't an excuse to keep every piece of clothing that any of them have ever owned, and when she no longer rolls everywhere because she can crawl, or communicates with words instead of the babbling. Life moves too quickly and pretty soon Isla won't be a baby anymore. All I can do right now is savor each moment while it is here and know that even though the baby stage may come to an end, they will continue to experience and learn new things and each chapter is just as new and exciting...

Adiee is 4 dang it!

At a barbeque for Kasey's graduation, Linda (Kasey's Stepmom) asked Adiee how old she is; she replied 4. Linda corrected her "No, your 3." It went back and forth a couple of times, with Adiee's frustration growing. She yelled, "I'm 4!!" and ran to me crying. I picked her up and asked her what was the matter. She said, "That lady [grandma] called me 3!" Laughing at Adiee's label for grandma "that lady" I told her, "Adiee, you are 3." She squirmed out of my arms, angrily yelling, "No I'm not, I AM FOUR!!!" and ran away. HAHA!! She is hilarious!!