Riverfest

I don't have many pictures as I wished I did.  I forgot the camera card for the first day of festivities.  Sigh.  Friday night we went to the blow up carnival.  It was a lot of fun, besides the fact that it was freezing!  They had a bunch of blow up slides and bounce houses for free.  I love free!  For dinner that night we ate corn dogs and french fries. Yum!  The next morning was the parade.  The parade was the only thing I did document.  It was kind of a sad and short parade, but the kids still ended up with a TON of candy.  So they were happy.

See how happy this little girl is!

The Red X float.  Made us laugh a little bit. (for those of you unfamiliar with Red X it is a grocery store in town that mostly sells liquor)

Look my husband is being social! He looks a little short in between Ryan and James.

Don't you just love Jacks jacket?  I found that little beauty at the thrift store for a buck!  He thinks it is the coolest.

This is our beloved story time liberian Ms. Kathryn.  Jack was so happy to see her.  Actually it threw him off to see her in the parade.  I don't think he ever considered the fact that she doesn't live at the library!

Here he is turning back to tell me who he just saw.

Look mom there she is!

For a kid who never sits still she stayed in her seat almost the whole time.

This is just a weird picture I think she is in the air.  Jumping to get some candy I guess.

Lemonade

Kaitlynn and her friend MacKenzie wanted to have a lemonade stand.  So we had one.  I had a bunch of pennies and handed them out to the neighbor kids so they could by the lemonade.  It was pretty cute to watch them pretend to be big.

Sampling the goods.

They didn't like Olivia trying to steal their lemonade so I turned on the hose to distract her from the big kids game.

In the end they were all distracted.

More Olivia and Olivia shots

This is all that was left of the lemonade stand.

Last week of August

My favorite view.  Nothing better than walking downstairs to our creepy unfinished basement and seeing this perfect sight.  Jack on top of the couch, intently watching a movie. Olivia sneaking into the popcorn. And Kaitlynn with daddy arm wrestling.  I love them all.

I gave Olivia a chocolate cookie.

Olivia and Olivia playing together.  These two always squeal with delight whenever they see one another.

They even share! Sometimes...

BFF.

 I put this picture in because this is what happens when the real daddy is always studying or at work.  The surrogate daddies have to fix the bike.  Only a year and a half left then Ryan can be back on bike duty.

Funniest Thing Ever...today at least

This is the latest of a series of videos made by some Utah brothers. They have a bunch of kids retell stories from the brothers' childhood and then the brothers act out the story using the audio from the kids. Funny. I giggled. You should too.

Rock Climbing

Once upon a time I was a decent rock climber but not so much any more.  While in Utah for one of our many adventures, we went rock climbing up Rock Canyon in Provo.  It was a lot of fun, but I am way out of shape.  I would like to blame having had three kids as my downfall, but I am guessing it has more to do with the bag of Cheetos I am eating currently.

This is the climb my younger brother thought we could do.   I don't know if I could have really made it up. The rain came so I didn't have to find out if I was a big failure.  

This is my cousin Emily. She came with us another day.   I didn't do any editing to this picture.  Yes she really is that tan and yes her teeth are that white.  

Michael climbing (actions pose).

Paul climbing (more action). 

Joseph climbing (epic action - sorry Jesse, used the word epic as an adjective this time).

Stephen climbing.  Sorry Stephen. I don't have good pictures of you climbing. It was either raining too hard or I was belaying you.  This is the best I have.

Less epic picture of Joseph. This might help Stephen feel less cheated about his picture.

Here I am rapelling down the crack climb. It's almost as scary going down.

I like this picture because you can see Paul peek over the cliff face making sure that his sister isn't messing up his rope or something. You can also see how Paul felt this was a good "beginner" climb.

This tough picture of Paul's arm shows exactly why he was the best climber out of all of us and why the crack climb should have been easy for us mere mortals.

But Stephen wins for prettiest baby blue eyes.

We also let the kids play up on a kid version of rock climbing while in Park City.  You were really supposed to pay to let the kids play on the playground but we thought that was stupid so we just walked in and played.  No one kicked us out. 

Ryan climbing up the wrong side,  just to show how tough he is. Yeah dear, you climbed like 5 feet. Real tough.

Jack was quite satisfied with his accomplishment.

Contemplating important things I am sure.

Thanks for the adventures!

First Day of School

It happened.  Somehow my baby girl grew up and left me for the big wide world of kindergarten!  While I haven't been looking forward for this day to come, Kaitlynn has been eagerly awaiting it for the past year.   

Classic first day of school picture, standing in front of our house.

The group of parents and kids waiting for the bus to come.

Kaitlynn with her best friend Makenzie.  These two ended up in the same kindergarten class.  

Ryan and Brandon (Makenzie's dad) teaching Alexis how to pound it.  Olivia is an expert of sorts and will pound it with anyone who can make a fist.

They just saw the bus!!!  I don't have any picture of Kaitlynn getting on the bus because I took video instead.  She was the first one on and didn't even look back to wave or say bye.  She was ready to go!

Jack watching the bus drive away.

Jack waiting for the bus to come back.

Eating her afternoon snack and telling me all about her very first day of school ever.

All the Grandchildren

While in Utah we had a chance to take pictures with all of the grandkids together.   

It is impossible to get seven kids and a play horse to look at the camera all at the same time.

 (Hylton Cousins)

We took pictures in three different spots.

 (Bartholomew Cousins)

I am not sure any of them worked out like we had hoped

But I still think they are pretty dang cute.

And I threw this one in there just because she is beautiful.