Jenessa a hippie?

My mom came over and helped Jenessa and I decorate her room. Here is before we started (with the beautiful plain boring walls).

In the middle of the project . . . . .

And here is the finished room! It looks pretty cool.

My little flower child!

Conference Sunday

Bogus Basin 2010

My family has a tradition that they started a long time ago (I believe it was when I was 8) where we go up to Bogus Basin on General Conference Sunday and we have a family picnic and listen to the afternoon session of conference up there. My uncle David and his family use to go up with us for many years until they moved too far away. This year it was just Dad and Mom, Ryan and me and our kids, Jordan and Jeff and Amy and their two boys. It was a super warm sunny day and I was regretting the fact that I didn't wear shorts. We ate, talked and played. It was a lot of fun.

Uncle Jordan playing and hanging with the kids on the chair lift. His head was so close to the ground. :)









There is a winding path that the kids like to ride their scooters and bikes down. Even the bigger kids had fun racing each other down it on bikes, trikes, scooters and even an old school big wheel. :)

While up there we celebrated Max and my birthday.

We got into a berry throwing war and pretty much everyone got involved in it (even mom). It is all fun and games until someone loses an eye. :) It was a fun day but ended pretty quickly when dark clouds started rolling in and it got windy. We started packing things up and right before we were about to hop in the cars to leave it started POURING rain. It was crazy. That was the end of our fun. On the drive home Alyse got car sick and threw up all over in the car. Not a fun way to end the day...however it was a fun day none the less. I am hoping that someday we can get Matt and Janae and their family as well as Derek and Julie and their family to come. We missed you this year Jaron!

New house without the hassle of moving

My dad, Jordan, Jeff and a friend of Jeff's painted our house. I have always hated the color of our house and the paint job was horrible....it was splotchy and fading.
Jeff was such an awesome brother and kind of gun runned it to happen. He came over and power washed the outside of the house and then came back another afternoon and caulked everything. Then Jeff and Dad came over and taped up all the windows, doors and lights and getting it all prepped for the next day. On Saturday Jeff, his friend Steve, Jordan and Dad showed up and painted our house.

My family is such a great example to me of being selfless. I appreciate all of the time and hardwork that they put in and their personal free time that they sacrificed to paint our house.

My Baby Brother

My baby brother left for BYU Idaho and the week before he left we were able to go and see him being ordained as an elder. It was an awesome experience to be able to witness. The spirit was very strong. It is such a strange thing for me to see him leaving home and going away to college...I remember the day that he was born. (I was 12 when he was born). My family has a lot of fun playing with him and we will miss him while he is at school.

Three of my four younger brothers.

Bees, bees and more bees

So while getting the outside of our house ready to be painted, Jeff informed me that we had wasp nests all over the outside of our house. Those little buggers had made nests underneath the roofline all over the place, inside vents, light fixtures and even in one of our trees. Jeff was able to spray a lot of them down with a power washer but there were a few that we had to get with wasp spray. So Ryan got onto the roof to take down the shutters and to spray the bees. The sneaky little things had even made a nest in our down spout. So Ryan sprayed inside the spout and you should have seen all the wasps come falling out of there. Here is a picture of the massive grave of them after falling out of the down spout.

Labor Day Camping

Traditionally we go camping on Labor Day weekend with my family up to Silver Creek Plunge however this year they didn't go. My youngest brother Jaron was getting ready to go to BYU-Idaho. So we went camping with some good friends from the ward (Kynastons and Behunins). We went boon docking it and camped just out in the woods...no offical campground. I have been camping a lot of times in my life and I have to say this is a first for me. Camping with no running water (faucets...luckily we were right next to a creek) and no bathroom. (well there was a kind of a make shift toilet there....someone had built a box out of plywood and cut a hole on the top and put a real toilet seat on it. No thank you for me...I prefer to squat in the woods, thank you very much). It was a pretty chilly weekend and there was a lot of dirt. But the kids had a lot of fun playing in the dirt and with their friends.

The younger girls dug and played in the dirt for most of the weekend. Needless to say, after the weekend they were filthy!

The four boys slept in a little tent together. They seemed to have fun goofing off together and glad to be in the same tent until Trevor threw up in the middle of the first night. Luckily (weird to be talking about throwing up being anywhere remotely close to being lucky) he didn't get it all over the tent or over all the others' stuff. He got the majority of it inside his sleeping bag, pillow and blanket. Since it was freezing and like two in the morning we just rolled it all up and threw it into a garbage bag to deal with the next day. Good thing we brought extra sleeping bags. :)

A group of the girls had a little sleepover in Kynaston's camper.

WARNING!!!! This next picture are not for the faint of heart. The next day we waited until the middle of the afternoon to clean up the throw up. We were hoping that it would warm up a bit...however it was still really chilly and the creek water was ICE COLD. After washing the pillow, pillow case, blanket and sleeping bag...Ryan and I's hands were practically numb.

While washing out Trevor's bedding we realized that our kid doesn't chew his food very well. Our friend was very good to take pictures for us while we were cleaning up but I decided not to include the pictures of the throw up in the water. :) There were whole pieces of chicken....does my son not chew his food???

I love this picture of the girls watching us cleaning up the throw up. They look so disgusted. :)

I am not sure if Jordan ever checks my blog or not however last year during our Labor Day camping trip Jordan, Ryan and I burned a box. It was so AWESOME!!! Remember that Jordan!?! The box acted like a chimney and the flames went shooting up through the middle of the box....but it created a vacuum type. It got so loud. :) Anyway ever since then everytime we go camping Ryan and I have tried to do the box burning again. So this is our attempt at it on this trip. The bonfire got so big. We did this late at night after all the kids were in bed...wouldn't want to be giving them ideas. :)

Here is a picture of all the kids. Look at how dirty the younger ones are. They look like they rolled in the dirt. (I think they practically did.)

Thank you Kynastons for finding this spot and inviting us. It was a fun time playing games, chatting, laughing, freezing and staying up until all crazy hours of the night.

Start of the New School Year

Trevor started sixth grade this year. Yikes!! I do not feel old enough to have a kid in middle school. I have to say that I was really nervous for my little boy to be going there but he absolutely loves it! I definitely don't love how early he has to wake up and be out of the house...but I guess I had better get use to it because it is going to be like this for a really long time now. A new thing...Trevor also got glasses this summer. The other day we were in the car driving home from scouts and Trevor told me that he can fit into his locker at school. ??? So I of course in shock, asked him how he knows that, and he tells me that after school one day he wanted to see if he could fit. So low and behold he finds out that yes in fact he can fit into his locker. Still to this day I can't figure out why this is so cool to him???

Jenessa started fourth grade this year and at a different elementary school. She had been struggling with some mean girls and bullying at the traditional school where she had been going and so this pushed me over my year round school avoidance. Jenessa is now going to a year round school close to our house and is loving every minute of it. She is in class with one of her best friends and loves walking to and from school with her friends. She chooses to walk even though we are in the bus zone and can take the bus. I am so glad that she is enjoying school this year.

Alyse started kindergarten this year and loves going to school. She walks to school every morning with Jenessa and then rides the bus home at lunchtime. It is so strange for me to have three kids in school now. It was a little bit of an adjustment to try to figure out a schedule...it is hard having three kids coming home from school at three different times. Lexi enjoys being home alone and being able to do things without older siblings bossing her around or taking over. It has been a lot of fun for her and I to have some time together just the two of us. It is kind of weird...it is not very often that I get one on one time like that.

Don't die of shock!!!

I have decided to try to get back into the blogging life. Life has been keeping us really busy and it seems like I never have time to do anything. But I have decided to try to just start blogging again and not try to catch up on too much old stuff...that was overwhelming me. So don't anyone die of shock! :)