All sunscreened up and ready to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, we are officially a month into our summer vacation. I think my kids are beginning to feel the affects of our super long spring! My goodness! We've had so many rainy and cold days that we've been couped up forever! Addie has asked me numerous times when does summer start? We'll I think it has officially landed. We hit 90 degrees for the first time this year this week. So, of course my first thoughts are lets go to the pool! I think everyone is tired, burnt and thank goodness sleeping!!

Brinley has just taken right off swimming all around our pool this year! She has amazed both Derek and I. I put those arm floaties on her and stick her in an intertube, and she is off kicking all over the pool trying to keep up with Chandler and Addie. Chandler loves to dive into the pool and also dive under to pick up our diving sticks. Addie loves to count how many somersaults she can do in the water....I think at last count it was like 32. I am grateful we pay our HOA's so we can have access to our neighborhood pool. I don't know that my kids would frequent swimming pools nearly as often without it!

Laughlin Cousins

One morning I went in to check on Addie & Joey and here is what I found. I had set up a bed on the floor for Addie to sleep in, but apparantly they had other ideas. Too Cute!
Addie and Joey on their way back to my house after swimming at my pool. Cute little toothless grins don't you think?

Jett and Brinley and my feet!

Jett

Jayce (blue) and Chandler at our swimming pool.

(Left to right) Chandler, Jayce & Jett hanging out at the temple waiting for pictures to finally be done with!

Joey & Brinley playing in the fountain at the Denver Temple.

Jayce playing video games first thing in the morning! Boys!

Addie & Jett hanging out at the fountain.

One of the perks to Kenny getting married is that Brooke, Adrian and their family came for a visit. (My sister from Seattle for those of you who don't know:) My mom had a full house with my brothers families staying with them in addition to those that are still living at home, so Brooke and Adrian stayed at our house. Derek and I are the oldest in our families, we started having kids first. Brooke and Adrian's children are the closest in age as far as cousins go for our children on both sides of our family. Our kids had so much fun together! We both commented on how alike our kids are in many ways and wished we lived closer so that our children could play more often. Not to mention we could hang out as well! Jayce(boy) and Chandler are about a year apart and they did the boy things. Mostly video games.... Addie and Joey(girl) were all over the place. They did makeup, hair, tortured their younger and older siblings and listened to Taylor Swift and sang at the tops of their lungs. Those two are so much alike it's hilarious. Not to mention that Addie looks just like me as a little girl and Joey looks just like Brooke. For only seeing each other probably 5 times total (if that) in their entire lives it's crazy how similar they are. Brinley and Jett (boy) are the same age and they were constantly running after each other. I found them often playing dolls (sorry Adrian:) in Brinley's room or dressups in the basement. It was a fun week of memories for our families. My kids are still asking when we'll make a trip to Seattle to visit them. Maybe someday.....We miss you guys!!

Kenny & Andrea

On June 12th, my youngest biological brother got married! It was a fun day filled lots of crazy, tons of family, and of course way too much food! All of my siblings but one (we missed you Tyler & Amy!!) were able to make it out for the special day. They were married in the Denver Colorado temple. The best part about their wedding is that we didn't have to travel this time to participate in all of the festivities. :) I loved that I was able to go to Andrea's bridal shower, her endowment session and do all of the fun stuff that I have missed out on with us not living where the others live. I look forward to spending more time with them both since they are living in an apartment about 10 minutes away from me. Congratulations you two!

Johnstown Days

Here fishy, fishy....

Here's the little guy....

Got it!!

She's trying soooo hard.....come on Papa...where are you????

On the first Saturday in June our family gets woke up around 4:30 AM by our local fire department. They come around the neighborhood and up and down every street with their sirens on. It is their signal to meet at the fire station for a pancake breakfast. This is the official start to "Johnstown Days." The day is followed by many events one of which is the fishing derby (pictures of kids above). The local businesses set up booths at Parish park and have bounce houses, a 5k run and of course a parade. We would have had more pictures of the day, however our camera had a mishap this year at the fishing derby. Our family has yet to make it to the pancake breakfast nor will we ever. The idea of getting up super early, standing in lines, eating pancakes with lots of people who may or may not have washed their hands...people touching all of our food (I dunno...I guess I am easily grossed out) and the 6 bucks a plate seems to keep us from making it over there.

Chandler and Addie were very excited to participate in the fishing derby this year. Brinley and I decided to stay home -plus she was still sleeping. Addie especially was excited. She kept saying to me maybe today will be my day to catch my very first fish. Unfortunately it didn't happen for her. (Papa...I think this is your chance to help her get her first one!!) Chandler caught 4 fish and in addition to that, cast our camera out into the Johnstown Reservoir. Derek luckily was able to recover it, however it will never work again. It was a great camera...sniff.....

The kids enjoyed fishing and the parade. We laughed at all of the silly floats and people who made it into the parade this year. The best were the senior citizens who rode the similar style Vespa scooters (but they were old, classic versions) who rode up and down the streets. I loved all of the older ladies "pull on jeans." I told Derek when we get old that is what we'll have to do. Buy us a scooter, some pull on jeans and ride in the Johnstown Days parade. He just looked at me and said, "Wow, you have some high ambitions for our golden years."

(PS: I finally posted pictures of the kids on the last day of school on a previous post called "School's out for Summer!)

Memory Lane

I decided to take a walk on memory lane....here are a few pictures that I looked at.
This is Brinley this past Halloween in 2008. She was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I think she was sneaking candy while we were at our ward Halloween Trunk or Treat party.

These were taking shortly after Brinley was born. Early April 2006. I would guess Brinley is about a week old here.

These are more of my 3 beautiful kiddos! April 2006 as well.

This is Chandler and Addie in the fall of 2004. Chandler 5 Addie almost 3.

Chandler would ride this little red bike up and down the sidewalk in front of our town home we lived in in Ft. Collins. He would get his little legs moving sooo fast it would make us laugh. Summer 2004

Addie getting ready to go to dance in 2005 sometime. Look at how long her hair is!!

Addie in 2005 I think. My girls don't look a thing a like do they?

Chandler and Addie 2005 sometime too. I think Addie is having a bad day?

I can't believe how big they are now. My how time flies. I wish they'd stop growing up so fast!!

comments

Some comments I heard this past week that made me laugh.

Me: Chandler please go comb your hair it's sticking up everywhere!
Chandler: I can't.
Me: (giving him that mom look) And why can't you?
Chandler: Mom, it's too long it won't comb anymore.
(Derek gave him a haircut 2 days ago...thank goodness! The pointy sideburns gross me out!)

Brinley: Mom (looking up at me)
Me: What Brinley?
Brinley: You have hair in your nose.
Me: Great.....thanks, yes I do:)

I love the library

I love visiting the library. The summer reading programs they have going on out here in our area are really well done. Even for our tiny town of 3000 people. On Wednesday night this week they had a girl from the Butterfly Pavillion (bug zoo type thing out here). She talked to the kids in the "tween" program. (I can't believe Chandler is considered a tween already??) Anyhow, she thoroughly grossed me out by talking about how the FDA allows so many bugs to be in our food source. Basically everything we eat..has some bugs in it somewhere. Ketchup was the grossest though. Maggots anyone? That is what we are putting on our hotdogs and hamburgers....You should have seen these kids (3rd through 5th graders) their eyes all huge and looking a little green. To top off the evening they had the kids sample real bugs. They had three choices sour cream & onion crickets, cheese flavored meal worms or chocolate covered worms. Chandler was all over it. He lined up selected a chocolate covered worm and snarfed it up. I was trying to not gag just watching him! He later told me it tasted like chocolate popcorn. Eww!

Also this week at our library they had a tumbling storytime which Brinley loved all of the movement and stories. Addie told me afterwards that it was for babies and she didn't want to go to storytime anymore. (Sniff...they grow up too fast) . It was cute to see Brinley dancing around with 3 of her little friends while their older siblings rolled their eyes and tried to look as bored as possible. :)

The other thing they did this week was a presentation by a meteorologist at UNC about our wacky Weld County weather. He specifically talked a lot about the Windsor, CO tornado last year. Addie has been extremely fearful of clouds, stoms, wind etc ever since that tornado missed Johnstown by about 5 miles. She has nearly driven me crazy with how panicky she is over the slightest breeze or drop of rain. I finally had to ban the word "tornado", "storm" and "clouds" from our house because I just couldn't take her talking CONSTANTLY about it anymore. It was a very real and scary experience for the kids last year. Especially since where the tornado hit in Windsor is part of our ward boundaries. It caused a lot of damage to the majority of the members homes in our ward. 3 of which were completely demolished. Very scary! I hoped that by Addie learning a little more about weather and storms that she would not be so fearful. I told her when the presentation was done to go and ask the guy all the questions she's been pestering me with that I haven't got a clue about. Of course she was too chicken, but at least I tried. The one thing that I think has helped her a teensy bit is he said that someone is ALWAYS watching the clouds and the weather. He explained that because they are doing their job we'll be safe because they let us know any changes that could harm us.

As you can see, I rely heavily on our library. With student loans coming due next month I'm looking for free things for us to do to keep the kids busy. Having such an age variance with my kids can be challenge to keep my almost 10 year old happy while entertaining the 3 year old....the library seems to keep them all happy!