Bryan at Justin's baseball game.

Nathan and Kempton getting ready to climb.

I think Justin had a mouth full of sunflower seeds when I took this shot!

Summer Re-Cap

Now that the summer is officially over I want to post about some of the summer things that went on.

Justin played baseball this summer. He had a great time and really improved in his batting skills over the course of the season.

Nathan and Kempton had some rock climbing lessons that they really enjoyed. They are not quite ready to climb on their own yet, but they will eventually get there.

Our whole family took a trip to Utah in July. Nathan attended EFY while the rest of us met up with our friends and went to Lagoon one day and then spent a day poolside with them as well. We also went to Bear Lake and did some boating and also sampled the local food (raspberry shakes and burgers!). It was a bit crowded in the small town where Bear Lake is located but we had a good time and enjoyed ourselves. It was fun spending time w/ friends that we don't often see and Nathan had an awesome time with his cousin Dallin at EFY.

Just before school started we took a trip to Dana Point, California to stay in a condo near the beach. The trip was a long drive so we broke it up into two days and so we all survived! After driving through the desert areas of Utah, Ariz., and Nevada, I can't imagine living in such a hot, dry and ugly place, but lots of people sure do! The boys really loved playing at the beach and Barton and I enjoyed just watching the kids play in the sand and the water for hours and hours. We also went to Disneyland a few times. It was always hot and crowded but we made the best of it and rode lots of fun rides. Our last night there we decided to go late in the evening because we knew it would be cooler and thought it would be a little less crowded. We were right about the cooler temps, but it was even more crowded at nighttime there!! We stayed until almost midnight with lots of other Disney-Crazy folks.

Some other fun things we did this summer:

Trek (Nathan, Barton and Ann)--A three day pioneer re-enactment in Wyoming

High Adventure (Nathan)--A trip with scouts to camp, mountain bike, fish, river rafting, etc.

Scout Camp (Kempton)--A two day adventure with other scouts his age

Day Camp (Justin and Ann)--A two day adventure at Boulder County Fairgrounds to do lots of fun activities

I have left out many more things that we did, but these are the major highlights.

Summer is officially OVER! The kids went back to school last Wednesday. Nathan began his first day of HIGH SCHOOL (I'm feeling just a little OLD), Kempton had his first day of middle school and Justin was at Centennial again for 4th grade. The three school days were stressFUL for me trying to get three different kids to three different places, help the kids makes lunches, fill out forms, get Kempton to football practice several times, and on and on and on! On Thursday Nathan started seminary class at 6:00 a.m. Luckily we have some neighbors who we carpool with and Barton is the one who took them this past week. Nathan did pretty good at getting up and being ready on time. He was a little tired this weekend, but he will get used to it pretty soon I'm sure. Today is the start of a new week and I'm feeling like it's going to be a good week.

Justin enjoying smores at his 9th birthday party.


Third Update: Justin turned 9 on May 19th. We had a little party for him and lots of his friends. He and his friends all roasted hot dogs and marshmallow in the firepit, played lots of outdoor games until the rain came and then came inside to open presents and play some more. It was a really fun party and two of the boys who came keep begging to come over again and play with Justin! I haven't had the chance to have them back over, but now that some of the craziness of summer has died down we will have to get some of those boys over here again for some more partying!!!!!!

Okay.....this picture isn't cooperating and is supposed to be down by the little quip about Kempton, but instead it's up here. This is Kempton at the awards ceremony. His teacher, Mr. Bonnema, is in the striped shirt and the Principal Mr. Liddle is on the far left in blue. Not the greatest of pictures....sorry!

It has been montsh since I have updated my blog, so tonight I am adding lots of updates.

First update: Nathan finally finished his homemade-from-scratch go-cart several weeks ago. He had it running and was driving it in the driveway without a seat. I was a nice mom and so I bought him a seat for it which he has yet to install. I have decided that Nathan is a builder but not much of a user. He loves to build RC airplanes, but really doesn't have much interest in flying them. Kind of the same w/ the go-cart.....spent months and months building it and now it's collecting dust in the garage. I'm not too upset that he doesn't get it out more because I know he learned a lot by building it. He did an excellent job and amazes me at the talent he has!!

Second Update: Kempton "graduated" from 5th grade in May. At a special awards ceremony he was awarded a special award for consistently have high academic achievement. Each teacher chose one of their students to receive this award so this shows what a fine student Kempton is. We are very proud of him for being such a great student!! Way to go Kempton!!!!!

Just some updates.....nothing too fancy.

I just have to add one more funny thing that Bryan said the other day. He came to me with his fingers stuck in his nose and asked, "Why do I have these two holes?" He was totally serious and I was chuckling at his funny question. So I told him that is how Heavenly Father made our noses and he was okay with that answer.

Sunday (yesterday), was a bit of a hectic day for us. We had stake conference in the morning and I had to be there early to accompany the choir. After a wonderful conference we went home and I fixed a quick taco lunch before Barton had to head to the airport for a trip to Nashville for work meetings. I had a 3:30 meeting with the stake primary presidency for some training, so the kids were on their own at home. I had my cell phone on silent so as not to interrupt the meeting if any calls came in. About 5 minutes before the meeting was over I thought I should check my phone to see if I had received any calls and decided not to because I was in the front row and didn't want to seem rude. As soon as "amen" was said for the closing prayer I pulled my phone out and saw that there was a voicemail message that had been left exactly 5 minutes before. I quickly dialed and listened to Nathan saying that Bryan had fallen down the stairs and hurt his wrist pretty bad. I hurried home and found Bryan had been well taken care of. The boys put ice on his wrist and propped it up with a pillow. I took one look and knew it must be broken because he didn't want me to even touch it at all and he was very whimpery and there was some swelling. So off to the urgent care clinic in Broomfield we went. Luckily we beat the crowd that seemed to follow us in there and didn't have too long of a wait. The x-rays showed that it is broken....possibly both bones. Thursday he will be getting a permanent cast as he only has a splint while the swelling hopefully goes down. He is a little trooper and has hardly complained about it hurting. He is hoping to get a red cast but says he will get blue if they don't have red!

Scissor Conversations and Other Funny Things!

I walked into Bryan's room the other day to help him get ready for bed. To my astonishment, on his floor was a large pair of scissors! I asked Bryan why there was a pair of scissors laying on his bedroom floor and his reply was, "Oh I used those to cut open the cookies". "What cookies", I asked. "Oh the ones that I have under my bed." Puzzled, I asked,"Why do you have cookies under your bed? Will you please show them to me?" He willingly pulled a package of oatmeal cookies out from under his bed and said that he couldn't open them without the scissors. So, thank goodness he hadn't cut the curtains or his clothes or shoelaces or hair or done any permanent damage. Just a package of cookies that he snuck up to his room along with some large scissors. They funniest part is that he had only eaten one cookie! For all that trouble that he went to he really should have enjoyed more of them!!

This morning while I was putting on my make up Bryan wandered into my bathroom and said, "What ya' doin' mom?" Before I could answer he said, "Oh you're puttin' on your face....(pause)...oh no you're not, you're just putting on your cheeks." So today I just have my cheeks on....not my whole face! I must look really funny...... :)

Easter Weekend.....

We had a busy, but fun weekend with all that was going on. After church today I was pretty worn out. I showed up early to practice singing with the ward choir and also to accompany two of the numbers. After that I played 5 numbers on the organ for Sacrament meeting and then headed to primary where I did the music time in junior and senior primary. So it was a bit of a long day at church, but I survived and also went to dinner at my in-law's home. Yesterday (saturday) the boys decorated Easter eggs and Barton and I drove some kids to a youth dance in Greeley so we were up a little later than usual. Here are a few pictures of the egg coloring. I hope you had a wonderful Easter!!

Our 7th pinewood derby!

With four boys all spaced 3 or more years apart it allows us the opportunity to participate in 12 pinewood derbys. The making of the cars is great and Barton is a good dad and lets his boys do all the work except for cutting it on the band saw. This was Justin's first derby and he really did great. He made a blue and silver car that was pretty darn fast. Overall he placed 12th out of 36 boys, so that puts him in the top 1/3.

Kempton took a video. Justin's car won during the heat he was recording. It's a really short clip so you will probably need to replay it a few times like I did so I could take it all in.

Card Swap

I just wanted to post a picture of the card I made for March Card Swap. I had a harder time with the theme which was cards for anyone with any theme (birthday, congrats, etc.). I chose to do birthday using a stamp set that I had never used before. I acutally ended up using three different stamp sets to get my final card design.

Lately we have had some little gray visitors in our house (mice). Luckily we knew that mice could be a problem in this house so we have plenty of glue traps and traditional traps as well. Barton was doing some "mice checking" a few days ago and noticed that a trap which sits behind a box in the storage room was missing. After some searching he found the mouse and TWO traps. The poor little mouse got one foot caught in the first trap then ran around and got a second foot caught in another trap on the other side of the room! We thought it was something we ought to capture with the camera because it is surely something we probably won't see too often if ever again!

The Thrashing Threes........
Now I remember why we came up with that title in the first place. Three year olds really are thrashing!! The twos may be terrible, but the threes are worse! Bryan seems to be getting into mischief A LOT lately. Yesterday he took a squirt bottle full of water and sprayed my laptop computer and a portable DVD player. Thankfully both devices survived. Last week he poured water on our DVR and ruined it. A few weeks ago he put Justin's reading light into a bathroom sink full of water and so it got ruined also.

But....there is a theme here. WATER!!!



So here is a picture of Bryan "ready for church" as he put it!!!