Birthday Bash

I hate the feeling that I haven’t blogged about two important events!  I hate scheduling time to do it.  Jonah is patiently waiting for me to play candyland so I will be brief.

No question I LOVE my birthday, and the gifts that go with it.  Bryan was successful again with clothes, shoes, bike pump, rain jacket (that I have wanted since April but wouldn’t buy) and other fun stuff.

I had a wonderful day.  Someone tracking me each year on my birthday would know exactly where to find me.  I run in the early morning (due to the stupid school schedule), but actually this year I was beat and didn’t, I get dressed in my awesome green dress, I drop Jonah off at my Dad’s, I meet Tiffany to get a pedicure, we go to TJ Maxx and peruse like we have all the time in the world, we go eat at Plates and Palates where they tell me it is good to see me again, and then I go home to the onslaught of first day/week of school papers and stupid things to do.

Bryan then makes my FAVORITE dinner, spaghetti margarita (or sometimes taco salad).

Eating it in my favorite place to be and where I spend every evening of the summer.

We then eat angel food cake with my friends and family.  OK this year he was helping someone move and so we made do with a fabulous cupcake from Si, and no friends or family.

Then I have to hurry and get the boys to bed (once again because of the stupid school schedule).

And of course all through the day I get phone calls, texts, emails and visits from people who know how much I love my birthday!

So Long Sweet Summer

No more swimming with friends.

No more lazy days of Candyland on the porch.

Welcome to Jr. High!!!  I keep saying I can’t have someone old enough to go to Jr. High, I still go there!  He was so excited and had a great day.  His only complaint was how hard it is to open his locker.

And 4th grade????  I can still remember 4th grade so clearly.  He had  a great day as well.  I asked who was in his class and he said, “I don’t know, everyone was too quiet so I didn’t notice.”  His only complaint, “When the fan is by me, all my papers blow off my desk, but when the fan is by Laila I get sooooo hot!”   Going to school in the middle of the summer is NOT a good thing.

Starting preschool in a few weeks.  His only complaint was, “When are the boys going to be home?”

The End

Kind of tempted to just let them do this all day today.  2 days left of the shortest summer in the history of summers.

I went to Back to School night at the Jr. High last night. a)It was so dang hot in the school I thought I was going to pass out.  b) I was almost running from one end of the school to the other the whole time, I don’t know how Brandon will make it to class in time. c)  He is so excited, but I got nervous for him. d) I am starting my goal of getting the school schedule here to quit starting in the MIDDLE of the summer!

Summer Lovin

I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon.  Well unless this was proceeded with being at a pool in the hot hot sun.  And of course some really good food.  And friends and music.  Ok, I better just stick with my original comment.

July

Me and blogging do not do well in the summer time.  The reason being that blogging is an indoor activity and I avoid those as much as possible during my precious summer.  I don’t want to think about it anymore though, so here I am inside while the sun is calling my name.

July in a nutshell!

I arrived home from girls camp and went to a family reunion the next day.  This was a Doxey reunion, all my Mom’s siblings and children.  There are only 2 brothers still alive so mainly is was lots of cousins.  This was the first time we had ever done this and it was great.  So many fun cousins and memories.  They live scattered across the US so we don’t see many of them very often, and the ones who live in Bountiful we don’t see either!  There were pictures taken and as soon as I get ahold of some I will add them!  Anyways it was so good to get together.

4th of July!!!!!  Who could miss out on the funnest party of the year?  We had to skip out a little early for a baseball game, but not before the traditional water baseball game!

Then we had Jacob’s birthday!  Please tell me I already blogged about that.  A Relief Society summer party I was semi in charge of.  The end of baseball, and then my summer could start!!!!

Swim lessons for Jonah, wedding shower for Nate and Yiska, The Sherwood”s here for a weekend (and then they come back later), trampoline sleepover!!!  Jonah’s first time joining us.

Dinner with our favorite dinner guests, Quin, Jaclyn, and Whitney Kofford and Jarom who isn’t our favorite guest anymore.  Why didn’t we take a picture????

And then the parade.  I said I wouldn’t go this year.  I certainly didn’t get up at 6 :00a.m. and set out chairs.  Bryan was volunteering at the parade and Brandon and Jacob were at snowbird with the Sherwood’s.  So I decided to drive down to the parade at 5:45.  I found a lovely spot under a tree and Jonah and I thoroughly enjoyed the quick parade.

After the parade was the beloved “culmination of summer” barbeque at the Murdock’s.  Of course we had a wonderful time.

Chris and Jen now are part of the tradition.

And then my 19 house guests arrived.  The Sherwood’s with their 4 children and Reed’s brother’s family, all 13 of them!

There are a few of them watching the fireworks.

More of them up on the deck.

The regulars.

Why oh why didn’t we get a picture of all 24 of us hanging out in our front yard?  Because that is what we did.  We ate dinner Saturday night on the front lawn and visited and played out there.  It was such a great time.  Our guests were the best you could ask for.  Darling kids and parents who were low maintenance.  I would have them back in a heartbeat!  They stayed 2 nights, probably because we are so fun.  They left the house cleaner than they found it.  We had such a great time.

Then off to scout camp went Brandon (6 days) and Bryan (for 3 days).  Jacob, Jonah and I partied it up while they were gone.  We were carefree, we visited Chris and Jen and the girls, went to a band party at the Unwins.  Swam and didn’t fix dinner, it was like a little vacation.  The night before Bryan came home Jacob said, “Oh dang, our party life ends tomorrow night”.

They had a great time at camp.  Brandon did several very hard things.  Like the polar bear challenge which was sitting in a 36 degree waterfall for 10 seconds.  He said he had a headache for 2 days afterwards, I would think so.  He was the only one in the group who would do it.

Jacob, Jonah and I went boating with the Bleazards last Saturday.  Bryan stayed home and worked on our back fence, which looks soooo good!  I will post pics when it is done.  It was so nice to FINALLY go boating.

I made Jonah go slowly on the tube, he had fun even though he didn’t want to do it!

Jacob knee boarded with no problem!

Pretty fun surfing at the lake.

We ended the day a little early so I could get home before Brandon did.  I missed him SO much.  It was a little preview for his mission, I will be a wreck!  I got home minutes before he did.  So good to see this face!

Dirty and covered in mosquito bites, but safe and home.

And that in a nutshell is July!

Allstar Baseball 2011

Jacob made the allstar baseball team again this year.  I wasn’t sure if he would because he was an 8 year old trying out for a 9 year old team.  Well he wanted to try out and he made it.  He did pretty well for being a whole year younger than some of the players.  He turned 9 during the last week of games and some of the kids had turned 10 during the season.

We had a lot of fun traveling to different ball parks across the valley for games and tournaments.  His team did really well and made it to the state tournament held in Tooele, why in Tooele?  I have no idea, I guess everyone takes turns.  They ended up taking 5th place in the state, doesn’t sound that impressive until you have seen how some of these teams play, they were amazing.

Jacob definitely wasn’t a star of the team and played right field most of the games, which was hard for him because he had never played in the outfield and had to learn how.  He had so much fun just being part of the team and getting the opportunity to play lots more games.  We were all a little burned out this week when they lost, so it wasn’t too upsetting (especially because I did not want to take him to Panguitch for the region tournament in a few weeks).

Overall I very good and fun time for our family.  It gave us lots more time to be together than we would have otherwise.  Brandon loves going and supporting Jacob and Jonah loves going as long as I have plenty of snacks for him to eat!

I LOVE this picture.  Just like the big league.

Warming up.

I think I need a new camera or learn how to turn off the flash!

Girls Camp

I didn’t meet my goal and get caught up last week, but at least I am getting close!

I was so lucky to be on the Stake food committee for camp this year.  I will do anything to get to go to camp.  The timing was crazy with my other back to back trips, but it was still so great.  Bryan and the boys stayed in Arizona until Tuesday so I didn’t have to find places for them to be for 2 of the days.  We went to Heber Valley June 27-July 1.  It was my first time at Heber Valley Camp.  I had heard for years about how nice it was.  Honestly my first day there I wasn’t thinking it was as great as people had been saying.  By the end though I was very impressed.

Our food committee was headed up by my dear friends Jolene and Nick Cash.  They are the best.   They are so much fun, love good food and all around the kind of people you want to be around.  We also had my friend Jen Broadhead,and others I didn’t know before Jenny Jensen and Max and Sharla Fillmore.  We all worked pretty good together, which was a good thing when you spend that much time together.  We planned on feeding 275 people, but never had that many, which was a little hard on the planning.   We had 2,000 lbs. of food delivered from US food services (thanks to Nick working there).  It was the best thing that could have happened.  From their refrigerated truck straight into our beautiful walk in fridge and freezer behind.

Jolene and Jen showing off our awesome fridge!

While we had so much fun the whole time, it also was the hardest I have ever worked for that many days in a row.  We were up at 6:00 and went to bed around 11:30.  We would sometimes have a 45 min. break in the afternoon, but sometimes not.  We could usually go to the evening event, but sometimes we worked through it all.  The first morning I didn’t brush my teeth before I walked into the kitchen and didn’t have a chance to until 2:30 in the afternoon.  After that I always made sure I brushed my teeth before walking into the kitchen!

Some pics of our working all day lives.   I promise me sitting on that cooler was the ONLY time I sat down all week!

And these are some pics from our more fun moments.  Jen and I were back up MC Hammer dancers in the stake leaders skit, definitely a highlight.  Our ward also wrote and performed, twice, a song and action thank you to the cooks.  It was so cute, we loved it.  It was done so well all because, MELINDA WELCH is in our ward! (that is a joke from camp).

Even though I was working so hard I had adrenaline to keep me going.  I do not normally function on less than 8 hours of sleep and I did just fine, until I got home and about died.  I know I was blessed to get through each day.

One of the stake leaders was talking to me one day and she said, “Well how old are you?  You can’t be more than in your twenties.”  And then on another day one of the youth from a ward said “ You can’t be old enough to have a 12 year old”.  I told them both to keep on making those comments!