A fun visit with Peggy and Rhea

We had so much fun visiting with Peggy and Rhea when they came to stay with us.

One highlight was the night Molly and I got to babysit Rhea while Peggy took Paula to see "A Christmas Carol."

We gave her a bath when she got a little sad, missing her mom, but, as you can probably tell by her wide-eyed looks and solemn face, I think she was a little weirded out by the conspicuous substitution of Molly and I for her Mom in this daily ritual. :P

There were lots of other fun things about Peggy's visit...you can read about some of them if you have access to her blog. :)

A Trip to the Splash Pool

Our neighborhood didn't open it's swimming pool till early July this year, so before that we could only go to their splash pool (which is unfortunate for BR because the age limit is 7 and under....and he's such a little fishie that he was over-joyed when the regular pool finally opened!!)

My sister and I took our kids (minus BR plus an extra neice) one day for the kids to cool off from the infernal heat. I am continually amazed how my kids just can't get enough water/pool time!!

East Canyon

Our annual Dalton family vacation/reunion was the first week of June this year (June 3rd-8th). It was very different this time than other years. First of all GM wasn't there until Thursday night and most other years he came up for the evenings even if he had to go back down the canyon every morning to work. Another big change was that I decided to give my kids more independence this time as long as they used the "buddy system". They were free to go from our condo to my sister Amber's condo, to my sister April's condo, to "The Bus" (my parents' motorhome-ized bus) as much as they wanted as long as they stayed in groups (with their cousins). They slept at "The Bus" or other condos most of the time and lots of times ate their meals with grandma and grandpa or their cousins so I didn't see them very often!! Because my kids are the main focus in photography, and because they were off with their cousins so much of the time, I took very few pictures this time as well.


If you look closely you can see BR in the background eating breakfast and watching TV. :) In the foreground is my oldest niece doing some scrapbooking. (My sisters and my mom and I also did a bit of scrapbooking.)


MC getting ready to go swimming.



I spent a lot of time with my sisters and I took some pictures of Amber's kids (her kids are also some of my favorites to photograph).






We went during the first week of June, from June 3rd through the 8th and it was very cold and rainy most of the time. In my opinion it was much too cold to swim (this wasn't helped much by the fact that I'm not a big fan of swimming), and I thought, foolishly, that my kids would feel the same. How wrong I was!! They went to the pool every single day, multiple times, rain or shine!! The only thing I made them get out for was lightning storms or if no other "big people" were going to be there. (BR would have probably been there twice as much if he could have stayed on when nobody was there or when the weather was too bad to permit swimming! GM and I call him our little guppie!)

GM decided to surprise me and come up on Thursday evening instead of the planned Friday evening. (I was glad to see him!!) We went to the hot tub together, 4-wheeling together and watched a movie or two together, but he also went off and did stuff without me as well. He went shooting with BR and my brother-in-law Alan. He also swam with the kids and I believe he went mini-golfing with BR.

Fun Friday #2

This week was our second "Fun Friday" so my sisters and I and all of our kids all went to the zoo together. There was tons of chaos with so many kids, but it was tons of fun! And the thing that made it the most fun was that we all got to be together! We (BR, MC an I) rode with my sister Amber and her kids. We met up with April, Julie, Grace and my mom showed up at the zoo. They've got a new carousel and so everybody had to take a ride on that, we also got to see a bird show (which is always a highlight), and take an *amazing* train ride (well, at least the kids always think it's amazing). :)



It's always fun for me to see which animals my kids will want to ride on...



This was a bowl that you rub and it makes a surprisingly loud ringing noise.




This cute little baby is my "big Buddha" Big HAPPY Buddha! :)


These boys sat there forever staring at this frog with its tongue hanging out. :)



It's my kin about as far back as the eye can see! And that's not everybody!!














After the zoo Amber's kids played at our house for a while (BR played wii with her oldest son while MC played with the baby and her middle son played with GM's "Matryoshka" doll. There's something fascinating to kids about that doll!! It doesn't matter how many times they've played with it before, they still want to play with it again the next time they come!


As we drove home from dropping off Amber's kids, my kids, GM and I were discussing what we could do that would be fun and different, but cheap. :P And as we were listing off the possibilities we came to kayaking on the Daybreak lake (which is conveniently free) and everybody was game so we rushed over there ASAP. (We got there at 7:15 and had to be back by 8:00). They have 2 man kayaks, 1 man kayaks and also row boats. We opted for the 2 man kayaks into which BR and I were a team and MC and GM were a team. It was tons of fun, in fact it was so much fun the kids were both begging to go again the next day!! (Which we had to decline due to blisters that we both got from the oars, GM's were much worse than mine). :( BR was quite a good little rower!! He and I could just keep up with GM's rowing by working together (our hardest). :P


















Once we were done we decided it was high time for dinner. We grabbed some sandwiches from Chick-fil-a and supplemented those with some left over salad from our fridge. :)

Memorial Day Weekend

This was a big fun weekend thanks to GM's family! Diana and Ashley (sister and sister-in-law) threw a fantabulous birthday party for my marvelous MIL. It was a really great party and many people who love her came to be there for that fun and special night. Her son Wayne made a slide show of her life that was really fun to watch, and really sweet.

On Sunday we did family pictures...or tried. :) It's pretty tough with groups as big as our family is!! But it was an adventure nonetheless. We also worked on a big ol' lego Eifel Tower (I think it was about 3 feet tall in the end). Lots of people had fun with it! It was a huge project!







Then on Memorial Day we continued with our tradition: do a project for MIL's birthday present. She usually wants her yard kind of renovated so that's what we did. Everybody pitched in and helped in their own way:

Thanks to Peggy for posting this priceless pic. (I had to steal it because I never got one of MC outside in the yard).

And also, we just did a bunch of hanging out, which is always very eventful and entertaining!

Our main source of entertianment was my darling little niece...she single-handedly provided us with hours and hours of diversion!!

Happy Birthday MC!

I promised I would post pictures from MC's Birthday Party. Unfortunately in the heat of the moment, trying to direct all of my "help" (GM, 5 sisters and my mom) I forgot to ask somebody to be photographer the entire time. My one sis with her nice camera was on jewelry making and dress ups duty before she began the Glam Picture Photo Shoot. Close to the end I finally remembered to snap few. :P

The girls had so much fun!! At the hair station (there were two) the got to pick some sparkly hair clippies to add to their hair and take home. They also got to choose straight, curly, up, down, etc.

At the nails stop they got to keep a little polish from a little bowl of nail polishes. (They all had a little princess crown for the handle of the polish). :) (This sister was also in charge of making the cake for me. She made it purse shaped and MC got to help decorate the cupcakes, she was very proud of her cupcakes.) :)

At the makeup station (Which didn't quite turn out like I'd hoped, most of the time it was me doing the makeup because I forgot to tell my sis that I'd wanted for the makeup that the party was at my mom's instead of at my house :/ ...so she got there pretty late and could only do one girl. Which happens to be the only girl you can tell has any makeup on...can you pick out which one she is?? :P Oh well, the girls felt all excited and special to have their makeup done.) they got to pick a lip gloss/key chain to keep and wear along with getting all made-up.

At the jewelry spot one of my sisters helped them create a choker to wear from a pile of beads they got to pick from. Then that same sister helped them pick out dress-up outfits AND did the photo shoot. :)

Besides eating, and MC opening her presents, the girls did their own thing the rest of the time. They danced and posed in front of a huge mirror I had set up for them. (It was big enough to be full length (for them) and for two or three girls to stand in front of at the same time). They also ran and played in the 'gym', swinging on the rope or turning off the lights and running into each other. :P I had thought about several other activities I could have them do (like designing fashion clothes on paper, decorating a frame for their pictures, decorating a purse...etc) but in the end I opted to keep it more simple which I think turned out well because the girls had so much fun just playing....go figure. :)

Talents

This is my oldest sister's oldest daughter, who was born when I was a junior in high school. She's performing at a vocal recital in American Fork, UT. This recital was the grand finale to a special set of voice lessons as a Christmas present. She's always had a lot of guts in singing. When she was 8 she sang a duet with my dad (her grandpa)in sacrament meeting. Now I wouldn't be caught dead singing a duet, or a solo, in sacrament meeting, or anywhere else for that matter. My talent is appreciating those who have the talent AND guts to be so bold. :) So this is me expressing my "appreciating" talent, if you have this talent too, feel free to join in.

Everybody's happy!

I spent the whole day at my sister's house yesterday. There were many benefits for all in this arrangement.

1. I have a HUGE debt to repay to my sister for childcare that she provided my kids while we were in Europe. This made up one measely day, but hey 1 is better than none! :P
2. ML had finals to work on (due today...which he finished in record time, I might add) so it was better if he didn't have us around to distract him.
3. My sister and her husband wanted to go house shopping. They went out twice yesterday while I was there to provide babysitting. The second time they found a phenomenal deal on the house of their dreams! Yay for them!!!
4. Grandma and Grandpa didn't have to go crazy with five hyperactive kids all cooped up in our house all day. (I don't know if your kids get like this, but whenever my kids get with their cousins they ALL start bouncing off the walls and it's as if there are ten or fifteen kids instead of five...I remember being like that, I'd venture that maybe it's hereditary, but then....guess not.) :)
5. I got to work on scrapbooking for our adoption and use my sister's vast inventory of paper/stamps/ribbon/idea books/etc. as well as get feedback and ideas from her (when she could get down off her "I found the house of my dreams and it's a steal" high for a minute to actually give it some thought). I really got pretty far and I'm very excited about that! I only have a few finishing touches left to finish up and then I can get moving with the whole thing!! Yay!!
6. The kids got to spend ALL day with their cousins. And if you couldn't tell from some of the aforementioned benefits...they think that's about as great as an amusement park!! (We were asking them what they wanted to do on Martin Luther since the don't have school: #1 go to cousin's house. #2 go to indoor/outdoor amusement park "Boondocks")
7. BR had used his much beloved, hard earned allowance money to buy 2 legos last week. One for himself and one for his cousin. He was able to give his cousin the lego he'd bought for him. (He was really excited to give it to him, and proud of himself for being so generous, but honestly I had my doubts that he'd be able to resist opening it until he had a chance to give it to him.)

#5 is my very favorite bonus. But, I'm glad that the arrangement was so inclusively beneficial!

Camping with the treasured cousins