June 2016

June was a crazy, busy month for us. We love summer! (The pictures are out of order but it will have to do). 

(This obviously happened in July but the pictures snuck into June so I'm just going to leave them). On Pioneer Day we, along with my parents, celebrated by visiting the grave site and statue of Sarah Studevant Levitt. We (my mom, me and the kids) are a direct decedents of hers. She is buried in Gunlock and is a very well know pioneer around these parts. She helped settle Santa Clara. 

There is a statue and memorial of Sarah in Santa Clara, I've been meaning to visit it since we've moved here so I'm glad we finally got to do it. It was so neat to learn more about our great-grandma and all the sacrifices she, along with all the pioneers, made. We also visited and took a tour of Jacob Hamlin's home in Santa Clara. It has been preserved by the church and missionaries give tours to tell people about him and the early work of the church. He is my great-uncle. 

June 1st was Wendy's (Dan's mom who passed away six years ago) birthday. We miss her every day. We think about and talk about her often and the kids know all about her and the amazing person that she was. She would love them so much. It is so hard to think about her not being here to see them grow up. The night before her birthday, I thought Kami (whose middle name is Wendy) was sleeping and went to peek in at her. I saw her laying in bed holding the picture of Grandma Wendy. It was so sweet. She wanted to Grandma to sleep next to her. I went and sat by her and talked to her more about Grandma and told her that tomorrow was Grandma's birthday. She was so excited about that. The next day while we were driving in the car Kami asked if Jesus was having a birthday party for Grandma in heaven. She may have never met her Grandma on this earth but she definitely loves her. 

It's been hot so we've been cooling off as much as possible. 

Ellie has a thing for eating dirt. Seriously. She eats a lot of dirt. She like to pull her hair clips out to use as a spoon for the dirt. She keeps us busy! 

We've been planting lots of plants in our yard. Therefore we've spent some quality time at the nursery picking out plants. It gets kind of hectic with the kids (everything gets hectic with the kids) but I quite enjoy walking around there and picking out plants.  

Cason and Kami have found quite the little hideout in the hall closet. The even revamped it since I took this pic and put Ellie on the bottom shelf and they both moved up a shelf. It's really fun for them. And its really fun for me to clean up every single thing that belongs in the closet off of the floor when they're done. 

On this day her brother let out a stinky toot in their secret hideout and she did not like it one bit. I thought it was too funny not to snap a quick pic. 

Kami and Ellie are becoming best friends and I couldn't love it more. They really do love each other so much. It is fun to watch Ellie get older and play with Kami and Cason more.

She's just so cute. And fun. And fast. And messy. And sneaky. And daring. And.... I could go on forever. We just love her to pieces. 

If we don't keep the doors to the bathroom closed this is what we will find. She climbs up onto the toilet and into the sink. It really scares me. The first time I found her I could hear her saying owww quietly so I ran to find her in the sink and she was saying oww because the water was getting hotter. There is no sleeping on the job when your watching Ellie. 

We love to go hang out at Grandma's and Grandpa's house. 

On this day, I took a blanket so I could lay in the shade and prepare my Relief Society lesson while the kids wandered around. I didn't get much work done but I did have fun playing with this little girl. 

Cason we instructing Kami in "Tree Climbing Camp" while we were there. 

The library does these summer activities every week. This day it was a huge obstacle/exercise course. It was a lot of fun for the kids. 

We decided to let Cason and Kami share a room for the summer. They absolutely loved sharing a room. They would stay up late talking and laughing and playing and everything but sleeping. The never fought once after we put them to bed but they were staying up way too late so it only lasted for a month. It was pretty cute to watch them bond though. Sometimes I would stand outside their door and try not to laugh out loud at the things they were saying in there. Sometimes, when I would peak in at them they would be in the same bed and Cason would be reading to Kami (or trying to teach her to read). It was really sweet. It wasn't so sweet the next day, however, when they would fight all day because they were so darn tired! 

The girls are scared to death of animals but they love Maggie. 

Buddies walking to church. 

I like when she bakes with me. She like it too. 

My sisters, Amy and Christie, took their kids on a two week road-trip through the North West. They are doing a similar trip every summer until they visit every state. I thought my kids were a little too young to go on the whole trip so I decided to just tag along for the first few days. We had a little hiccup in the plans though. The morning we woke up to leave Kami woke up with 102 fever. I was so heartbroken. I didn't know what to do because I couldn't imagine not taking her but I also couldn't risk getting my sisters kids sick at the beginning of their trip. Dan and I decided to have Dan keep her at home. It was so sad. I cried. But it all worked out for the best in the end. She got to fly on an airplane with Dan to come pick Cason, Ellie and I up in Casper so she was happy about that. She did miss me though and I messed her. It was the longest I've ever been away from her. 

We traveled in a sweet 12 passenger van. While I was there, there were three adults and eight kids. Turns out that its not very common for people to travel with that many kids and we got a lot of funny looks and a few really funny comments like. "control your kids". Oops. They weren't even being bad for the record. 

On the first day my sisters dropped me and my kids off at my friend, Kamany's house in Perry. We hung out there for a few hours and let the kids play. Cason and Kinley have been the best of friends since they were babies. They picked up as if they never were apart. It was pretty cute. We did a water slide, had dinner, roasted marshmallows and then Kamany drove us up to Logan to meet back up with the group. We stayed the first night at Amy's friend Tawny's house. 

We had to stop when we saw this sign for obvious reasons. 

The second night we stayed in Jackson Hole at a little hotel right it town. I haven't been there since I went to BYU-Idaho so it was fun to walk down memory lane for a bit.

We went to the Bar-J Wrangler dinner show while we were there. It was fun. I pretty much just chased Ellie the whole time but that's to be expected.

The third night we camped in Yellowstone. It was awesome. We were able to see loads of animals including two bears, which for Cason made it was a major success. Every time we saw an animal it made me miss Kami, she would have loved it so much. But I did love having some extra time with this kid. I sure love him and his silly personality. 

Ellie was such a champ. We did lots of driving and she did so good. 

 I love spending time with my sisters. I had such a great time spending a few uninterrupted days with them. I'm glad they let me tag along.  

I decided that it might be easier to sleep in the back of the van with Ellie rather than the tent. Ellie doesn't sleep so good when we are away from home and needs milk to go back to sleep. We were obviously in bear country and couldn't keep milk in the tent, I didn't want to have to get out of the tent and go the the van every time she woke up, not to mention it was very cold, so we just slept in the van. We slept so good. It was kind of funny but was definitely worth it. 

She loves Bobby. And Kate. But she calls Kate Bobby too. 

My parents texted us and said they wanted to treat us all to lunch so we picked this cute diner in some small town in Wyoming. It was yummy. It was a small cafe and it felt like we took up the whole place. I think everyone there probably thought so too. 

On the fourth night we met back up with Kami and Dan and we all stayed at Dan's Dad's house in Casper. It was so nice of him to let us stay there and take over his whole house for a night. Ellie was pretty excited to get some snuggle time in with Daddy. The next Day was Father's Day so we were especially glad to be back with Dan. We were also glad to be there to spend the day with Tony. Dan is such an amazing Dad to the kids. They love him so much. One of my favorite things is when the kids hear the garage door go up when Dan gets home. All three of them start jumping and yelling and run to the door excited to see him, every single day! He takes good care of all of us. 

On Sunday morning my sisters continued on with their trip and we went to church with Tony and had Father's Day lunch at Matt and Darcy's new house. It was the first time I have seen their new house that they built themselves. They did such a good job on it. Our kids really like playing with Broox for a few hours. He is such a cute little boy. 

We were supposed to fly out on Sunday afternoon, however our flight was delayed, then delayed some more, then more and more and more...  

Finally the airline brought in dinner for us at 9 pm because there was no food options available at the small Casper Airport and the vending machines were completely empty. 

Then at 11:30 they told us to go home because we wouldn't be flying out after all. So we had to wake Tony up to come pick us up again. They said to come back in the morning. We were all pretty tired. The kids were zonked by the time we got home. 

This is how we found Kami and Ellie in the morning. 

So we headed back to the airport and... waited some more. It was insane! They were having mechanical problems and never actually got it fixed. Luckily, our kids were amazing through all the waiting both days. We even had a few strangers come up and tell us how impressed they were with the kids or that they thought we were doing a good job with them. It was definitely a tender mercy that they were so well behaved, And it was so kind of those people to approach us and give us a little boost.  There was a big room above the gates that they could run around in and burn energy so I think that helped. 

Almost 24 hours after we were supposed to board they said we could actually get on the plane. We were soooo relieved! 

A few days after we got home, we turned around and met Brandon and Jason and their families for a camp trip at Yuba Lake. We borrowed my parents tent trailer and had a lot of fun playing at the lake and spending time with them.  

The nice thing about camping at lakes is the kids (and parents) sleep really good. 

Cason spent three weeks (three days a week) in between our trips going to a soccer camp down the street from us. It was put on by one of his friend's 13 year old brother. It was so cute and he loved it. This picture was taken the last day of camp. The May's were in town for the Heers family reunion so Riley came to camp with him. The reunion started in June and ended in July so I will post more about it in my July post. 

She is happy, happy girl and I just love this pic of her!