Two days after vacation!

So I have been home from vacation 2 whole days. Want to know what I have accomplished? Well I did about 15 loads of laundry (6 of them were sleeping bags!). We even got them folded tonight! Yesterday I went and picked 30 gallons of green beans and today, I canned them (not all of them!) But I did can 56 quarts! Yeah me! My house isn't all back together but give me a break today was Hayden's first day of potty training. She will catch on quickly I think. Right now sitting there is just the quickest way to get a few M&M's but she did have a successful poop already!!! I know to much Information! But it is just so exciting to me that she is even willing to try it! Although a little sad to because that just makes her a little girl instead of a baby. But you gotta strike when the iron is hot!

Vacation!

This year we talked our friends the Jones family into going on vacation with us. We always camp for a week and spend the week being lazy on the lake, playing in the water, water skiing, swimming, fishing.... It is always great family bonding time, and we look forward to it every year. Last year when we got back I was telling Mellisa about it and she agreed to go with us this year. I hope they liked it enough to come back! It was nice having friends for the kids to play with! All the kids loved playing with John on the canoe, and on the tubes behind the boat. He was always more wild on the tubes then anyone else and the kids loved it! Larry and I loved playing games with them at night after kids were all tucked in. There were so many pictures I wanted to post I thought I would make a little video of them instead. We loved getting to meet the new cousin baby Dwight! He is such a cutie and very loved!!! I enjoyed visiting with my sister in law's Brenda and Annette. We got to see Lance and his family some too and that is always nice! Their kids are great and I enjoy getting to know them each time we see them. On Thursday while we were there it was Pioneer day so we had a pioneer day celebration. There was yummy BBQ food, songs, and then we played some fun games. I had planned some 3 legged races, gunny sack (pillow cases) races, and Melissa brought water balloons. I had planned more games but the kids were dying to get to the balloons so we skipped ahead. They were a lot of fun though!!! The races were so cute and funny with the kids and just plain funny with the adults!!! Everyone was a good sport and played along. Larry took our oldest 3 fishing that evening and they each caught fish! They were all sooooo happy! Amelia caught 3 or 4. We aren't sure none of them really remember how many each of them caught but they came home with 10 and Ethan had caught on on his own from shore the day before. So there were 11 fish caught by the Davis kids!!! Hayden loved playing in the dirt, as well as many of the other kids!!! She could spend hours getting dirty or throwing rocks in the water. All the other kids were fish. Loved swimming and tubing! The oldest 5 kids in our group, Emmalee, Ethan, Jacob, Caleb, Brock all wanted to learn how to water ski. They all did really well! It was so exciting to watch them improve each time and get up for longer and longer! I was impressed with as brave as little kids are! I didn't learn to ski till I was 17 or 18! Our last day there we took the boat all the way to the end of the lake where the river is feeding in and on the way back Ethan wanted to ski again and got up for a really long time! Long enough I took a bunch of pictures and then caught some video that is below! We were so proud of him for not giving up! He was thrilled that he could do it too!!! It really was a wonderful week with only one morning of rain. The rest was HOT but wonderful swimming and boating weather so we didn't care! The food and the company was great! I will post the rest of the pictures in a video! Enjoy!
http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/share_skin?work_id=6864230&type=embed

More about last week!

So I don't have any pictures for this one but my husband said I should blog it... Funny! Anyway I thought there was a lot of stuff I left out about last week anyway since I only talked about Cub camp anyway. I did mention the fact that I was sick in that entry and that was putting things mildly. Monday while I was at cub camp I started feeling sick and got worse through out the day. To the point where I am not sure how I got those boys home safely. I took my temperature when I got home that day and it was 101.8 I know not like rush to the hospital but my whole body was going from freezing to sweating and so I crashed on the couch when we got home from day camp. I tried to go to the Dr's office but they were swamped and couldn't see me till the next morning. So I was dead on the couch wen Larry got home and found crackers smashed everywhere on the living room, as well as many other disgusting things; banana peals on the floor, a huge mess in general. So he got to deal with dinner and bed time while I was passed out. The next morning I made it to the Dr. with only a temp of 100.8 (this was after I had been on Alieve all night and all morning!) He informed me that a couple of years ago he would have sent me to the hospital but they were going to give me a shot of antibiotics, a prescription and take blood to see if my kidneys were even functioning. He also told me that if I wasn't feeling better by Friday to get back in there. Each day I could see some improvement but it was Friday before I could move with out pain. ( I had a major kidney infection!!!) Now I am feeling back to normal but I have to not spend much time in the sun because of my med. I took the kids to the pool today, we were only there for an hour and I feel like that might have been pushing it. I don't look burned but my skin feels like it is a little bit...?
But on the fun side of things this last week is we have a friend who lived in our ward who use to receive shipments of free bread and she would pass it out to every one that wanted it. She moved to California and passed this duty on to us. I thought this would be a fun little project to do a service, (plus this is a fun way to keep in touch with our friends in the other ward.) Anyway Saturday evening the man who delivers the bread called and told me he should have 8 stacks. I thought "Oh that is a lot of bread!" Then he called me back and said it is a lot more then that! I spent a couple hours on the phone calling people telling them to come and get bread! By 10:30 we had made a pretty good dent in it. The bread literally filled our 1&1/2 car garage! Larry counted the pallets and there were a little more then 130 pallets of bread! I have never seen this much bread in my whole life! But It was amazing!!! We had everything from French bread, English muffins, loaves of all kinds of sandwich breads, raisin breads, bagels, bagets, and tons of buns!!! It was incredible! And after all that we only had to feed a few bags to the ducks!!! I can't believe we were able to share that much bread with people! It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to getting to do this for a while. It won't always be in that quantity but fun just the same. What a blessing. I was telling Ethan, this is what it is like to have the windows of heaven open and pour out more blessings then we can hold. We had so many blessings we were giving them to others and blessing them! How fun was that. Ethan was such a good helper too! He was taking the flats as soon as they were getting empty moving the one or two loaves left somewhere else and taking the empty one out to stack it. He was totally into it. It was really cute to see him work hard at it and help other people that way! The rest of my kids just loved talking to everyone that came. It was fun! This week it is vacation prep week. I have to get the shopping, packing, laundry, and cleaning done. I haven't really done nearly enough to get things going!!! I keep thinking tomorrow I will do that. I guess I better get busy since we are leaving Sat very early and I have to pack for 6 people to camp for 8 days!!! It is going to be so much fun. I just need to get my act together and get things together. But we really have simplified how we do this so it isn't to hard. We have some totes that stay packed all the time with all our camping gear in it. And then there is the tent, and sleeping bags all together, Larry has already loaded those. All that is left really is clothes, food, toys. Easy right! HA HA HA!!!! I actually don't mind the packing it is the unpacking I hate! But it is well worth it to make wonderful memories and bond with our family! This year we are having some friends come a long to and it is going to be wonderful! I will post lots of pictures when we get back! I might post something before we leave but we will see if I can get my house clean, packed, and ready first!!! Have a fun week all!

Cub Day Camp!

Ethan's first week of Cub camp was a lot of fun. I was lucky enough to go with him the first day. I wished I had been able to go with him more days or even the whole week but I ended up being very sick by the end of the first day and I knew there was no way I was going to make it another day! But he had lots of fun! This first picture was of him and some of our boys just hanging out while we were waiting to get started. They had fun together.
Our very first station was ran by Ethan's Grandma! (Larry's mom) She taught the boys a little bit of first aid and they even made a tiny first aid kit!
They did lots of other fun things all week. Some of Ethan's favorite was the archery and the bee bee guns! (Of course what boy doesn't love shooting stuff!) They also built treasure boxes, kaleidoscopes, and learned how to tie knots! I took pictures of each thing we did the first day but I don't think we need a post that long! It was a lot of fun though.
Brock and Amelia got to got to the "tot lot" or the "Polliwog pond" They had so much fun. The begged to go every day! They got to make lots of crafts, have snacks, and go on a "hike" (this was a very short walk holding on to a rope, but they loved it!) Crafts are one of my kids favorite things to do so they were in heaven! They also got to put beads on their name tags just like the big boys did each time they finished one of their things. It was pretty cute!

Our wonderful weekend!

The End of the day!

Amelia went in the house to go potty after all the fireworks and when I went in to go I found her like this! I had a hard time not wetting my pants laughing because it was so funny! I had to show Amber too! (She is the other person taking pictures and laughing!) Poor little girl had, had too much fun for one weekend! If you listen carefully you can hear her snore! Good thing the only thing we did on Saturday was a little house work and a Costco run! (Which wears me out but she took a nap when we were all done!)
***Sorry this whole Entry is done kind of backwards when you read it but for some reason I can no longer move my pictures on my blog. They go on in the order I down load them. I should have started backwards but it is to late now! It took way to long for me to want to start over! So either read from the bottom to the top or enjoy looking at things backward!!Amelia, doing her sparkler!

Brock!

Eli and Brock having so much fun together!

Ethan with a little bit of a Statue of Liberty pose!

Eve!

Kelli and Issac.

We don't know Issac as well but it is so fun to get to know him more each time we get together. He reminds me a lot of the other two Gard kids so he fits right in! We love him already!

Lucia looked so cute doing her Sparkler!

The BBQ!Some of the kids playing!!!

The adults visiting! (Sorry Amber about the Sneeze picture!)

More of the group!

Hayden with her "dinner" a chocolate cookie!!! Yum!

Every year we have a BBQ with some of our friends after the parade. It is always a lot of fun! The kids run wild (maybe get wet) and the grown ups get to sit and visit, and catch up. This is always a treat for me but this year I had a bit of an extra treat! One of my dearest friends Kelli and her kids were able to be there! We missed Lance but it was so nice have some catch up time, see her prego tummy, and visit with her kids who I totally love!!! Brock loved getting to play with Eli again! He missed Eli a lot. Anyway It was a success and we were so glad we had so many people out. Larry and I counted heads at the end of the day and were pretty happy that we had almost 40 people in our yard Saturday! (39 to be exact!) Way fun! We talked some of them into staying long enough for fireworks. I know some people had to go earlier but we were glad to have some company for fireworks!

Next Stop!Monmouth always has a Children's parade before the big Parade. My kids love to participate in this! We always put a few ribbons on their bikes, maybe some flags... anything to make it look festive! We even put a fun bandanna on the dog! I can't resist I just love the 4th of July!

Off we go!

Here we are all lined up to watch the parade! We ended up being joined by some of our friends the Jackson's which made the parade that much more fun! I just love hanging out with people who bring out the rowdy me that I don't see much. There was lots of candy almost to rival Halloween! YUM! (Larry found Brock and Eli hiding eating it later in the day. Not that we wouldn't let him eat it he was just being sneaky!)

Bright and Early!Every year our Ward has a flag raising! There is patriotic songs, prayer, a speaker, and cinnamon roles. Since we were out LATE Friday night it seemed to be ever earlier this year!

Here is our wonderful flag! I couldn't help but include it!

And here is the wonderful cinnamon roles! I think this is the other reason the morning came to soon for me. I had mixed up the dough for mine the night before (about 1 am actually) then I got up at 5:30 to roll them out, and put them in the oven. It was worth it to have warm fresh ones though!

Thursday Night!This is me tickling Brock and taking a picture at the same time (hence the blur! But I loved it anyway)

Hayden was just so cute I couldn't help it!

This is Ethan Busting a move on the dance floor!

More of Ethan and Amelia dancing!

Friday night Larry and I thought how fun it would be to take the kids down to River front park in Independence to watch the fire works (they usually do it for 3 days around the 4th and we thought Friday would be included!) But we got there and there was a military band playing and they played some really fun rock, country mix music and my kids just went crazy dancing. I have to say I wasn't sure if Ethan was doing some interpretive dancing or if he was trying to break dance some of the time. I just had to laugh half the time. (Not at him with him!) He knew we were all having fun. At the end Amelia, Brock and I were dancing together and they wanted me to lift them up and twirl them the whole time ( my back was tired by the end of that!) But it felt good to dance and have fun. After the music they played Spiderman 3 on a big screen. We hadn't seen it yet and thought we might have to leave with our kids since we don't let them watch things like that normally. It turned out ok. Ethan was the only one who stayed awake the others were all zonked. It really was a lot of fun. Oh and on top of it we had really yummy snacks to take with us because earlier in the day I had taken the kids to the Swimming pool and we had ridden our bikes (this is about a 2 mile ride one way.) Anyway on our way out of the pool to ride home a police man on a bike came and talked to us and saw that all my kids had helmets and were wearing them and gave them a free ticket for a BLIZZARD! Not a small cone a blizzard from Dairy Queen! (This is on of my most favorite treats!) Since we didn't have to pay for the kids to get ice cream we all got a blizzard and took them with us! It was the perfect ending to a busy week! Although we were out till after midnight and had to be up early for our 4th of July festivities!

Worth the wait!

Larry brought home this plant start the year we bought the house (3 years ago). He said "OH it has these beautiful blooms!" For 3 years I have seen this viney thing mix in with my Jasmine, that I totally love because of the smell and the beautiful tiny blooms that are out all summer! But I kept thinking maybe this thing is just a weed that is getting bigger... What has he brought home! But after 3 years of waiting we noticed 100's of these little pods on the plant. They are just starting to bloom and this is what we get! They are soooo pretty. They don't smell but they are mixed with the Jasmine and they don't need to smell. When the Jasmine is in full bloom we get the smell to fill the living room every time the door opens. I might have to put another picture tomorrow. I took this one after the sun when down so I think the flash is drowning out the color. So I will put more photos later! The moral to the story is I am glad we didn't pull it out after it didn't bloom the second year! It really is beautiful, and worth the wait!

Little bits of life!

We bought a pool pass for the first time this year. My kids are loving it and I am loving it too because I can use going to the pool as leverage to get things done with out crying and fighting! We are going to love it up all summer and we are all going to be very brown by the end of it!
Brock got to "Bird Sit" while our friend/ his kindergarten teacher was on her honeymoon. He was in heaven feeling so responsible to care for them. He did a great job and was thrilled to make a little extra $ on the side!
I love to watch Claire Hayden together. They are so cute, they go from playing so sweetly and sharing snacks to baby smack down. It is pretty funny! This picture I took with out them knowing. I was watching the girls on Tuesday and I saw them playing so nicely I grabbed the camera and snuck a few shots of them together.
All dressed up with some where to go! Amelia was so excited to go to one of her best friends birthday party last week! It was a dress up party and Amelia was thrilled! We don't really own any dress up clothes so she got to borrow some from another friend (thanks Allison!) She loves to feel and look like a princess (who doesn't!) She had such a great time getting her nails painted and having cake and ice cream! What more could a little girl want?

Weekend report!

Brock loved the water!

Claire did not love the water!!!

Hayden is our little fish! She would spend the whole day in the water if we would let her!

Sorry Allison! I had to post it! She did a great job skiing! She went farther then I did! Next time we will get her up on one ski!

Amelia had a lot of fun in the water and on the boat!

Ok it has taken me a few days to do this post, but I was having problems with my pictures so I am finally getting around to it!
This weekend we went to Foster Lake with our Friends the Bevans! It was so much fun to water ski, tube, and keep cool in the killer heat! The kids all had a blast! It was funny because just as we got there I had a bad feeling something bad was going to happen. I couldn't shake the feeling. I didn't think we needed to leave or anything I just knew we needed to be careful. So We get in the boat and I was going to drive the boat so Larry could get a run in on our way over to the day use area to meet the Bevans. After just a few minutes of him skiing he wiped out in a way I haven't seen him do in a very long time!!! When I got back to him he told me his ski had broke. Those of you who know about skiing and boats know that this is not a quick or cheep fix! The main problem with this is the ski is only a year old!!!! So we had to get new boots to put on his ski before vacation! FUN!!! But worth it I guess so they don't brake while we are there and be stuck for a week with no ski! Once that was over the feeling went away, everyone had a fun and safe day after that! (other then the missing sunscreen and kick board!) But those are minor! We didn't even have major sunburns! I on the other had could hardly move for the next two days due to my first ski trip this season. I always find new muscles that I forgot I had. Maybe now I will be less sore when we go on vacation in a couple of weeks! Yeah right! It was a fun day though!

The "new Hopscotch"

This morning Larry and I woke up to some sadness. During the night a Raccoon (or at least we are assuming a Raccoon since it doesn't look like a dog did it!) had gotten to our sweet Hopscotch. Marshmallow was able to hide. Larry buried her before the kids could see the trauma of it all. I had to tell the children. Of course our 3 older kids were in tears! We promised to buy them a new one as soon as I could get a hold of this wonderful family we bought the first two from. So by noon we had our as Brock calls her our "new Hopscotch" She is just as sweet and gets a long fine with everyone!