Theme Day Thursdays

Today's theme was GIANT day! (We had already done teeny tiny....) I made them GIANT pancakes. As big as their plates, gave them all a GIANT glass to drink out of (don't worry I didn't fill them!) Yes I know there are no pictures of the boys that is because they were busy being mad about something... I can't even remember what it was. Oh I remember I took away ALL The Lego's this morning because they were fighting over A piece AGAIN! So they all got boxed up and will be sitting in the garage till further notice!

In the afternoon we went to a GIANT party at the library. (It was the end of the summer reading program party but there were more then 100 people there so that is pretty big!) It was fun and all the kids won free tickets for a meal (they used them for dinner!)After the GIANT party I made GIANT cookies. Just for perspective that is a dinner plate it is sitting on. That means that cookie is about 6 inches across. Larry got home late tonight and saw them and said, "HOLY COOKIES!" Yeah that is right! But no one at a whole cookie... although I think Ruth came the closest!

Vacation 2011

Vacation was a lot of fun this year. It really always is. Our favorite lake, great weather, great water, and lots of time with our kids. We ran in to the typical "pirates" on our big trip to the end of the lake. (Which means Daddy and Mommy throw kids off the boat, there are lots of squirt guns being sprayed and lots of fun!) Hayden actually swam this year with out death gripping on to Larry or I! I guess those swimming lessons worked!

Me and Amelia showing off one handed on the tubes. Larry bucked me off probably 5 times the only time Amelia came off she was going a victory dance in the tube after I fell off and she fell over!All of our kids have done this...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz on the boat!
Me and Hayden on the tubes. She likes it slow and NO bumps... lets just say her ride was really short this year because it was not a smooth day on the lake when we were doing this.
Brock and Amelia are quiet the dare devils on the tube. Brock doesn't like to ride with me because once I told Larry not to crazy... That doesn't mean anything! The kids start chanting buck mom off! And before I know it I am on the CRAZY ride! It is fun though.
Don't worry! We did NOT pull they baby in the tube she is just sitting there with her sister while other people are jumping off rocks and swimming around them. She loved sitting in there!!!
I can't believe I was terrible at taking pictures this year... I usually thought I should take pictures of this.. but not want to get up and miss what was going on! This is the ONLY picture I got of Whitney my sweet niece! She is such an angel. She would hug me and let me hold her and she barely knew me! Her and Ruth played nice and had fun being the littles together!
Brock built a "lake Owyhee" instead of a sand castle. He found lots of little bits of junk to make boats, a half a ball to make the "glory hole" What a creative kid even when we are camping. The kids loved playing with their cousin Dwight!!! I loved seeing him in those shorts they were Brock's when he was little!
This picture is for Melissa Jones I hope she looks!!! It is showing how full the lake is this year! Typically we are camping where I am standing and there is a good 100 yard hike down the steep rocky hill to the boat... this year... 40 feet at most! It was AWESOME!!!!
Brock is our Pro knee boarder, he does water ski as well but he way prefers the knee board. He will only ski most times if we tell him he has to ski before he can knee board. He had gotten really good at doing 180 turns on it and is sooooo close to getting a full 360! Who knew a 9 year old could do tricks!
Amelia learned on this trainer ski this year and after doing it a few times she got up on regular doubles!!!! So proud of my 7 year old little girl water skiing. She is a little timid about it, which I am not sure why she is our biggest dare devil when it comes to the tube!!!
Daddy skiing! I never can get the best shot of him cutting really hard... but I am driving the boat too so you get what you get!
Ethan water skiing. He has been doing it for a few years now! He learned how to get up on slalom this year! I just never got a picture. He is still learning how to balance it once he is up! But we are so proud of him for not giving up!
The kids all LOVED their cousin Josh. This is a picture of him teaching the kids how to play "We Will Rock you" on their drums they built! Who needs toys. Every year on vacation I am reminded that my kids don't need any toys. They have just as much fun with sticks and rocks! I think I will sell all the toys!
Loving the Sea Bike!
This may be the cleanest picture I have of Ruth all week. She was a dirt ball all week, but loved it!

50th Anniversary

Here are a few of the cousins. Ethan, Hayden, Dwight, Whitney, and Ruth. They had so much fun getting to know each other. Larry's parents have been married for 50 years and the family came out for the celebration. It was nice to get to see the cousins!
This is Larry's sister and her kids. Her husband couldn't make it. With Grandma Lucy and Larry's parents Glenn and Nadine.
This is Larry's Brother Lance, wife Karen, and 2 of their 4 kids. Sariah and Josh. Jake is married and couldn't come (he starts law school soon) and their other daughter Hanna is on a mission in Brazil!
This is Larry with his siblings and parents!
All of us! I didn't get pictures of our family or Scott and Annette's family because my battery died. I also very sadly didn't get a picture of the quilt! Back in March I told Larry about how my family had made this quilt for my grandparents for their 50th anniversary and each family did a square. Larry loved the idea and said why don't "we" do that! (This meaning I do it!) We called his brothers and sister and checked to see if they would participate if I sent them a square to do and they all agreed. I got all the fabric cut the squares and mailed them to each family. They all got them back to me "on timeish" So I could quickly put the top together before girls camp, then hide it so Grandma wouldn't see it while she was here taking care of kids while I was at girls camp. After camp I spent the next week + getting it on the rack, quilted, and bound. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears (literally!) went into it. They love it and everyone said it looked good. I hope they just don't look to closely. I am not a perfect sewer but it turned out. I stole this picture off of Scott and Annette's blog!
I embroidered a family tree for our family square. It had Larry+Amanda stitched on the trunk, each of the kids were a leaf, then I had a little spotted dog sitting there (our dog Dottie) a bike sitting against the tree (Larry and I have been riding together pretty regularly lately) and I had a tire swing hanging from it. I also did one for each of the kids. Ethan's had a lot of stuff on his because we couldn't decide on one thing he would have represent him, he had piano, music, bike, water skiing, Boy Scouts soccer, and baseball. Brock had a long neck dinosaur (I know big shocker!) Amelia had a ballet dancer, Hayden had a butterfly with flowers, and Ruth had tracings of her hands and feet. I also stitched the temple they were married in and I did a 50th anniversary square. Larry's contribution was scanning and printing on a fabric square one of their wedding pictures. It turned out nice. I sewed 9 squares! Then put the whole thing together.... now I need to get busy on my holiday bazaar projects. I am starting to feel behind. It is almost August and haven't done a thing! Plus there will not be a grandma camp this summer so I will not have a full week of work work work with out interruptions to get a jump start on my stuff... So I better start busting some stuff out next week!!! Soooo don't come buy for a while my house will be a "work zone" I guess that is a nice word for PIG PEN! Oh but next year I will have the girls all moved into one room and I will have a craft room! That is another project I have to get done this coming month, paint bed rooms, pain beds, move all the bedrooms around!!! I think I am tired thinking about it now!

Music Camp!

Last year Brock and Ethan did this music camp with our music teacher from MES during the summer. They loved it. This year Amelia, Brock and Ethan were all old enough but Brock had Cub camp the same week... So just Ethan and Amelia got to do it this year. They had so much fun! Amelia got to play the mouse in their rendition of the Lion King. Ethan got to be Simba!

Like Ethan's head piece/ mane? Yeah I made it! All with a paper bag, a piece of ribbon, and my curling iron! Yeah I am crafty like that! Ethan was pretty excited about it and thanked me for it which was nice. I let her keep it so she could use it the next week for music camp if she wanted.

First boat ride of 2011

Ruth LOVES the boat. Good thing she has to have a life jacket on. She tries to climb out all the time but the life jacket holds her back a little because it is a little bulk between her and what ever she is climbing, the side, the steering wheel, the windshield, (no I am not making that up!!!) I fear that she will eventually succeed and get out of the boat, yes she will float but it still scares me! I wish she were a little bit afraid of SOMETHING! But she is not afraid of ANYTHING, fire, heights, water....
Ethan got really good at catching salamanders and the kids had a blast playing with them.
Brock is really good at knee boarding. He can do a 180 deg turn pretty easy he is trying really hard on getting a full 360! I am sure he will be doing it before the end of vacation!
Watch out there are pirates aboard this boat! (There always are a few "men" tossed over board)
Ethan's first time out on our "new" wake board. He really liked it. I might have to try out the new one to see if I can steer it a little better then our Giant one! We will see! One more week till vacation!!!
Ruth just looked so cute in the morning light on my bunk that I had to get a picture!

This was our "amazing" camp site. It had bags of trash all over we cleaned up so we could stand to be there, and had a giant cliff which terrified me into night mares with Ruth and her NO fear of anything! I literally woke up in the middle of the night and woke Larry on accident having a nightmare about her falling off the cliff! Good thing it was only one night!

Theme day Thursdays (which we did on Friday)

Thursdays we try to have a theme and eat foods, and do crafts that go with the theme. I missed taking pictures of the teeny tiny pancakes we had but I took some last time we did this back in September. They are tiny pancakes and we eat them in a bowl like cereal with syrup and butter on them. YUM! I bought these tiny "crabby patties" for teeny tiny day. (I got a box of 8 for 98 cents!) The kids thought they were fun!
Then we did teeny tiny crafts. Brock and Amelia took an art class last summer where they got to do these and we loved it so much we wanted to do them again this summer! (minus paying for a class). I bought them all little wooden boxes (which I got for 40% off at craft warehouse so they were CHEAP) and some bake to dry sculpty clay. They make their objects to go inside the box and they paint the box, then they will each write a story about the things they made. I actually made these for Hayden... she was having a hard time (although she was still having a blast, I just wanted to play too and made these and told her she could have them. Not bad for my first time ever with sculpty clay!)Here is Brock showing our teeny tiny dinner. Larry ended up having the day off of work so we went on a spur of the moment camping trip. I had planned these lil smokies for dinner only I was going to cook them different at home. But I thought what the heck we will just roast them over our camp fire. The kids had a blast with this! (I did bring regular hot dogs to to fill our tummies more then just a teeny tiny bit!) I also brought coleslaw (aka teeny tiny pieces of food)
We attempted roasting these mini marshmallows. They just burn but it was fun trying (I did bring regular ones too though!)Hayden eating her smore!
Here is a picture of Ruth holding the Teeny tiny marshmallows before she ate a not so teeny tiny amount of them and then threw up a NOT so teeny tiny bit all over me! Ahhh memories!

Feild trip day Friday (which we did on Thrusday)

Thursday was suppose to be a nice day at the beach so we changed our field trip day to Thursday instead of Friday. The kids had a great time playing in the sand and the water. Amelia loved chasing the sea gulls away after we fed them crumbs left over from our lunch.

Ruth loved the sand... a little to much. When she started getting tired she would just lay her face right in it. I kept picking her up and brushing it off and trying to get her to lay on me in stead.


I hardly heard from the other kids unless they were hungry. They stayed busy playing. Which was WONDERFUL!

Independance Day!

We LOVE the 4th in our small town. It is a BIG deal here! Everything shuts down for the day, everyone is out and there is a big party! We party from sun up to sun down. We start every 4th at the church for a flag raising and cinnamon rolls! Then we head off to the children's parade. This is basically all the kids in town show up ready to walk, ride, or what ever down the main street in town. This is the "opening act" to the bigger town parade. My kids love participating in this here is a picture of them lined up for that!
This is the only way we could keep Ruth out of the middle of the road and this only worked for a short time. In a chair with candy!

The "big kids" waiting for the parade!
This was Amelia's fancies hair to date! It is a flag and I am sorry the picture isn't as clear as I thought it was when I took it but if you look close the upper left has tiny buns that make the stars of the flag and then there are 6 french braids making the stripes. It wasn't to bad to do and we copied the idea from my favorite hair blog! But she got lots of comments and it held up really well which I was actually worried about! Hayden actually let me do a star in hers with pigtails but sorry no picture!
After the parade we always throw a big BBQ for all our friends. Her is a great picture of the "rescue mission!" Ethan was being super smart and was walking on the top of our back fence... then what do you know he fell over into a GIANT patch of blackberries! It was quiet the event! Larry had to lift a latter over and wedge it down so he could climb back out. No major injuries just a lot of scratches. He will live, although he tried to milk it for the rest of the day!There was a lot of other excitement too. Some water fights... I got Larry with a water balloon, tried to get Neal with one, then they threw me in the pool... A bunch of other people ended up getting wet on accident... you know the story it is hot there is water around and adults who never really wanted to grow up, that is the way we roll! It was a lot of fun and a lot of great food! We look forward to doing it again next year. But we weren't done yet! When the sun goes down the next party starts!
This picture pretty much sums it up. Ruth is NOTHING like Hayden and LOVES the fireworks. She would cry till you gave her another sparkler. She had a great time!