First Half of June

Kid's Day! The kids woke up before me, and when I stumbled out of bed with Benson, Mario Kart was already going strong. :) The 2 biggest things the kids are excited for on "kid's day" (the first day after we finish school for the year) is banana ice cream in the morning for breakfast, and no limits on screen time all day!


Goodbye old shoes. I had to throw them away, because yes, they were that worn out. And apparently, I was still attached enough to take a picture and post it. Ha!



Art Show! BreAnn and I have been switching off weeks doing arts and crafts class every week this year. We finished at the end of May and celebrated by having an art show. We were supposed to do it outside, but the weather pushed us back inside, so we taped pictures ALL over our walls. The grandparents came to oooh and ahhh over all their art work, and we snacked on fruit and a cake that was supposed to look like an artist's paint palette.



Thanksgiving point was putting on a swing dancing night with a live band. Richie and I went with our friend's the Andersons and had such a great time. It's been WAY too long since we've been dancing. We danced so hard I broke one of my dancing shoes. :) Richie ran into some of his swing dancing friend's from high school and got a real kck out of seeing them and dancing with them. He's the one in the black shirt in these pictures trying to cut into their dance.


Crazy girls! They took the hairspray in their room during quiet time and came out like this! Yikes!


Dressing Benson up in the girl's old baby headbands kept all the kids entertained for a good 30 minutes.


Grandma Garner loves her herbs. She is helping her grandchildren learn all about them by having some herb classes at her house this summer. We're so lucky!


Backyard summer fun with friend's. Thanks Melissa!


We got new neighbors on our street. They are a mirror image of our family in a lot of ways. The parents are Matt and Mandy (Rich and Rach), he's a Baptist pastor (seminary teacher), and they have 4 kids- same genders and almost exact same ages as ours. Needless to say, there has been a constant stream of kids running between our two houses since they moved in 2 weeks ago.


Checking out the West Jordan Library. As far as libraries go, it's a pretty cool one. The kids always ask to go, and I always say no because it's a bit far away. But in the summer, there is extra time, so we spent a fun morning there.



Miles and Dad on their way to Father's and Sons camp out with Richie's home ward. It was so windy they ended up sleeping in the cab of the truck.



Invited some friends over for a a movie night. Originally the kids wanted to watch Mary Poppins and eat Pop-corn! But when there friends got here, they decided on Anne of Green Gables instead. I was pretty thrilled with that. :) However, the lost interest in the movie as soon as they realized there were a bunch of baby bunnies in the backyard.


Benson's preferred way of sleeping these days. Blows my mind! He can pull himself up from laying on his back, to sitting on his bum, with no help. Go abs! So as soon as I lay him down, he immediately sits up, and then eventually falls asleep folded over like this!


Miles's first orthodontist appointment. The dentist mentioned that I should have Miles get in to see an orthodontist sooner rather than later. We put it off till we had more free time this summer. I was not looking forward to it, because I figured we'd need to get ready to plunk down a bunch of money. I was pleasantly surprised when the orthodontist told us that we didn't need to worry about it for at least another year. :)



Our first EGG!!!! I was super excited about that.


Not a bad harvest for one night. :) Lovely lavender.
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All us girls got our summer hair cuts. :) I gave the boys theirs later that night.


"Hey Gwen! Where are your church shoes??" "I don't know, I can't find them!"


We checked out a new trail/park in Draper. We didn't make it too long on the trail because we saw some friend's from the ward on the trail making their way back down and the kids were anxious to go play with them. :)


Back in 3rd grade, my awesome teacher- Mrs. Brinkerhoff- gave us a reading chart. It included all sorts of wacky ways to read that I got such a kick out of. So when I made a summer Bingo chart for the kids, they included some of the ones I remembered. Reading under a table, reading in the bathtub, reading under a blanket with a flashlight etc etc. Something else Mrs. Brinkerhoff did was "reading parties". I really looked forward to these. We got to bring in treats, and our blankets and pillows, then cozy up anywhere we liked in the classroom next to our friends and read for a long time. I tried to make this happen the other day at home, and it didn't quite turn out like I thought it would, but the kids did get a bunch of items marked off their Bingo charts and they were involved and busy all day. :) Win!

Memorial Day

We had a nice Memorial Day with the Garners. We started the day at the Bluffdale cemetery and visited Matthew's grave and also Karl and Helen's grave. The kids each got to pick one flower from our front yard and were very particular about where and how to place it. :) After lunch, we met at the Riverton Park. The kids ran around in the splash pad- Lindy did so very cautiously, but had fun nonetheless- and played on the playground, the guys got nice and sweaty playing ultimate frisbee and later playing kickball with the kids. Later on people met at our house and we pulled a dinner together, with some help from Costa Vida. All in all, a really nice day.

Cove Fort

Cove Fort has always been a special place for my family. It's been made even more special since my Mom and Dad were called to be the directors of the Cove Fort mission last January. Usually my Mom likes to have a Mother's Day Get together with all the girls in our family. We were thinking we wouldn't be able to this year, but we decided that I would come down from SLC and the other gals would come up from SG and we'd meet in the middle at Cove Fort! We had a nice picnic lunch, toured the fort and had lots of fun just being with each other. (They let Miles and Benson tag along :) ) Most of these pictures don't need explanation, however, I should mention that the ones with Benson next to the tree are extra special. One of the men he was named after, Ira Nathaniel Hinckley- who built the fort, planted these trees with his children 150 years ago. This particular variety of tree (Black Locust) is only supposed to survive about 80 years. They even had to cut down the trees in the middle of the fort because they were becoming a liability. But there are 4 of them still around the outside of the fort. I thought it was pretty neat that Ira Benson gets to take a picture next to a tree that Ira Nathaniel planted, 150 years later.