First Half of June

Check out my handsome boys!!! They were all unintentionally matching last Sunday, so I had to snap some pictures!



My dancing girls! They had their year-end recital and rocked it! Lindy felt so nervous, and so excited! Performing already seems to be "old hat" to Gwen, so she was cool as a cucumber, even when we realized we brought two different size shoes for her and she had to dance barefoot. :) My favorite things by far were watching them smile on stage and watching Lindy correct the other girls in her group to try and get them into the correct spots (so Lindy). Lindy wants to try Karate next year, and we may be switching Gwen to a different studio this upcoming year, so this may have been our last "No Sweat" dance recital. ? And in keeping with tradition, I snapped a couple of pictures of them in their costumes before they danced instead of paying money for the professional ones. :) Hopefully that doesn't come back to haunt me.


Park Days! All the time!


Gwen had her end of year piano recital. Her first one with Sister Costanza, who she adores. She did a great job and got the award for most determined...I think.. :)


For the past year, Lindy has been participating in an online preschool called Upstart. It was academically beneficial yes, but mostly I just wanted something for her to work on during school hours that helped her feel a part of school time and feel capable. Sometimes it was a struggle, but for the most part I think she enjoyed it. She felt pretty special at the little awards ceremony they held for the graduates.


Our neighbors have a pool pass to the county pool and go every day. Obviously my kids are jealous. I told them I don't think I can handle taking all 5 of you by myself. But I agreed to try it once and then we'd see if buying a pool pass would make sense. Miles and Gwen were terrific helpers with Benson, which I assure you is no small job. It was actually do-able. But still not a super pleasant experience for me. I'm too anxious I guess. Kids and water scare me. But it was a good outing, and I'm sure we'll go again sporadically.


These 3 high school friends and I used to get together about once a month when we first moved here. It was a life saver to me. We haven't gotten together for about 2 years because of the craziness of life and one of them moved to Texas. But the stars aligned and we were all able to get together this last week. We agreed that it would have been nicer if just us gals had gone out to dinner or something so we could chat uninterrupted, but we made it work with what we had, and it was great to see each other again! And check out the 14 kids between us! hA!


Richie remembers selling Father's Day Pies as a scout project/fundraiser growing up. We decided to try it this year. I wrote more about it on my other blog, but here's the reader's digest version. The kids were involved in the entire process; shopping for ingredients, doing the math to determine how much each pie would cost, what we should charge, and what are total profit was, taking pictures and advertising, actually making the pies, clean up and delivery. It was a great summer project for us! Lindy and Benson ended up staying at Grandma Garner's most of the day since Richie was window washing all day and couldn't help manage the chaos. They helped a little, but then it was me, Miles and Gwen (&Davy) working alongside each other all day. It was tiring, and awesome! They ended up making $180 total. They felt so empowered by the whole process, I think we'll definitely do it again.



Random pics of the kids. :)

Last Half of May

Richie's friend is putting on open-mic nights in Bluffdale, so Richie had gone and played the last few times. The last time, I got to go watch him, which was super fun. I married such a talented guy. :)


When one of your Grandpa's is a rocket scientist, they can't pass up buying a giant water pressure rocket at Costco, and setting it off on Sunday after dinner. :) Lucky grandkids!


Another Spring night, another kickball culdesac party :)


When we moved into the house, the backyard grass was quite lacking, due to the enormous amount of shade provided by the 6 huge trees out back. Over the years, 4 of the trees have died and every time we got a windstorm, we were terrified they'd fall on our house or the neighbor's. And after so many years of free-ranging the rabbits back there, the backyard was looking quite shabby. But it's crazy expensive to have trees chopped down, did you know that? We would have done it ourselves, but the trees are so close to homes, we were nervous our inexperience would cause a major accident. So this year, we finally got 4 huge trees chopped down, and we re-sodded the back yard. It is looking so great out there! We were so thankful to our family for helping us out with this huge project.


Grandma and Grandpa Crosby pop in for a quick visit while they were up here for a Hinckley siblings meeting! We'll take any chance we have to see them, so my Mom can snuggle Davy and my Dad can play the "drop the dollar" game with the kids. Always a highlight!



This kid...He gives me a run for my money every day. If my memory serves me correctly, he's my most challenging kid at this stage. It feels like it's been that way for a while now. :) He's plenty adorable..but I can't trust him alone for very long, unless I want a giant mess to clean up later.


Some yummy garden produce! The radishes have been amazing this year, and we have had so many greens growing that I had plenty of spinach to make lots and lots of pesto with! YUM!


Miles has been invited to a lot of birthday parties etc lately, much to his delight and the frustration of his little sisters. I'm so glad Miles has good friends in his life!



Lindy snapped this photo of me. I wasn't aware she was taking pictures and was surprised to find it on my phone later, along with about a billion other kid selfies and videos. I almost deleted it, but I'm glad I didn't. It's an accurate representation of me right now, imperfections and all. I'm tired, but I'm trying.


We finished our school year!!! We all breathed a sigh of relief when we finished all of our required math and language arts! Whew!


I turned 33! For one reason or another I was moody all morning. Even with so many kind friends and family reaching out to tell me Happy Birthday or bring a little treat! I'm so blessed with good people in my life! I was working on changing my attitude, when I went to pick up a rain water barrel we had ordered in SLC, and a lady there asked me if I was pregnant. Ugh. That will never get easier to take. Luckily, Grandma and Grandpa Garner offered to babysit that night so that Richie and I could go to the temple! It saved the day! When we came out there was a beautiful rainbow outside! I took a picture of it, and then Richie reluctantly said, "Ok, let's get this over with. I know you want to." And he agreed to take a selfie with me. :) haha!!



We got to have Paris here for the weekend before we dropped him off at EFY. My kids were in heaven!!! And he was such a good sport. We took advantage of a break in the raining to check out the fairies at Gardner Village. :) Always a hit.



Memorial Day! We always love going to the Bluffdale Cemetery and visiting Mathhew and Karl and Helen, and participating in their ceremony there.


To end our history study this year, Makenna and I decided to take the kids to the State Capitol building. They have a Vietnam memorial there we thought would be fitting to see. Too bad it was under construction! But we did happen upon an exhibit about the transcontinental railroad, which fit right in with what we studied this year. I don't think the kids made that connection though. The coolest part to them was riding the elevators with glass doors so you could see the floors as you went up or down! My favorite part, by far, was the fact that there were tons of Chinese tourists there. One lady mimed to me, asking to take a picture of us. I said yes, and pretty soon about 15 other Chinese people were swarming our kids and taking their pictures! We stood there for a solid 15 minutes while they held up Lindy's blonde braids, and picked Brendan up. It. was. hilarious. I was crying from laughter!



Just some random, fun kid moments; plus a poem Gwen wrote at activity days about spring. :)