Best Friends

Before the weather turned bitter cold, we went on a picnic to the school by our house. Lilly told me that Luke was her "Best Friend" the same day this picture was taken. I love how she always likes to sit by him, and she likes to lay down by him and drink a sippy cup when he is laying down drinking a bottle. Rilee and Cameron are usually doing their own "big kid" things and Lilly gets left out a lot. I'm glad Lilly can pal around with Luke (or "Wuke, Wuker, Wukie" as she likes to call him).

I tried to give Luke some pieces of sandwich and he threw it right on the ground! He wanted the whole thing, and he did a good job devouring it too. I think this kid already eats more than Lilly.

Chad and Luke

My first attempt at salsa - Chad's first attempt at a deck

This is our first year ever having a garden. We grew many different things, but ended up with loads and loads of tomatoes. What better way to use up tomatoes than to make a nice garden salsa?! We grew all the peppers and things to go in it as well, but our onions didn't produce anything so we had to buy those at the store.
After much chopping and dicing, it finally started to look like the real thing!
And here are the fruits (vegetables) of our labors - haha. In my research about making salsa, I ended up finding too much scary information on canning your own salsa and that it can be very dangerous - even deadly if it doesn't have the right level of acidity or canned in a pressure canner. I didn't want to get or give anyone else botulism so we just ate it all. That's right - all 10 jars!! It helped that we had the Stewart family reunion at the time and were able to take chips and salsa to many-o-gatherings! I would call it a success and definitely do it again now that I have my pressure canner that I will be able to safely can and store it.

Chad's big undertaking this summer has been our back deck. After many many LONG hours of labor - he has delivered! Haha. We appreciate all the hard work he has done and I was so glad to get my husband back and no longer be a single mother!

Bear Lake

Stewart family trip to Bear Lake. It's amazing how many of us were able to go up to Bear Lake on such short notice. The kids had sooo much fun running around the house together with cousins, playing on the beach, going boating (thanks Uncle Gavin and Aunt Heather), and riding on the jet skis and four-wheelers. It was so much fun to have everyone together and to have to room to all stay together and play together.

It was a group effort of cousins to get this huge pit dug - the kids really enjoyed their fortress!

Luke really enjoyed getting dirty and sticking sand in his mouth - gross!

Here's Lilly on the little jeep we used to cart everyone to and from the beach.

Summer of Swimming

This summer the kids were lucky enough to partake of swimming lessons many times up at Grandma's. They love having Uncle Blake for their teacher and love that it gets us out to the pool every day.
This was Lilly's first year taking lessons. . . . . don't let the smile fool ya. She cried and screamed a lot during lessons and was completely uncooperative. At the end of class the kids always go up off the diving board while their teacher catches them in the water. One class I was surprised to see her march right up there and be the first one in line to jump off. I was very impressed with her bravery until she realized what it was she was doing up there, turned around and started pushing the five kids behind her over like dominos to get off that thing! At least she still had fun playing in the water after class.

Somehow I didn't get a picture of Rilee during her class, but here she is in her swimsuit at least. Rilee was just like Lilly in swimming when she was her age, and has turned out to be an EXCELLENT swimmer.

This was Cameron's first time in the deep end class. As you can see, he liked to swim pretty close to the rope. This was earlier in the summer though. He now swims all over the pool.

While Luke was not in any of the classes, he often enjoyed a little dip after lessons were over.

This was Cameron's second season of playing soccer, which it turns out is kind of an advantage with this age group. Many kids have never played before, don't really know what to do, or aren't aggressive enough to do much. Cameron got many goals for his team, and the main coaching advice given to him this season was to try to pass the ball to someone else and let them make a goal once in a while. This season was especially fun for him because: a. it was outside, b. he was on a team with a few of his friends, and c. Chad was an assistant coach. I think his favorite part though is the last game when they all get trophies. His trophies have gone many places with us, they even made it on a trip to Bear Lake!

Lilly Pilly Punkin' Silly

This is our sweet Lilly after she has gotten into mommy's makeup. If there is anything that can be gotten into and made a mess of - this girl can find it! She LOVES makeup, lotions, soap, shampoo - all that stuff is like gold to her. She will find it and find somewhere to spread it - usually on herself, and then somewhere in the house. Scissors are to cut anything she can find, pencils and crayons are to write on anything she can find, and gum is (of course) to put in her hair. What else?! She has been my WORST toddler at getting into things. I think it's a combination of being in a bigger house that has been harder to babyproof, less supervision because of the bigger house and more kids to supervise, older kids leaving things out for her to get into, and the simple fact that she is just a stinker! Hence the name "Lilly Pilly". If Lilly visits your house and you haven't seen or heard from her in a few minutes - you better go find her!

"This and That" (so you know we're still alive!)

April? Is that really the last time I posted ANYTHING?! Well, let's just say I'm kind of a blogging loser! The time just goes by too fast! I'm just quickly looking through my photos over the past few months to see what may be worth mentioning or seeing - to me anyway. These will be in reverse chronological order as to remain consistent with how the blog normally posts. That way we can pretend I've been blogging all along. :)
This is in the month of May. The kids helped plant flowers in our yard and this is where they were planting the giant Sunflowers. If you've been to our house in the last few months, you've seen that these Sunflowers that started from seeds are bigger than our trees!

This is also in May. This marks the beginning of my coupon shopping. In the past, I've just taken the kids with me to the grocery store. Shopping with coupons is quite another story. It just takes a lot more time and effort. As you can see all 3 kids knocked out after we finished - they were not up for the challenge. I now leave them home if at all possible if I'm doing couponing. :)

Luke

No, I'm not trying to start a new trend! This is just an example of something a rushed mother might do. I grabbed a pair of pants - the ones I thought Luke had been wearing that day as we rushed out the door to go somewhere. I didn't put them on until we got to our destination, and after a few minutes noticed that indeed these were not Luke's pants, but Cameron's shorts. Too late! He would just have to wear them. When we got home I decided to take a picture and document my stupidity. Glad I can laugh at myself!

Chad and Lilly

This was up at Bear Lake over Memorial Day weekend. The kids had fun at the beach, and I DID take a lot of beach pictures of the kids playing, but I thought this was a good opportunity to include Chad on our blog once in a while! :)

So the next thing I found was Easter. Yep - Easter was a long time ago, but here is the best photo I could get of all my kids (and Yoda). It's not very fun trying to get all the kids in a picture at once and from my photo files I can see that I only tried 7 times and this was number 7. I guess by that point we were all just DONE with trying so this is what we got. They are all looking, and smiling (sort of - Lilly) and I suppose that is about all I can ask for. Nice diaper shot Lilly!

This has caught us up to summer - and boy we have had a whole summer FULL of family, fun and sun so that will have to come later.