Ma♥Key and Poppa's Mission Farewell

This summer has been insane. I can't believe how busy we have been. I'll play catch up one of these days but for now this was last weekend.

My parents had their mission farewell and all my sis's and bro were able to be there and as many of the grandkids that could come were there too (6 out of the 17). MJ was my tag a long. Jeremy had to work and the boys both had scout camp stuff.

Ma♥Key and Poppa are serving a church service mission. They will first serve in the Tri-cities for around 6 months, then go to SLC to serve the rest of their 23 months. My dad will be selling land for the church along with water rights and I'm sure lots of other things that I don't remember. But basically he's doing what he just finished doing for the state,  and now he's doing it for the church as a service mission. My mom will be doing what ever suits her fancy. Helping in the temple, doing church history work, geneology work, serving in a calling in their wards. She gets to decide. Oh the joys of retirement! So excited for them. They didn't know a mission would be so soon in their future, but here it is knocking on their door. They leave around the first week of August.

We got there Sat. evening and had to leave Sun. evening. Such a short trip. But it was fun to be there with family and to support our wonderful parents who are being such a great example by serving a mission. We are so blessed!

Last Day of School....Finally

It's finally summer. Yay, I think.
No more school, homework, spelling tests, field trips, baseball, even scouts for the summer. It's going to be so nice to have a break from everything for a while.
More time on the beach and lake, I hope. (if the weather ever warms up around here)


First day of school:

Last day of school:

It's George's last day of Elementary School. So weird to think about my babies growing up so fast. Say goodbye to 2nd, 3rd and 5th grades.

Now it's time to pack. We are moving to a new rental home this week. Pretty excited. It's a 4 bedroom house and so far all the kids are going to have their own rooms. I wanted a craft room and for the boys to share, but they really really want their own rooms, so we'll try it out and see what happens. We get to stay in the same ward and same schools for next year too, which is a huge deal for us. As soon as we needed to start looking for a new place to live this house just fell into our laps. AND it's cheaper rent too. I love how everything just falls into place when it's meant to be. I need to remember these blessings the next time I get frustrated.

So it's going to be a crazy busy week. I also have to get ready for Wed. night. At YW's we are making buckets to use at camp for the girls to each have their own seat around the camp fire. I found the cutest fabric/sheets at Goodwill and Value Village this week that go perfectly with our BOOT Camp theme that we are going to use to glue on and decorate the buckets with.

I might need some sanity pills by the end of the week. Pray for me :)

Father's Day weekend

On Fri night we hiked up to the Ice Caves. From the parking lot it's just a one mile hike. When we got there, there was still lots of snow covering the caves. Bad timing. I think they had quite a few avalanches over the winter and things haven't warmed up enough for the snow to melt up in the mountains. So no ice caves this time. Guess that means we'll have to come back in a month or two.

(MJ took this one. a little blurry) One way to keep a girl happy and busy on a hike is to give her the camera :)

It was a great trail, either paved, planked, or gravel the whole time. The kids loved being in the snow for a little while. And the waterfalls and scenery was gorgeous.

Saturday he got to go to a Mariner's game with the guys from work.

Father's Day morning Dad got all his favorites ~

Coke, Tim's chips, Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch Cereal (which the kids ate 1/2 of this morning), Reese's Mini's, Sweet Baby Rays Beef Jerky, mini Nutter Butters and cookie dough ice cream in the freezer. Yummy junk food all for a Dad that we love so much. He unfortunately has to work today, which seems to happen every year, but we'll gladly help him with his stash when he gets home later. He did get to go to church though. Our ward's tradition for Father's Day is people sign up to bring pies and then at the end of church all the men are served pie. They love it. For Mother's day the men serve the women ice cream with toppings. They set out tables and chairs in the gym and we sit and enjoy the last 15 or so minutes of church. I think it's a great tradition. Simple yet fun and yummy too. Who doesn't like pie and ice cream.

We love our Dad. He's such a great husband and father. Couldn't do it without him.

Happy Father's day to Poppa, G'pa York, G'pa Mark and all the other fathers in our family. We love you and miss you all. Wish we could spend the day with all of you too. Hope you all had a great weekend.

We love each of you so much. You have given us an amazing legacy. We are who we are today because of each one of your influences in our lives. We feel truly blessed to call you Father.

3 Little Monkeys

Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we get bored. So this is what we do~

This playground is at MJ's school, just right down the road.

More phone pics.
I think why didn't I bring my camera? then I remember I have my phone. yay.

Boys and Puppies

I have a fun app on my phone I like to play with. These are all pictures I've taken over the last couple months. Kind a fun.

 Mason on the computer. Made for good lighting on his face. Not intentional.

 Suppose to be a polaroid frame around the pic, but you can't see it. Darn.

George getting ready to go to baseball practice.

This is a fun one that turns your pic into a drawing. I love this one. We had fun with it one day. I took more but they didn't save on my phone for some reason. So I need to redo them.

 Pretty cool huh?


Puppies.
We love puppies around here.

 I was sitting in the chair next to this one and Jeter came and sat next to me in the other one. He's so precious.

This is our friends new puppy Jerry.

He is the sweetest thing. Never barks, just loves to be held and loves licking your face. They had 2 labs Ben and Dover (get it), but Dover died sadly, got hit by a train. So now they have Ben and Jerry.

A Walk on the Beach

A few weeks ago we had a really nice sunny Sunday (and since then our spring has finally arrived now that's its finally summer). We've had a really wet spring, so it was so nice to see the sun. So we got out of the house and went to one of our favorite beaches.

The beach has a fun park for the kids.

I love these last tree pictures. I can't decide which one I like most. I love how the sun is shining through. It's hard to capture the beauty in a picture, but I tried.

We came here again last weekend for Memorial Day with some friends, but I didn't get any pics. We had a bbq and a fire to make smores and the kids played and played in and out of the water. Living next to the beaches and the ocean and having them so close (only 10 min) is one of my favorite parts about living here. Just can't get enough.

(disclaimer, all pics from camera phone)

Homemade

Isn't this pillow the cutest? I got the pattern from cluckclucksew.com. MJ picked out the fabric from my small stash. I'm excited to make more.

I made these cupcakes for Young Womens. I've been asked to be the Camp Director this year for Girls Camp. Our theme is BOOT Camp (Built Out Of Truth). So I made these to hand out the day I went in to talk to the girls about camp one Sunday.

Made Chunky Monkey Pancakes from The Best Bites blog. They have lots of yummy recipes. The kids devoured these. They have chocolote chips and bananas in the pancakes and then the syrup is syrup/peanut butter.

Mason made this kite at Scouts. He was very proud of it.