First Day of School

We always have "ABC 123" pancakes for breakfast on the first day of school. This was the first year that I had to do it twice because Emillie leaves for school 2 hours before the younger kids. She was just as excited as they were to get this traditional breakfast!
Emillie hates shopping, but we managed to find her a few cute tops and some cute jeans. This was her favorite! If it looks dark in her picture...that's because it was! She is in 8th grade and leaves at 6:30 to meet her friends and catch the bus. I wonder how Taralee is going to like those early mornings next year when she is catching the bus with her.
Round 2 of "ABC 123" pancakes. It is so hard to get a normal face on JR for a picture.
See what I mean....he is all clown! He gets to ride his bike to and from school which is about 1 mile from our house. He is in the 2nd grade this year.
Taralee is in 5th grade this year and it is her last year in Elementary School. She walks to her school which is just a few blocks down the street. My 3 kids are in 3 different schools. I was thinking ahead and when Emillie is a senior in high school my 5 kids will be in 5 different schools. That makes my brain hurt!

Back to School Party

Mindy and I had a "great" idea to host a back to school party for our kids and their friends. We thought it would be a good way for my kids to meet some of the kids they'll go to school with. It was a wild and crazy couple of hours, but the kids all seemed to have a great time!
Who is the most flexiable? These kids didn't have a problem!
Can they run the length of the yard without popping the balloon between their back? Most of them did!
When the sun went down we watched College Road Trip on the projector on the side of the house. It was chilly, but the kids didn't seem to mind! They gobbled up the whole back to school cake I made, several sno cones each, 4 pounds of licorice and 10 bags of popcorn. I guess it was a success!

Cakes, Cakes, Cakes

Now that I have a blog I can show my cakes as I make them. I made the purple and red cake for Fred and Victoria's openhouse. The colorflow rectangles turned a funny color when we took it out of the fridge. The blue one is for my Aunt Carol's mother in law. The chalkboard is for the Back to School party we are throwing for the neighborhood kids tonight. I'll blog pictures of that tomorrow.

Twin Lakes Campout

The highlight of the summer for our kids is our Family Campout at Twim Lakes. After 3 days of sun, dirt, water, and bugs they declared that this was the funnest year so far.

Emillie and Katie spent a good share of time suntanning, they thought they so cool until they were burned the next day. Emillie burned her leg on the fireplace, but is is healing up now.

Taralee and Jake rowed themselves around the lake on the supertube most of the weekend.

JR played with his new remote control boat and rode the tube behind Uncle Richards boat, but his favorite thing was when he got to drive Uncle Richards boat. I don't think the remote control boat is going to cut it for him after that.

Melanie is still scared of the water so she spent the weekend wearing her lifejacket walking along the shoreline.

Addie was such a good camper! She got braver in the water every day. She would walk out to about knee deep and then run back to me and say, "I did it, I did it." Then I would give her a high five and she would repeat the same thing, over and over!

Justin was a good camper, too. He hardly complained, even in the middle of the night when it started to rain I remembered that I'd left the camcorder and camera outside. He put a blanket over his head and went out to search for it. He couldn't find it, but we were happy the next morning when we found out the Robin had picked it up and saved it from the rainstorm. We pretty much stayed dry, but we were SO happy to come home to a shower, flush toilets, and a comfy bed. Until next year.

Neighborhood Bounce

We surprised our kids with a new trampoline after we moved into our new house. It seems to be the hot spot for the neighborhood kids, especially on a hot day when the sprinkler is under it! Addie gets up every morning and says, "I want to jump".

Emillie's new haircut

I am sorry about all the updates in one day, but we've had computer problems and we were FINALLY able to get our pictures onto the computer!

Emillie wanted a new haircut and this is the result. She says it is totally cute even though she doesn't like this self portrait all that much.

She has made a ton of new friends here and loves to play night games with them almost every night. She says she just wants me to keep talking about her on the blog. She is going to be in the 8th grade this year. Did I mention that school starts on Thursday? This truely is the "most wonderful time of the year" !

Rodeo Weekend

Our family always gets into Rodeo Weekend in Preston. We usually go to the parade all three nights, but Saturday is always the best when the Cream-o-Weber truck passes out chocolate milk! For 7 years we have watched the parade at Shawn and Nathlie's house, but it is for sale now so this might be our last year watching the parade in the shade with them:(

The kids each got 5 tickets for the carnival,which was just right (except for Emillie who got sick after 3 rides)

We took all the kids to the rodeo Friday and Saturday night and they loved it. It is so fun to watch JR get so excited for the cowboys. It always seems that summer is over after the rodeo so I guess fall is on it's way now!

"Yolka Pots"

Addie had us all laughing at church one day when she told us she was wearing "Yolka Pots" on her skirt. She is growing and talking more every day, even in full sentences now. The most exciting advancement she has made is that she now wears panties! This is a very exciting thing for her, but mostly for me! I think we need to go out to dinner or something to celebrate this milestone!