Alisha's roommate

Poor Alisha :-) She says Eliza wakes her up singing I love to see the temple, A child's Prayer, I'm a child of God, or any number of primary songs. She then whispers, "Weesha, I need to get down." This is all at 6:30am. Rent is never free, ha, ha. Today when Alisha was at church, Eliza asked, "Where's my Weesha?"

We've been busy playing in the hot tub a lot. One day we got 12 people in there! It didn't last long for some reason.
Eliza wants to swim every day after dinner. She loves swimsuits. Whenever she sees one of my bras or tank tops, she asks if I'm going swimming. Fathers Day was busy. We got Braydan a hammock and he set it right up in the living room. Ironically, Alisha has spent more time in it than he has. Maybe that's why she gave me the idea to get it for him???

Eliza- enjoying the hammock from a different view

I spent the whole morning in the kitchen prepping his special dinner. I will never do that again! It was not a very restful sabbath. I marinated steak, had caprese salad, guacamole salad, and baked potatoes. What took me forever was the lemon cheesecake. So nummy though, and no picture to remember it.

Braydan is the best Dad I know. The kids really missed him this week. He had to work in Palm Springs, CA again. They were doing seismic refraction or something like that (blowing stuff up)

He came home grateful for our cooler weather :-) Can you see the temperature?

He almost stepped on this rattle snake

Friday I went to activity day camp all day. It was so nice not to worry about the kids with Alisha home! We were in charge of the camp cheer class and wow, our YW helpers saved the day. My energy ran out after the 3rd class and they kept going for 5 more classes.

Last Saturday we did the Stake Fun Run again. It was raining and I almost talked myself out of it, but I'm glad I didn't! Braydan did the 10k and I did the 5k, pushing the kids. One lady asked if I'd been training with the kids and I laughed. After I started running, I knew what she meant. They're heavy! Braydan passed me coming back at the turn-around point and took the kids. Good thing or I might not have made it.

Not much else new. Alisha has organized almost every space in the house: the garage, pantry, kids' closets, office, and toy closet. Now I have to find out where she put everything . . .

Our chicks laid their first egg! Braydan accidentally broke it, but at least we know one of them is a hen! We already had to kill one that was a rooster. I cried and begged Braydan not to kill it. I didn't think he had enough evidence. For instance, one of the tests we read about said if you throw a towel on their head, a rooster will freak out and attack you, but a hen will just be still. We tried this test and he just sat there. See!!!! Maybe it really was a hen! I think mostly I couldn't bear the thought of him chopping his head off. Alisha made me go inside and Braydan killed the poor thing.

OKay, that's it for now.

Siblings

I love my siblings

Wallace Falls

Last Saturday we took Alisha to see Wallace Falls. Kaleb did great all the way up (and most of the way back), skipping and running a long. Eliza, on the other hand, didn't even make it out of the parking lot before asking to be carried in the "pack pack".

Her flip flops and skirt might have contributed to her hiking abilities

Alisha and Kaleb

We did it!

"All this getting carried business makes me tired."

Zach's Homecoming

Zach came home from his mission on May 25th. We got to go home for 2 weeks to be with him and the family! It was heaven being all together again.

Zach was a little quiet at first, kinda overwhelmed by all of us I think. But, then he was okay. I kept touching his arm to see if he was real.

I loved being around him with his peaceful nature.

The kids made these signs (with a little help)

We loved staying up late listening to all his mission stories.

The kids had so much fun with all the creatures on the farm. They found at least a dozen snakes.

Sparticus came with us. Braydan was worried he would disappear if we left him for 2 weeks.

Our duck nest we found and checked every day out in the field.

Kaleb loved sitting on the "tractor" mowing with Dad.

Trying to catch frogs

One day we went on a "hike" to see the flooded Yellowstone river with Jan.

I couldn't believe the rain! I thought we were going to escape it, but there was serious flooding everywhere when we first got there.

Mom put me in charge of planning outfits for family pictures. It was kinda stressful figuring it out, but I think they'll look nice. I can't wait to see them! Here's a non-professional one from Alisha's camera :)

We stayed over at Grandma's house. She was so sweet to try and make us as comfortable as possible, including setting the heat at 80 :-) She folded our clothes, ironed, and bought us whatever breakfast stuff we wanted.

The kids had a love/hate relationship with Buddy. Sometimes they'd freak out if he got close and other times ran around with him, playing fetch.

Mom was so kind to get the horses ready for us every time we wanted to ride.

I loved our swim races, but lost every race. Sad.

Too many good pictures! We got to shop a lot, cook a lot, eat a lot, play games, Braydan golfed with Zach, fixed culverts, burned brush, sang/played songs around the piano, taught sunbeams, played volleyball (one of my favorites!) and ran across the street a lot. No need to workout, just run back and forth all day :-)

I won't talk about our 14 hr. drive there and back. I'll try and block it out of my memory. Alisha followed us back for the summer and I'm so excited to have her here! I still can't believe my good luck! It made it a little easier to leave MT knowing she was coming. We got 200lbs. of steer meat to bring home too! Braydan's happy about that.

Thank you family for the good times. I love you all!