July Randoms

July was hot, hot, hot! And we had some of the most intense thunderstorms we've had in years this past month. In our neighborhood we even had flooding and roofs caving in. It was crazy. Luckily our roof is still in tact. Our flowers on the other hand...well they didn't fair so well. I should just throw in the towel on even trying to make this house look cute from the outside. I don't know if it will ever happen.

One highlight of July is that I was able to pull out the "stripper pole" that has been gracing our front yard! That was an exciting moment. For those of you who don't know, the "stripper pole" is the post part of a very old gas lamppost that has been in our yard forever. It hasn't worked since we've lived here. When we moved in it was so rusted and faded that I went out and spray painted it in an effort to spruce it up. It didn't work. Then, last July when I was watching Zane, he ran head first into the post and not only bent the thing way out of shape, but he caused the lamp part to come crashing to the ground. Since last July our front yard has had a black crooked pole sticking out of the front lawn. And we haven't known what to do about it. We attempted to have a neighbor take it out for us but he got us so worried about blowing up our entire street because it was still connected to an active gas line. Then we decided to leave it up to Blue Stakes of Utah to take care of. Only, they wouldn't. Neither would Questar. Our landlord's handyman said it would cost upwards of a thousand dollars to fix it or try to take it out. That was a crock if I've ever heard one! In the end, our landlord offered us $200 to come up with a solution. His solution: try to find a new lamp for it and see if we can't get it up and working. My solution: rip the dang thing out of the ground and when I didn't blow up the entire street, have Kendrick cut the "active gas line"...and voila! We now have a semi normal looking front yard that no longer rocks a kiddie size stripper pole. Why do I call it the "stripper pole", you ask? It earned that name last summer when I caught the neighborhood girls trying to spin on it in their swimsuits. It was an awkward glimpse into a potential future that I didn't wish to promote for the young girls in my neighborhood.

In July we enjoyed celebrating Independence Day, we had a fun fishing day, we ate lots of snow cones, we enjoyed lots of swimming, Tay and I had a girls night, we met Oliver for the first time, I watched Zane and Millie, Tay and I went to a play, Kendrick got to go to the World Cup soccer game, we celebrated my mom's birthday, Kendrick and the boys took a mini camping trip, the kids and I met Eliana for the first time, we had a dart night in our old neighborhood, Kendrick and I inherited some Pass Of All Passes and had a date night at Seven Peaks, we took the Beehives swimming, I learned to paint faces, we played at the school when we were overwhelmed by restlessness and we enjoyed lots of fun movie nights and long walks as a family. Oh, and on a day of absolute boredom I decided to join Instagram. I remembered someone telling me that Instagram lets you edit your pictures to the max and I thought that would be a fun tool to have on my phone. I didn't realize I would get so hooked! It is way better than Facebook because on Instagram it's just pictures, no drama, no political posts, no religious points of view, no people trying to invite you to do things or get you to buy things. So far I love it. So some of these pictures were edited on Instagram and that's why they look the way they do...

The kids decided to have a picnic in the front yard on one very overcast day. The girls were afraid of lightening so they hid under strollers.

We enjoyed A LOT of trips to the Snow Shack this month

This is the result of a 3 and 6 year old collaborating on my hair

Have you seen these before? According to Kendrick, everyone has except me. All I know is I was super excited when I came across this shoe tape dispenser and I want one!!!

Kendrick and his whigga friend, Max

This picture makes me laugh. I love that my husband thought to ask his friend to take a picture of him standing alone at a soccer game, with nothing exciting going on behind him, holding a churro. What a nut!

Kendrick's attempt at capturing the beautiful sunset on one of our walks

The kids sending Birthday love to cousin Drew

Snow cones with the Brodericks!

The one downside to this neighborhood: not a ton of kids are home during the day, during the summer. So in an effort to combat boredom, I made my kids have a LEGO boat racing contest and I timed how long it took each of their LEGO boats to make it across the pool. Tay's won with 8 seconds.

My darling pedicure

Our little neighbor boy, Zack LOVES to get Kendrick's attention. After doing so by trying to kick Kendrick in the "treasures", Kendrick pretended to dump him head first into our nasty mud water kiddie pool. Zack was laughing so hard I wouldn't be surprised if he peed a little! Notice the nasty stripper pole. Yeah, two days after I took this picture,  I tore that mother out!!!

My kids were driving me so crazy one evening that I sent them on a "yellow scavenger hunt". They had to fill up an old peanut jar with as many yellow things as they could collect from our neighbors. It kept them out of my hair for nearly an hour and the neighbors got a kick out of scrounging up random yellow items to give the Martinez kids...or so they said.

Aliyah and Taylor at Tiana's mom's pool

My pretty pool boys

These two have too much attitude to be contained in one pool!

On our way home in 103 degree heat

Baby Eliana

Jack LOVED baby Eliana and we got a kick out of teasing him about her being his possible future wife

Tay got to have a sleepover at Grandma's and the next day Grandma took her school shopping. So naturally the next day she felt that she had to try on every ensemble she could think of. I didn't think to start taking pictures of her until about outfit 3, but these outfits were all HER creations. She even busted out my jewelry box and styled her hair.

On one ridiculously hot afternoon we decided to hide on the back deck and give face painting a go. I had never done it before and for some reason I got an itch to try my hand at it. I love face painting! It is so relaxing and fun! We will be doing a lot more of it this summer.

The next day I tried to get more intense and attempted harder pictures. The caterpillar was the most fun to paint but the fish bowl remains my favorite.

I even tried to paint the neighbor kids faces but that didn't go as well. For some reason with them I got nervous and my hand started shaking.

Our neighbors had a butt load of sand delivered and because they are 10 times more patient than I am they let the kids add water to the sand to make sandcastles. My kids spent 3 hours in this sandbox and had a blast!!! It was the first and only time I ever found myself jealous of a sandbox.

I have had a hard time getting going in the mornings so I usually find myself dozing on the couch for an hour while the kids finish breakfast and read. Sometimes I can convince one of the kids to brush my hair or tickle my back but on this day the boys fought over who got to tickle my back! I was in heaven.

Tay and I tried to take a picture to send to the boys before we headed off for our girls night but my camera was being weird.

And then Tay informed me that my face was "too red" in all the photos so I had to edit the crap out of them on Instagram to make them presentable...

My mom took us shopping on our girls night and convinced me to try on these bag pants. I never would have picked them out for myself because I NEVER wear pants on my waist and I try to stay away from all things baggy. But these pants were ridiculously comfortable and made me feel like I was on vacation so I let her buy them for me;) The great thing about shopping with my mom is, nothing is off limits! As long as it has a sales tag, it has potential. So she had me trying on everything from a 4-8 and from an xs-large and I ended up coming home with a very wide array of clothes in an even wider array of sizes. It was awesome!

A text I received from Kendrick while they were on their boys trip

This kid hates being hot so he spends most of his summer days in the house. Or in this case, in a tupperware....

He kills me because he finds the most random ways to entertain himself.

Apparently Tay missed her baby brother because when I went to go to bed I found her fast asleep in Easton's room.

Emma, Abby and Becca

Kinsee and Annie

Annie

Kinsee

Annie, Makelle and Becca

Kinsee, Abby and Emma

Makelle and Dustie

Abby and Becca

Echo, Jack, Myles and Zane being monkeys

Easton

Tay

Easton, Millie and Tay

Kendrick and I at Seven Peaks

Cute cute Millie playing in the pool-I wish I could have had her and Dex on the same day

SOO cute!

I came home from Young Womens and my kids were trying on my shoes! Like how Easton bombed this photo and looks all bad @$$?

Jack with a Superman symbol

Myles as a sad tiger. I don't know why he looks so sad-he was thrilled with his face-I promise!!

Zane as a Pirate. This is one of my favorite things to paint

Millie LOVES Zoey. And look how good Zoey is to just lay there and play dead.

This girl got into my lipstick, stole my shoes, necklace and sunglasses and then had the nerve to ask me to take her picture because, and I quote, "I look so fabulous I bet no one would recognize me..."

We went back to the old hood for a dart night. It was so fun to get the old crew back together and the kids literally ran around the street until midnight. I miss those days...

Graciebelle and Easton. They would be the PERFECT couple!

In August we are going to Bear Lake with the Clarks, we have Easton's Birthday and some friend birthday parties, more school shopping, the FUN concert and hopefully, HOPEFULLY a trip to Oregon at the end of the month...August randoms will be a lot of fun!