Bear Lake 2014 and some July Randoms

I am feeling pretty lazy lately. Why doesn't someone create an app that immediately puts any photo you take into your Blogger account so it's ready to be blogged? And if it already exists-why didn't I know about it? Half the struggle for me to blog anymore is just the sheer time it takes to upload photos. This whole process is so tedious. If I die, my family had better appreciate all the years of blogging I did for them. Because my fingers are tired, my humor is fading and my patience is worn when it comes to blogging. And my brand new, shiny computer is already full of WAY too many photos that are causing it to run slower. So I am combining two posts in one today-Bear Lake and the July Randoms

Bear Lake:
We have been going to Bear Lake as a family for 4 years now. It is one of our favorite summer getaways. There is just something about being on Bear Lake's warm sandy beach that makes me SO HAPPY. We were able to reserve a spot at our favorite campground back in February and again, we went up with our good friends, The Clark family and their extended family. Our kids had a blast having other kids to play with and it was fun for Kendrick and I to have other adults to hang out with around the fire at night. On Friday we were the only family that opted to go to the beach so we spent 6 hours at the beach by ourselves. It was heaven. Seriously, heaven. The water felt so nice. And the day was perfectly sunny and warm, not too hot. I think that I could lay on the beach every day of my life and be one very happy lady.

The high points of the trip were that the dogs came with us, we loved our camping spot, Clint cooked breakfast every morning, we somehow fit everything in the car, no one was hurt, or ill, or slept too badly or was sunburned and Kendrick and I got along peachy (camping has been known to put us both on edge and make us snappy with each other-there was none of that this year), the remake of David and Goliath that Haleigh put together for the kids to act out, the dance party by the fire, and the onion rings.

The low points were the crazy busy beach, not having a camping spot super close to the Clarks, taking the dogs with us, eating a shake that left me feeling bloated and nasty for at least 24 hours, and coming home nearly broke. Why is camping so expensive?

Bear Lake Pics...

July was a super fun month for us. We did a lot of fun things with neighbors and as a family. Honestly, Bear Lake was just sort of the cherry on top of our perfect summer month.
Here are some random pics from the month...

I craved fruit pizza for like two weeks before I finally broke down and made some. It was good but not worthy of a two week craving.

The random text I got from my neighbor one night. I sent Easton over there to deliver a cup of sugar and apparently he delivered much more.

LOVE finding love notes around the house!

 Kendrick and I were able to see Dan Reynolds (lead singer of Imagine Dragons) play an acoustic show to raise money for his friend who has cancer. It was so fun! I had never seen a show at the Sandy Amphitheater before and the best part was that it's close enough to our house that we avoided the whole parking fiasco and just walked there.

Waffle Love- if you live here then you definitely need to locate a truck near you and try these bad boys-they are AMAZING! This was my first one. I couldn't finish it and I still felt sick afterward.

Oh just the cutest sight in the world! Myles fell asleep reading the scriptures. He was determined to start reading them himself at night and he made it through like 4 pages before he zonked out.

This kid still refuses to eat anything that touches a vegetable. Lucky for me he drinks veggie juice like it's Coke so I know he'll survive.

May Re-cap

May was a busy month for us! I loved it. I complain a lot about being dog tired when I am busy, but I prefer being busy over having nothing to do. And it seems that I am a lot more tired these days anyway. Is that a sign of getting old? Any other 30 something year old mom's out there just plain tired most of the time?

The kids and I had spring fever bad in May. We were all just over waking up early and doing homework and doing anything that required us to be responsible. I am so glad SAGE tests are over. Had I known sooner that it was an option, I would have opted out of Tay taking them. Luckily, she didn't let them stress her out too bad. We had lot's of fun baseball nights, a few fun days watching our neighbor's kids, we had preschool at our house, we enjoyed a fun rock climbing Birthday party, I had an amazing Mother's Day, Memorial Day weekend was awesome, Kendrick went on a fun camp out with the YM, the garage and loft are finally clean again, our summer vacation is planned, and according to our landlords- we have new siding, windows and possibly a new deck coming this summer...
So as awesome as May was, I'm sure it was just a preview of how awesome this summer will be!!

Baseball nights
The boys were able to play machine pitch this year. I loved it! It was so much nicer having consistent pitches for them to hit. Their coach this year was awesome-he was very much involved and on the ball and tried to teach them each game. That's a far cry from some coaches we've had in the past. Our parks here are beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed spending my Tuesday and Thursday evenings there, watching my little ball players.
*Note: These are all out out of order.

Easton and his current favorite friend, Dayton. Dayton is 8, but he sure does love Easton. They play so well together that we have just unofficially adopted Dayton into our family.

Mother's Day
Kendrick did a good job of making me feel special on Mother's Day. He made breakfast and helped the kids make cards and of course did my favorite thing, wrote me the best message in my card. I love and always look forward to getting cards from him. I also scored these cute new Nike's...

Sam's Rock Climbing Party
Our old friend, Sam turned 9 this month. His mom won the coolest mom ever award by having his Birthday at Lifetime fitness. After some pizza and cake the kids got to climb all over some rock walls. It was a great way for them to "harness" all their energy and burn off said pizza and cake. And it was fun for me and Easton to cheer them on from the bottom. Last time I tried rock climbing I embarrassed myself, so I was more than happy to sit at the bottom and take photos.

Preschool fun
Once a month I get a turn teaching preschool at my house. This time my turn happened to fall on a super busy day where I had already committed to watching my friend's 4 kids while she was on vacation. I was a little overwhelmed leading up to it and then realized that all 4 and 5 year olds really care about is getting dirty (or wet) and having fun. So we made letter W families to hang in the windows and then we washed our bikes. We also painted clay numbers the kids had made the week before and then made and performed a musical number with kitchen utensils. Not the most structured week of preschool but they sure had a blast!

Maryssa

Miriam

Andrea

Izzy

Michael (notice in the background how desperately we need that new siding?)

Easton

Logan

Andrea and her beautiful artwork that took up my whole driveway (and my driveway is big)

Michael, Maryssa, Miriam, Logan and Easton all prepping for their hot tubbin' High School days.

Maryssa, Easton and Miriam

Logan and Emma

Randoms

THIS MORNING I woke up to this little guys standing on the back deck screaming at the dogs to go potty. Yes, he was wearing his undies outside.

Taylor and her cute friend, Karlee who was baptized today.

I honestly cannot figure out why it took us 2 1/2 years of living here to finally realize that we have the world's best trees in our front yard. These monkeys can be seen swinging from our tree swings every chance they get. 

Why shouldn't Kendrick get his clubs regripped for Mother's Day? I got myself a new punching bag for Father's Day!;)

I will miss this sight when he finally goes to Kindergarten. I love waking up next to my little techie after an afternoon nap.

I may have a new spray paint addict on my hands.

Mr. Independent informed me that he is not ready to go to Kindergarten and "be a big boy" yet and then proceeded to make his own lunch while I was in the bathroom.

Someday I will greatly miss opening my shower and finding action figures staring at me. I let this little man stay there through the whole shower. Tay was the one who knocked him down that evening when she informed me that, "it's weird" to have him sitting there while we shower.

Trying to earn his keep. Easton will only do chores he sees his dad do.

Easton pretending to sleep with his dad.

Guys, I have PERFECTED the chocolate chip cookie. It is dangerous.

I personally couldn't fall asleep 80% naked with a tent over my head, but to each his own.

Kendrick and our dear dear neighbors, The Espinoza's

Kendrick and Makelle

We invited some non member neighbor's to church with us and this picture of the boys following in their dad's footsteps just made me melt. 

Cute Story time-
The girl in the purple shirt/pink skirt is named Logan. She is Easton's current favorite female (aside from yours truly of course). After a 3 hour preschool play date at the park we had Logan come back to our house for a lunch date.  As we were walking home Logan and Easton would not let go of each other's hands and Logan said to me,
 "I'm going to marry Easton."
 I asked Easton how he felt about that and he replied,
"Well...I didn't ask her, but I'm okay with that."
Then Easton asked Logan,
"Do you want to marry me because I'm handsome?"
And Logan responded,
 "Yes! You are so handsome!"
 Easton blushed and said thanks real quietly and then said,
 "If those people would let me pick their flowers, I would pick one for you."
Then Logan replied,
 "Oh! I knew I would love you!"
 And Easton goes,
 "I didn't know I wanted to marry you, but now I do. I'm happy you think I'm so handsome!"

School Stuff

Myles had his VIP week in May

The twins had their 1st Grade program. This is their darling teacher.

Myles

Jack

Memorial Day Weekend
To kick off the weekend I took my friend, Carissa out for a Birthday pedicure. I decided to get creative and had the nail tech paint anchors on my toes. I think they turned out cute. My toes even made the salon's photo book! Then we hit up Straws for some dirty drinks and cookies. I opted out of a drink but my cookies were divine. The oatmeal looking one is called a Scotchie and it had butterscotch chips in it...so good.
On Saturday Kendrick and I took one of his clients to a Real Salt Lake Game. I was glad that I got along so well with his client's wife because I think soccer is the world's most boring sport to watch. So it was fun to sit back and gab with her.
On Monday we went to Seven Peaks and then that night Kendrick and I went to the California Pizza Kitchen (I had never been there before-LOVE it!) and went to see The Naked and Famous in concert.

`

Camping with the YM
Kendrick is the 2nd Counselor in the Young Men's Presidency in our ward and was able to go with them on a camp out to Crystal Hot Springs. His newest (and only) Deacon wants to be Kendrick when he grows up because Kendrick  "gets" to eats junk morning, noon and night. I am married to a man child who thinks sugary cereal counts as a balanced meal. He's a twelve year old trapped in a 36 year old but I love him!
On the way home, the car they were riding in broke down:(

Haleigh's 9th Birthday
Added June 4th-
On the last day of May we were able to go to Miss Hay's 9th Birthday party. Cute Heidi set up a "movie theater" in their backyard and had treats and tattoos and a photo wall for the kids to kill time until it was dark enough to start the movie. Our whole family went and we had a blast hanging out with the entire Clark family. Heidi posted these cute photos to Kendrick's Facebook yesterday and I had to add them to the blog...