June was such a wonderful month with so many fun things going on. We had camps to prepare for (and attend!), projects around the house, lazy pool days, soccer practices, friends running here, there, and everywhere, date nights, late nights, early morning exercising... and I even got a little work done around the house! There are so many wonderful things about summer and this one was especially great since I didn't have any work OR school-- a first in four long years. Oh goodness, it was just so wonderful.
The month started out with this incredible sunset on the first of June. Just lovely.
Another one of my favorite things about summer is the delicious fresh food. Ohhhh, so good! Berries are my fave.
And the color! All of the beautiful flowers, green plants, and smells. So good. At least until mid-July when it's hotter than Hades. But June? Perfection.
My mom took Laylah to the new Provo City temple and out to lunch. This was another temple Laylah could cross off her list in her goal to attend every temple in Utah.
Just my cute hubby sewing a button on my blouse (while using Laylah's sewing kit ;). I love that he does all of the sewing and ironing in our house.
School got out of June 3rd (I wrote about that HERE) and on Monday at 8 AM we had dentist appointments. I know, I know, I am the mom of the year for forcing my kids to wake up early for dentist appointments on the first day of summer! Ha!
Everyone did great, but we had some bad news. For the first time in my history as a mother, I had some kids with cavities. BOOOO! Jonah had a couple between some baby teeth, so the dentist just pulled those since they had to come out anyway. We avoided some fillings there. But Magnus had some tiny ones between his back molars as well. Unfortunately, this will probably become the norm. Radiation to the brain can damage salivary glands which is what our dentist figured happened with Magnus. He thinks he has cavities from lack of saliva which helps prevent cavities. There's some special toothpaste and gum we can use to help him produce more saliva, but we just need to prepare for Magnus to have a mouth full of fillings. Stupid cancer. He did great getting them filled though, so that was good.
This was hilarious. Jonah knows all about the Tooth Fairy, so I decided to play a little joke on him. He had the two teeth pulled and put them under his pillow that night. The Tooth Fairy left a little note and $1. The note says, "Hi Jonah! I give a discounted rate for teeth with holes in them. Better luck next time! Love, The Tooth Fairy" He thought it was as funny as I did and I did actually slip him another dollar later that day ;)
Later that same day we went to a family reunion on my Jerman side. We had a water fight with all the kids and Andy was chasing them around on the playground. He had a little mishap on the slide and ending up fracturing his tailbone. He was in so much pain that he could barely walk. He was literally crying. Ugh, I felt awful for him while at the same time trying not to laugh my head off. He knew it was funny, but every time he tried to laugh he would cry instead. Poor guy, hahaha! I took him to the instacare and they dosed him up with some drugs and gave him a prescription to help with the pain. We also ordered him a donut seat off Amazon that he carried around for the next two weeks.
My relief society calling continues to be busy. We decided to do a clothing exchange and had everyone in our ward clean out their closets and bring it all to us. My committee and I organized everything into boy/girl, men's/women's, various sizes, and different categories such as shirts, pants, skirt, shoes, etc. It took about 8 hours and about 10 of us working tirelessly. It was quite exhausting.
We took a lunch break and this is what I had:
It was so nice when we had it all set up and ready to go!
We had tons of people come, but because we had so many donations we only had about 1/2 of the stuff get taken. We donated the rest of the items to a free health clinic. They are always needing blankets and clothing to give away to their patients. I was so glad that it was such a success and that it was over! It was a huge project.
Laylah also had a dance camp the first week of summer. She loves going to her dance camps. They are 3 hours per day and they have guest artists come and teach them various forms of dance such a hip hop, ballet, contemporary, lyrical, and jazz.
I had SO much paperwork to get done for all the kids to attend Camp Hobe, Laylah's young women's camp, Jonah's scout camp, Laylah and Jonah youth conference, and Murray Max soccer registration for Daphne and Jonah. It was so much work. I planted myself on the couch for about 3 hours and got it all done in one sitting.
I had a call from Make A Wish back in April and they asked us if we would be willing to participate in a fundraiser that they do with the Parade of Homes every year. I happily accepted because I am happy to do anything I can for them to raise money to help more kids have wishes granted. The fundraiser works like this: Some kids (about 15 -20 wish kids) who have recently had wishes granted meet with certain home builders who feature a "wish room" in their parade home. They feature the room in their house and design it after the kid's wish. So, in our case, Magnus' wish room was designed after his cruise wish.
We met with Edge Homes (our builder for the wish room) at the Make A Wish building, along with all of the other kid's and various builders who were going to be featured in a wish room, where they had dinner catered and we were able to talk to Kate (the designer) and Jared (the builder) about Magnus' wish, his favorite things about the wish, and we also showed them photos of the cruise and told them all about Magnus. They took all of the info and used in to help them design a wish room for their home. It was a really fun night and it made me excited to see the room reveal in August when the Parade of Homes will be.
Date Night! Some of my favorite nights are date nights with our good friends. On this particular night we did dinner and then Top Golf. It was my first time there and it did not disappoint! It was so much fun.
Filled donut holes. They give you the syringe to fill it with various flavors and they are so good.
We sure love these friends of ours!
I wish I had pictures of the next thing, but it was so crazy busy that I didn't even think to pull out my phone to take one. I, and several more of my friends, helped with another friend, Karen-- (who also happened to be Magnus' preschool teacher) daughter's wedding. Make sense?! So, the week leading up to the wedding was absolutely gorgeous and perfect weather. The wedding reception was going to be in their backyard, so they were really happy about the weather forecast. They set up the backyard the night before the wedding and it looked positively magical. Well, a freak rainstorm decided to come up just a couple hours before the wedding and it was insane. Wind, rain, hail, you name it. The whole set up in their yard was basically ruined and we had to come up with Plan B. Someone made the decision to move it to the next door neighbors house (since their house is huge-- it's Cindy's, Katrina's mom's house) and we got busy saving a wedding! We moved all of her furniture and then Katrina, Julie, and I ran out into the pouring rain and brought back tables, chairs, and decorations to be dried off and set up int the house. We made about 20 trips total and then we had to go change and try to look presentable since we were actually helping with the food for the wedding as well. Katrina and I had made 10 gallons of sugar water for the sno-cones they were having as part of their refreshments and it was still steaming hot from that morning. We ran to get dry ice to help cool it off without watering down the sugar water and then we carried it all over to her mom's house to get set up to make sno-cones. We were a sticky mess by then from having sugar water slosh over the edge of the coolers onto us. Ugh, it was such a crazy night. A few other ladies were there to help (Marcie, Julie, Diana, and Wendy) and we finally got started mixing the flavors, shaving the ice, and getting everything set up just in time for the wedding to start. We had our daughter's be serving girls and while we just kept making sno-cones they served them to everyone waiting to see the bride and groom. The kitchen was a disaster by the time we finished and it took awhile to clean it all up and get the sticky mess washed away. We were all exhausted after this crazy ordeal and just sat down at the kitchen table and stared at each other... and then we all burst out laughing. It all worked out in the end and while I felt bad for the bride and groom not getting to have their dream reception outside, everything still looked beautiful and it all worked out. We ended the crazy night with pizza benders from Italian Village and then all was right in the world again, haha.
Just a few funny photos of summer exhaustion. Teenagers are funny creatures.
I took Daphne and Baron to Camp Hobe and while these three were home I think it was the quietest my house has ever been while still having kids in it. These three are definitely my easiest kiddos. My two spicy and sassy kids were at camp together which made for an enjoyable week, haha! In all honesty, of course I adore and love all of my kids equally, and their different personalities are what I love most about them, but Bear and Daph are loud! And these three are not.
Rachel invited Jonah and Magnus to go to the zoo with her one day. They had fun, as usual.
More delish and fresh summer food.
Andy's best friend's from high school try to get together about once a year whenever the Rowley's visit. They live in Minnesota and we just love Paul and Cheryl and their 5 boys! Blair and Jenny Jo couldn't come this time, but we had a barbecue down at Matt and Liz's house in Lehi and the 14 kids had a blast reconnecting and playing together.
I love these women that have become dear friend's because of Andy's friends. They all have great taste in women!
After we got home from the barbecue I had to go meet with my Ragnar team to decorate our van and get ready to go to Ragnar the next day. I left the next afternoon... more about that HERE.
Here are a couple more photos of the night we celebrated our anniversary as a little family of five since I had dropped off Laylah and Jonah at Camp Hobe earlier that day. More about Camp Hobe HERE.
One morning I was being lazy and still in my pajamas at 10 AM after spending some time cleaning up the house. A knock came at my door and Marcie was standing there telling me she had a babysitter for 3 hours and wanted to know if I could go to a movie. Umm, let me think about that... YES! So I quickly threw some clothes on, threw my hair in a bun, and got the heck outta there. Katrina and julie met us at the theater and we saw this amazing movie:
Spontaneous moments like that always end up being the most fun times. I just love my friends. And I LOVE that my kids are old! I love that I don't need a babysitter, except for Magnus. And I love that my kids can watch him now! I remember just waiting for this day to come and now that it has been here for a couple years, it never gets old. I LOVE IT. Haha. Did I stress that enough? That I LOVE being able to come and go freely without having to worry about tiny kids needing a babysitter?! Okay, good.
Our neighborhood does a swim day once a week at the Murray Pool. Laylah and Jonah were still at camp and Daphne and Baron were at their cousin's house so I just took Magnus with me. It was a super fun day. I love that the big kids can just go swim and the mom's can just sit and hang out. Magnus has even gotten brave enough to go on the huge water slide by himself.
Bathing beauties!
I actually challenged Julie to a diving contest (I knew she would say yes because she is so competitive, haha!) and before you knew it, there were all of us moms having a huge diving contest with judges and winners and prizes. I'm sure all the kids waiting in the diving board lines with us were not too excited about us hogging the boards, ha!
These three can actually play happily together without fighting sometimes. It's a miracle.
Andy and I took Daphne to the Manti Pageant... more about that HERE.
I had to go to the scouting store to get a new scout shirt for Bear and a few other things and patches for Jonah's uniform. I have a love/hate relationship with scouts. It is SO much work and I don't like doing it. But I like all of the things that it teaches and all of the things my boys learn while doing it. But seriously... the scout stuff is SO. DANG. EXPENSIVE.
This tiny bag of stuff which had a shirt, a kerchief, a slider, a book, and some patches was $130. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS. Ugh. Highway robbery.
But here's Bear looking dapper in his new ($60) shirt and getting ready to go to his first cub camp!
Bear and his buddy Easton. They are only 4 days apart, hahaha!
Daphne was able to go to the zoo with Haley, one of her best friends from school. I'm just glad all of these people are inviting my kids to the zoo so I don't have to take them. I hate the zoo.
I picked up Laylah and Jonah from Camp Hobe and it was the first time in 2 weeks that we were all home together! It was short lived since Jonah left 2 days later for scout camp, but we celebrated by going to Finding Dory. It was such a cute movie and a fun night together. We got some amazingly delicious sushi afterwards and some burgers for the sushi haters. Yum.
We procrastinated getting Jonah ready for scout camp and were frantically running around the night before he was supposed to go making sure he had everything he needed. We are new to this because even though Jonah hadn't turned 12 yet they still let him go to camp and youth conference since his birthday was just a few weeks later in July. We finally finished packing his pack up around midnight and he had to be up at 6 AM to meet his troop and leaders.
All ready to go!
Be safe my boy! Off he goes for a whole week.
The whole troop heading out.
Andy was able to join him that weekend and spend one night with him as a leader. Jonah came home full of hilarious stories and had the time of his life. I was so glad. I worried about him the whole time and wondered if he was too cold. He was. Haha.
Throughout the month of June I was slowly working on our basement. It was so much work. I cleaned out our two storage rooms, organized and filed a million papers, threw away bags and bags of stuff, donated even more stuff, and threw away SO. MANY. TOYS.
We also got rid of our huge, old desk. We replaced it with a smaller one and I am still in the process of re-decorating the basement/office area/toy room. It is coming along slowly but surely.
We got these toy boxes for Laylah and Jonah when they were 2 and 1. I included this photo for nostalgia sake.
I forced the kids to come go through their toys. The four older kids really don't play with toys anymore, but I let them keep and pack away some favorites to keep forever. We got rid of 3/4 of what we had and downsized a ton. It was really difficult and really tugged at my heart strings. I actually posted the photo below on instagram and this is what I captioned it with:
Have you ever had that moment where all of your kids are in a
room together, sorting through old toys that they outgrew years ago, and
they are trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep? And
then when they try to get rid of something they don't play with anymore,
but you can see them opening that toy when it was a gift on Christmas
morning 8 or even 10 years ago, and how it never left their chubby,
little hands for months because they loved it so, and even though you
cursed those toys strewn all over your dirty, young-mom-house, now
YOU'RE the one who doesn't want to let it go? Because that would mean
your kids are much too old for those toys and it makes you want to cry
out in rebellion and forbid them to grow up so fast and that they
better keep that toy and sit down and play with it right now, or
there'll be trouble! Why is this so hard, and heart-breakingingly,
wonderfully sad, this mothering thing? I don't want them to grow up
anymore. Take us to Neverland, Peter.
Too true. Too true. I loved being a mom to tiny kids. It made my heart so happy and so full of joy. But I love them even more now and I can imagine that it just keeps getting better from here.
My grandma sent us some money to take our family out to dinner. That Grandma Darlene of mine... she's so sweet. We went to California Pizza Kitchen and got some amazing pizza's and avocado egg rolls. My kids gobbled it all up and loved every bite. We headed to Swig afterwards and got pink sugar cookies with extra frosting. Perfection.
Braids = curly girl!
Probably one of my most favorite treats ever. An avocado Thai coconut bubble tea from Orange Peel. Luckily it's far away from my house so I don't get over there very often. But every time I am near there I have to stop. It's soooo goooood!
Easily my favorite summer food. Berries and mangoes!
More basement stuff... there's our much smaller new desk that fits way better in the small space. We also got that wooden filing cabinet that I need to paint white. But the main purpose of this photo was to show the fireplace that Rachel agreed to let me paint white to brighten up the space.
She even came to help me! What a gal.
We got this far... and then ran out of paint. I even went and bought more paint the next day, but have yet to finish it. I need to do it, and it won't even be hard, but I just haven't found the time! Or the will, haha. It will look great once it's done. Until then, the basement redecoration project continues.
I just love my new Ragnar hat. So cute.
More lazy swimming days at Grandma Marge's pool.
This summer I decided I wanted to become a hiker and take advantage of all that beautiful, mountainous Utah has to offer. My friend Karen (to the left of me in that photo up there) was on board and she created our weekly hiking club. We met every Thursday morning at 6 AM and anyone was invited to come. It was one of my favorite things about this summer. This first hike we did was Rattlesnake Gulch and then connected to Pipeline, and then over to Grandeur Peak. We went about 7 miles round trip before we had to go home. It was beautiful and I loved being out in nature (which is actually so good for your mental psyche-- I read an article all about it!). Susan came with us that first time. Just look at these views:
That was just the first of many beautiful, breathtaking, and amazing hikes that were to come every week.
Daphne and Andy were able to go on a Daddy/Daughter date for Activity Days. It was a cowboy/western theme.
They had a lot of fun eating dinner, playing games, and spending time together.
And that's a wrap, folks. June was way too much fun! We still have two-thirds of summer re-caps to go. Woohoo! I love summer!
