Okay, no one bothered to tell me this video never worked, and I finally just figured it out myself today. So here's a great little clip of t-ball. Billy is in the green hat on first base to begin with. :)

Fantastic duet!

A couple of weeks ago our high council speakers were fantastic! I know, something you don't hear about high council weeks often. :) Anyway, they spoke on marriage and one in particular, Bro. Williams, I think his name is, is a marriage councilor, too. He gave such good advice, and as part of his talk he talked about this You Tube clip. He gave the analogy of us each being instruments and how we need to learn to "jam" together to create beautiful, rich, fulfilling music/marriages. Plus the two songs that are played are Love Story and Viva La Vida, which he laughed about, are kind of like marriage - full of love and romance at the beginning and then it's just living life. However, if you can live life together like these two play music together, then it's going to be a pretty good life.

The 4th of July Weekend

Okay, so I'm only a few weeks late, but I thought I'd share our awesome weekend anyway. On Thursday night, my sister Leslie and her 3 boys came up from UT to stay with us for the weekend. Unfortunately Luke wasn't able to come with her this time, but Bill said Luke's the admission in the door for them to come next time. ;) We had such a fun weekend together. Bill had Friday off (since the 4^th was Saturday), so he got to share in all the fun, too. We took 4-wheeler rides down to the river to throw rocks and sticks in the water. We all went to the carousel and played at the park for a bit. We tons of fun playing and chatting and it was a little hard to get the boys to settle down each night as they all slept on the floor in Billy and Jon’s room. We met my brother Shaun and Alana at the parade, on Saturday, but it was a little sad to see our numbers so low there. No Mom and Dad, no Hathaways (as they'd just moved to CO that same week), and the big kids were in the parade or working. The parade was a little boring, as usual, very hot, and we didn't get any chocolate milk! But Cheyenne and Natalie had a fun time passing out flyers and bottles of water for Bill’s brother Tom. After the parade we went home and the kids immediately headed out to the pool. So a couple hours later we grilled hamburgers and just played all afternoon. Then of course fireworks that night, and finally we put 6 tired kids into bed and ended our day, too. It wasn't anything spectacular, but we all had such a great time! You really need to come again, soon, Les! Billy told me just yesterday, that the worst part of having Camden come was when he had to go home. :( Ahh, it's fun to have cousins to play with!

T-ball Time

This is what we've been doing every Tues. and Thurs. at 9 a.m. for the past month. This is no rules, everyone bats and runs around all the bases, no outs, nothing t-ball. Some games were very entertaining, some were very boring, some were even cold thanks to our nice cool June. I think the highlight of the games, at least for the little kids, was going to the playground at the park afterwards. But overall it was fun and I think Billy learned a lot. I learned something very important, too, that the triplets can play next summer. That should be interesting. The video was his last game and for some crazy reason he wore sandles so he couldn't run as well; and I think he spent more time playing in the dirt than doing anything else this time. You could tell it had been a long season for most of the team. :) That's Hyrum Flamm's little boy with the red hair.

Girls Camp

Well, girls camp was a bit of an adventure this year. We were up at West Piney campground (I never got to go on the slide, but Cheyenne did.) When I walked into camp Wednesday afternoon, just about the first words I hear are, "You're daughter is lost." Cheyenne's group left at 10 a.m. on what was supposed to be a nice little 5 mile hike. 7 1/2 hours later and an extra 4 miles, they stumbled back into camp. Who ever was in charge had found this motorbike trail on a map and it was supposed to loop back into our camp. It didn't. Finally they got turned around and came back down the mountain and were rescued later. She hiked through/over snow, hacked her way through the forest, and survived! Secretly, I'm VERY glad I didn't go up earlier, like I did last year, because I'm sure I would have gone on that hike, too. The day had been very pleasant and slightly cool, just right for hiking. However, another part of their group broke off and just after they got back to camp, the skies broke and it poured for the next couple of hours. Our leaders tent didn't fair to well, and my end of the tent had damp sleeping bags that night. We found another tarp to cover the really leaking end and then it started raining again just as we went to bed. We laughed as the leaders at the other end slept with garbage bags over them and we heard the plink, plinking of water dripping on them all night. The next day it rained/poured off and on all day, but we had the lodge to do all our activities in all day. About 3 in the afternoon, the sun peaked out and we opened all the tents, pulled out all the wet blankets and sleeping bags and tried to dry out for a minute. Then it clouded up and rained again as we ate dinner. It cleared up in time for testimony meeting outside and stayed clear all night. It was amazing how many stars there are up there! Us leaders, and a couple other girls screamed (some thought for sure a bear was coming for them), giggled, and laughed until after 2 a.m. and finally went to bed when it was freezing cold. Literally, freezing! One of the leaders scraped ice off her window the next morning. After a cold night, it was so nice to see sunshine the next morning, just in time to dry out the tents and tarps and pack up to come home. All in all, we had a great time with some great memories we'll never forget.

We're done!

Our remodeling/deck addition project is done! We added a 4' bay door onto our dining area, which has made all the difference in the world. We can easily get around our table now; who knew when we built our house 7 years ago we'd have such a big table in it. lol When we were looking at plans to build our house, I always wanted a railing on the front porch and Bill wanted a box with windows - he got the box and I was promised the railing would come. Well, I finally have my railing and the house looks much less boxy - it's all good!! We're loving the deck and wonder why we didn't add it on sooner. I have been pushed so far out of my comfort zone while this little project was going on that I'm really glad it's done. Making small talk with different workers as they're wandering through my house, calling lots of people, just having things out of place and not the regular routine was hard. Although, at least having Trent as our contractor was great. We knew him before so it wasn't hard to talk to him and the kids had a great time waving to him all the time and telling him to jump off the roof, and more. He was even named "Kronk" for a while by Maddie until she could finally remember Trents name. Then his other worker was named "Kronk" instead of "the orange guy" because they couldn't say his name. We're having a great time on it already and look forward to many, many bbq's and good times out there.

Before

After
BeforeAfter

Kia! (The yell you make doing karate moves)

Another update, Natalie tested last night and is now an orange belt! Luckily we didn't have mutual last night and I got to pick up Natalie from class where they informed me she was testing. So I got to watch her spar and everything. She was awesome! She first sparred with a younger girl and she really took it easy on her. Then she went up against her former friend who is now really not a friend and she kicked her butt! It was awesome. You could tell she was letting out some pent up aggression towards her. :) The poor girl could hardly hit Natalie because Natalie was so good at blocking her. Then Natalie went against an adult. She did pretty good, although I could tell she was getting a little frustrated. The guy kept hitting her head and she said he was blocking all her moves, but she had a smile through it all. Next up is her green belt!

Here's another picture of the progress that is slowly coming along on our house. We're down to hopefully a few more days and everything will be finished.