Wow, what a summer!

What a great summer we had, but it went WAY too fast!  One great thing I did was kind of take a break from the computer, I just had too much fun doing other things, but I did miss blogging a bit.  Anyway, here's a little snapshot (or two or three) of what we did. 

Birthday times 3!







T-ball fun, except for the wind and cold.

 



This is what Maddie did most of the time.




Jon aptly nicknamed "Chicken Little" by his sisters as the helmet was too big and would fall over his eyes.  So cute!




A very cool 4th of July, notice Drew wrapped in the blanket and everyone in jackets.




Natalie's 12!!




A great week camping.

 

Chloe learned to ride a bike is a whizzing around everywhere!



I'm very reluctantly adding this picture, but Pioneer Trek was a big part of the summer. It was a fantastic experience.

 

Long time, no posts

I can't believe it's already July! Birthday season at our house was filled with lots of fun, and lots of cake and ice cream. 5 birthdays within a month's span (of course, 3 being on the same day) is a lot of fun, but nice to be over with, too. School ended with all it's fun and it's been so nice to see our new addition take shape and become a fun place to hang out. June flew by with the triplets playing t-ball twice a week, with a practice in between. We had a fun weekend of family visiting. And now the weather has finally warmed up and we've been spending a lot of time outside. I have four little "fish" who can't get enough of our swimming pool (aka watering trough.) :) We also got a new/additional computer, so I've been trying to figure out all the new things and moving all my stuff to the new one. However, all our pictures are on the old one. Hopefully, we'll get that worked out very soon and I can post pictures of all the fun we've been having.

The dude is 7!

Wow, how did that happen? My little guy isn't so little anymore but he still has that grin from ear to ear with those stinking, cute dimples that make my heart melt. Billy is such a good kid and a great big and little brother (most of the time). We love having him in our family. This year we celebrated with blue french toast for breakfast and chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner with chocolate cake and monster cookie ice cream for dessert - all his requests. He opened his presents with the highlight being a remote-control Jeep (which Chloe promptly seated her Barbie in.) Then Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle Thomas came over and brought more fun. He was in Lego heaven with a lego tie-fighter (with Lego Darth Vadar, so cool!) and a Bionicle. I knew he had a great day, because that grin never left all day. :) The next day he had two friends come over (good thing birthdays are only once a year) and they had a fun time shooting each other with nerf guns, driving the jeep, playing xbox and more. Happy Birthday, Billy!

Tax Day

We celebrate an unusual day at our house, April 15, tax day. No, it's not because we're getting a refund (we've usually gotten it and spent it by then :) ), but it's the day we get Bill back. Starting from about the middle of December to April 15 is a very stressful, very busy time for Bill at work. Although this year was a little better in that he didn't work so many Saturdays, I think it was a little more stressful with all they've got going on at work. I'm just glad he didn't go into public accounting as we'd really not see him at all during this time, so it could be worse. However, by the time April 15 rolls around, we're ready for a party. We're ready to have a happy, relaxed Dad around again, so we throw a party for him. We celebrated with a very clean house, taco salad, the "special plate", german chocolate cream pie, pepsi, and a time to snuggle with dad and just relax together. It was a good night. Ahhh, I love tax day!

Easter

A little slow, but at least it's not May yet. We had a great Easter weekend, despite all the snow. It was so nice to just relax and watch conference - about 5 more and I think I'll have my cross-stitch Santa done, I think I've been working on it for about 5 years now. :) We colored eggs on Saturday night. And in between sessions on Sunday, we had our hunt for their baskets. Bill and I hid them all upstairs. The kids ran up, did a quick run through all the rooms and announced they couldn't find them. I told them to look again, with their eyes open ;) , and they started looking a little closer. It still took them quite a while and some clues from me before they finally found them. We had a nice dinner at home and just enjoyed being together the rest of the day.

April Showers, bring May flowers, right?

I'm not sure that old saying meant snow showers though. So our latest snow storm dumped about 5" on us and farther south, around 8". My kids were pretty bummed when lots of schools (and their cousins) had a snow day in April! And what a spring break - it snowed every day they were out, and when it wasn't snowing it was windy, cold and miserable. Oh well, that's spring in Idaho. So instead of complaining too much, we took advantage of our new very wet, heavy snow yesterday and the little kids and I made a snowman. It was much easier and way more fun to roll it into a snowman than to try to throw all that heavy snow off the deck. But it was fairly warm, the kids are all in jackets, and the snowman toppled over in a couple of hours (then I let Cheyenne shovel the rest off. :) )

Contest Entry

Hi I just need to make a quick post about one of my favorite websites - Snapfish! I do pretty much all my photo printing from them, unless I'm in a big hurry and need one hour. The quality is excellent, the colors are fantastic, and the prices are really good - especially when I wait until it's a free shipping promotion. Anyway, I just found a contest on rockinmama.net where you can win a $50 gift card to Snapfish. I can always use more credits for prints as I'm slowly making my way to catching up and keeping current my scrapbooks, so I get an extra entry if I blog about it. Go check it out!