month in review

I think I would normally be saying "I can't believe it's almost the end of august" right now - but I'm not.  It feels like the end of august.  We started school last month.  July 20th I think.  I can't remember for sure cause it was a rough, sad day for me!  Pretty good for my kids though and for that I'm very grateful.  the two pictures below show some of the massive amounts of sawdust and manure that we've been getting from the fair grounds.  Brandon called one day and asked where they dumped all their stuff when they cleaned out the stalls after events and when they realized our house was closer than where they were taking it they started bringing it to our house.  A few days ago my kids were kicking around these huge chunks of .....poop, (can't think of a better word to use) like way way huge - the size of soccer balls, and we realized they were from the elephants at the fair last week!  So funny - and yep they are standing bare foot in that manure pile....they'll have healthy little immune systems and I will have an awesome garden next year!  

 This might be my favorite picture of this whole summer....

 The next few pictures are from the first day of school and none of them are super great cause really it's just hard for me to be all cheery and take a bunch of pictures and think very clearly about what i'm doing.  cause really I just feel kinda sad.  My cute little first and second graders.

 see...bad picture, but it's all we got. Kelsey Anne and Clara

 and this ones crooked but really all I could think about at this point was how glad I was I remembered my sunglasses this year so that I could slip out of that room and slip them down over my red, watery eyes.  still looks super handsome though.

 School is just hard for me.  And Grady's had a hard time too.  1st grade is a looooong day.  The first day of school they were doing an art project and grady's glue stick was all dried up.  He kept trying to tell his teacher and she kept responding in Spanish and telling him to go sit down.  He relayed the story to us saying, "I just needed a glue stick and she kept saying "blah blah blah blah blah" and shooing me back to my desk!!"  it was pretty sad and really funny.  Poor kid.  I know spanish is gonna be harder for him, but I also know how proud he'll be when it starts sinking in.  I think these next pictures are so funny - looking at them in my camera I totally thought I was gonna have this iconic summertime picture that would end up in a frame somewhere someday.  And then I saw it on my computer.  My kids are filthy.  Sweaty headed, soggy diapered, sunburned and red eyed, little dears.  (i for reals call my kids little dears, and dumplings and muffins too, and I don't even mind admitting it) Hah! probably not going in a frame, but I still really like 'em.  my kids and the pictures:)

 Side note about my cross legged Graham - he went ahead and potty trained himself in July.  No kidding.  And he says "please" and "thank you" about 50 times a day, tells me how beautiful I am when I'm washing my face at night and this morning after i struggled getting us up this kinda little hill on our bike ride i turned around to look at him in the baby seat behind me and he has this look of complete astonishment on his face as he says "Mom..... THAT WAS AWESOME!"  you rock grahamy

 ok, now side note about clara.  it happened.  The day has come when she can talk in spanish - like for real conversational spanish, and i have hardly a clue what she's talking about.  holy smokes!

 this is my view from my back porch.  I know - i will live in this ugly red house forever if I can always see that view.  we've had enough rain this summer that the mnts. are still so pretty and green.

 Grahama and Leah like to do "oga" with me in the mornings.  Check out that down dog

 Gray went ahead and turned 6........i will have to write more about this later, but he had his first friend party and.....well - we did it.  that's about all I have to say about that:)

 happy birthday sleepy little 6 year old.  Gosh i love you.

 I giggled when I looked at this picture.  For his birthday breakfast we have no placements, napkins or drinks.  The french toast is burned and he only gets one candle in his eggs.  But - look at that bowl of whipped cream!  What else matters?

 Brandon has been working hard in our yard and he thinks its super cool how all of Clara's little friends hop right in the tractor with him and start singing really loud as soon as they come over;)

And finally -  a bunch of sticky faced baby Leah pictures.  I'm completely not kidding when I say that she has gained at least 25% of her body weight in the last 4 months.  This chubby monkey only wants one thing - food! all day long.  She begs and begs and begs for nana's (bananas) what are we gonna do........... good thing she's dang cute.

I should probably end this post with a bunch of pictures from the week me and B spent in Sun Valley - except that we didn't actually go to Sun Valley together for week, at least not in real life, but I dream about it all the time and my parents actually did go there last week for their 40th (!!!) wedding anniversary!  So if we can't be there I'm really glad they got to be:) and I'll just have to keep dreaming and maybe next month we'll work in a super awesome date:)

the end.

night time and kittens

i just went into the kids rooms to check on them before I go to bed.  I walked into Clara's dark bedroom and my heart kind of skipped a beat as i looked at her bed and saw this long dark figure stretched out on it.  i almost felt like calling out, "who's there" - wondering who had snuck into my little girls room when i wasn't looking.  But as i got closer i realized it was my little girl.  just that she's not so little anymore.  i felt like i needed to touch her soft cheek and check her bare little toes just to make sure she really was mine.  that that really was clara.  how can a person i'm so familiar with possibly change and grow faster than i even have time to notice? I'm not just being sentimental - this really did happen. and it made me want to laugh at myself and cry in the very same minute.

then i went in to check on the boys.  grady was hanging off his bed from the waist down and graham was hanging off his bed from the neck up.  silly boys.

and....on a side note.  we got baby kitty's last night.  currently named lightening and velvet.  I think Grady and Clara feel like life has finally begun:)  I hope i never forget that look on Grady's face when he walked back to the car after having picked out his little gray cat.  It was like having that little baby animal in his arms made him complete.  even more grady than he was before he picked it up.   Seeing my kids (even Leah!) haul those little kitty's around tonight made me so happy i kinda wanted to cry. cause that's just how i roll these days:)

These are out door, mice catching, garage living cats. period.  but sometimes, if they promise to stay in the mudroom, I let them bring them in.  just for a minute...

harvesting and resting

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due

 season we shall reap, if we faint not”

 This scripture gave me so much comfort today.  Sometimes it feels like as a family we are soooooo far away from the goals and aspirations that me and brandon have for us.  I envision all these things and sometimes just getting everyone fed and clean is about as much as I'm capable of!  But thinking about planting little seeds this morning somehow made me feel so much better.  I want to reap these huge rewards but I guess I just need to take comfort from my little garden.  Some days all I do is plant tiny little seeds.  All we get done is family prayer - that's it.  And sometimes days will go by without getting into my garden - but then we catch up and spend so much time working and watering and pulling weeds and it looks wonderful, till the weeds grow back and someone forgets to water.  But at the end of all that work we always harvest so much.  And those tiny little seeds I planted so long ago now matter so so much.  I can't feel like the tiny seeds don't count for much.  Especially now when my kids are little.  Every hug, every I love you, every family home evening counts, even when it feels sometimes like it doesn't.  And as long as i don't faint, gosh darn't, we will have something good to reap:). 

We went to Coeur d'Alene with my family over the 4th of july and then with Byron and Karen to Orcas Island in Washington State after that for a week.  It was beautiful and perfect and I loved almost every second of it.  Leah cried in the car and it was a whole tone of driving, but so worth it.  And kind of liberating to think we can just tuck our little kids into a car and drive that far away and be in some place so wonderful in a day.  

 We rode bikes on the hiawatha bike trail - it started out with a pretty treacherous (for grady anyway) 1 1/2 miles through an old train tunnel.  it was completely dark, like completely pitch black, dark as dark can get.  And my bike lamp didn't work.  But Brandon's did and I couldn't help but think of all these analogies the whole time about how important it is to have the light of the spirit in your life and not to have to always rely on others testimonies.  kinda how my mind works.  Gray and Clara rode on tag a long bikes and Graham was in a seat behind me and Leah got pulled along with poor parson in a trailer by paul ( I say poor because she cried a lot - I tried to stay away from them as much as possible.....sorry guys:()  It was beautiful though, clear up high along the ridge of a mountain.  The hiawatha trail is an old railroad track turned into bike and hiking trail.  13 miles almost all down hill with lots of fun tunnels to go through.

 At 15 1/2 months Leah finally learned to walk!!!

 The dock out in front of the home my parents rented.  The lake is beautiful!!! They rented wave runners one day and just cruising around this beautiful place was so much fun. There was also a hot tub which made for a super awesome spot to watch the fireworks over the lake from on the 4th! Clara said, "I've never in my whole entire life seen fireworks over a lake!"  me neither babe:)

 This is the spot where my sisters husband is going to build a zip line course.  gorgeous!

 We spent wed. - monday in idaho, then got up and drove to seattle.  I still am not sure how we accomplished this, but somehow in about an hour and a half we made it to the russian bakery at the market for cheese rolls, into the market for my very most favorite on the whole planet balsamic vinegar and white truffle oil, plus a bag of rainier cherries and apricots, then onto "serious pie" where they seriously made us two pizza's to go in like 8 minutes (which was lucky cause we were parked illegally) and while those were cooking I ran into the Dahlia bakery for a box full of cookies! In my opinion we got every most amazingly perfect food item that city has to offer.  We were pleasantly stuffed by the time we got to anacortes to catch the ferry.  The ferry ride over was amazing.  Look at that sun set!  

 

This vacation was heaven.  It felt like a real vacation.  I took a nap and went for a hike or walk almost every day. Didn't wear make up or anything made out of denim the whole week.  We spent hours exploring beaches and tide pools.  We ate ice cream and rode our bikes around the darling little village of eastsound.  we ate awesome seafood Byron cooked up for us one night.  we saw jaw droppingly beautiful scenery and we soaked up the 70 degree weather.  Having a 4 - 4 ratio for kids to adults is soo perfect for a vacation and we were so happy Byron and Karen came with us.  It was perfect.  One day me and Brandon went for a drive and found the perfect hike that ended up and the most beautiful little beach I've ever seen.  We laid on the sand and climbed up on the rocks in the most perfectly warm goldeny sunshine and talked and laughed and brandon jumped in the freezing ocean water and it seriously felt like the most wonderfully relaxing happy afternoon that I could ever even dream about. I am in love with this place.