Sassy comes to visit!

Kendall's sister Sophia "Sassy" arrived on Saturday. She is visiting for two weeks. Poor Sassy didn't know she was going to be attacked by six little kids when she arrived.

Kendall, Sassy and Noah went ice skating yesterday in Everett. It was Noah's first time. They all had fun on the ice.

Sassy striking a pose. We are just waiting for this baby of mine to come. It's really hard to be patient and we are all excited to meet her/him. Hopefully my next post will be full of pictures of our newest member of the family!

Noah finally was able to buy his Swiss army knife! He worked hard and saved up all his money and all that hard work finally paid off. He carries it with him EVERYWHERE! He is always looking for an excuse to use it. He did cut himself the other day opening a box for me, but it wasn't a bad cut and he cleaned and bandaged himself right up.

Cousins

This past weekend my sister in law Sharon and her two kids Hyrum and Lilliana came for a visit from Colorado. My sister Jessica and her daughter Emily also came up for the weekend. So we had a full house. The kids had a blast getting to know their cousins. We spent Saturday at one of our favorite parks by the Sound.

Noah and Hyrum got along great and had so much fun playing together!

I love how Emma blends in with the play ground equipment in this picture.

All the kids eating lunch at the park.

One more picture of all the cousins together.

Hyrum had a birthday in June and so we had a volcano cake for him. He really likes dinosaurs and volcanoes.

Noah cooking something up. He had way to much fun with the dry ice!

Catching Up

We've been really busy here at our house.
Noah called us outside the other day and said we had to see something. We went out to see Emma riding her bike! She has had the balance down for about 6 months, but has refused to peddle. I guess Noah has been out there teaching her how to peddle and she finally got it down. Now we can't seem to get her off the bike! Kendall was really nice and finally repaired Noah's bike this past weekend and now the two of them ride around the neighborhood.

Another project going on at our house is bunk beds for the boys room. They are coming along really nice and I can't wait to put them up. Noah likes working with his dad on this kind of stuff.

Noah's got all kinds of plans for how he is going to get up and down from the top bunk. According to Noah he will have a rope ladder to get up and then wants to make a pole to slide down. That way no one can get up on the bed. I think he's going to be a little disappointed. :( I'll post pictures of the beds when they are done.

My "little" project has been strawberries and cherries. I got 45 pounds of strawberries and 50 pounds of cherries last week and had to get them all processed before they went bad. So I made 34 pints of strawberry jam and then froze the rest of the strawberries to make smoothies. I pitted the cherries and froze most of them. We have had a couple cherry pies and cobblers too. I love cherry pie with ice cream! My mom helped pit a bunch too, which was a very big help. My hands are still stained with cherry juice! But it feels good to have jam for the next year and fruit in the freezer for smoothies and pies.

Also, our couch FINALLY came! We've been without a couch since my mother moved out in February. I was really getting tired of sitting in the lazyboy recliner (which was our only place to sit all that time). As you can see the kids love it. It it big and comfy and I LOVE it!

I remember as a kid when we got our first brand new couch and how excited we all were. Then my dad ruined all our fun by giving us a very long list of things we couldn't do around the furniture (no eating, no dirty feet on the couch, no standing, jumping, climbing....) All us kids thought he was so mean! Now I find myself doing the same exact thing as he did! Daniel has gotten to the point that he will come up to me and hold out his hands and say "clean hand" before he goes near the couch. Poor kids! But I know some day when they have kids they will do the same thing!

So that's what we've been up to lately. Hopefully soon I will be able to post pictures of a cute little baby!

4th of July

We had a good 4th of July this year. It was a typical gray cool 56 degrees. We had my mom and some friends over for a yummy dinner. The kids let off sparklers in the back yard. And yes for those who live anywhere other then the pacific northwest, the kids are wearing coats on the 4th of July! It was a nice 56 degrees and cloudy skies all day. But that didn't stop us from having a good time.

We went to watch the fireworks. Daniel stayed awake for the first 5 minutes and then fell asleep. I don't think I could have slept through that show! Emma watched about 10 minutes of it and then turned her back to the fireworks, curled up and covered her ears for the last 20 minutes of the show. I'm just grateful she didn't cry the whole time like she has done in past years! Emma's favorite part was the drive home when she can see all the fireworks going off all over town, but doesn't have to listen to them. All in all it was a good day.