October in a nutshell and Jontu's Baptism

Jontu turned 8 in October and wanted to have a skylander cake, a portal and some sheep.  We had some mishap with the green food coloring, but other than that it turned out well.  He was really happy.  I can tell that I don't decorate cakes very often though. 

 Here's the birthday boy with a few of his presents. 

 The boys thinking about what Jongr should be for Halloween, he ended up with 2 costumes, ASU fan worn to the trunk or treat and "random guy" worn on halloween.  It consisted of clothes worn to school adding sunglasses and a jedi robe. 

 Jontu and Jonli at the ward Trunk or Treat, a knight and snow white. 

 Jonev really wanted to be a shark this year for halloween, he then got a face painting of a mustache while at the party.  

 Jonpa, Jontu and I before his baptism the first weekend in November.  

 Classic picture with Dad beforehand.  When we were looking at these photos tonight he said " I want to get baptized again".  It was a really special day for him and he felt so good about his decision to be baptized.  We love this little man.  

 We are so grateful for all of those who were able to join us for Jontu's big day, it was a great weekend spent with members of both sides of our family.  We feel truly blessed to be part of such a big supportive family.  Thank you everyone!! 

A New Look

Some exciting things are happening at our place...

we finally took the old lady wallpaper off of the walls in the kitchen.  Well most of it is gone as I am writing this post.  Here's a sneak peek.  I think that I have picked a paint color and hope to get samples up tomorrow to pick from so I can paint it next week.  

Another new look to come to our house this week, we now have 2 children who wear glasses, Jongr got specs too.  Now Jonev and Jonli tell me that they want me to buy them glasses.  I told them that they just need to wait until they are a little older because they will probably need them too.    

Summer of Galveston Island and a return to school.

Its pretty safe to title this the "Summer of Galveston Island".  In looking over our pictures from the past few months there are a lot of them that look like the ones from our last trip of the summer that we took this past Saturday.  We could also safely title it, "Summer of Skylanders".  

 Jongr with the latest one that he earned, they earn points for completing their chores and then get to pick rewards after earning the appropriate amount of points.  This summer its been mostly skylanders.

We made a trip to the zoo on Monday to finally see the lego animals, it was amazing.  We just might have to squeeze in another trip this week before they leave our zoo. We rode our bikes in the neighborhood and at the park.  We also played all day with friends and had our last water day in the back yard on Water Wednesday.  It was a busy and fun week, I didn't even get pictures of all of it.  

 We enjoyed doughnuts before running out to get the last of the school supplies and run a few other errands on Thursday in preparation for meet the teacher.  

We made a final trip to Galveston with some good friends to celebrate a birthday of Jongr's friend. It was a really fun day and we enjoyed playing in the waves and kayaks.  

 Jontu enjoying the mud and the water with his friend. 

 We made our annual stop at Kahuna Joe's in League City on the way home from Galveston.  

 It was worth the wait and the little detour to eat these things.  Thanks to my cousin we have added this to our to do list on the way home from a day at the beach at least once a year.  It was a great way to celebrate the end of summer, the boys all start school tomorrow morning.  It's going to be a long week.  Jonev is officially a Kindergartener tomorrow.  He's so excited!  I am really going to miss the boys and all of the fun things we get to do together when they are not in school.  

Highlights from Summer 2013

It seems that summer has just flown by and that there are a lot of things that we still want to do before we have to get back to the school schedule.  It's going to be a busy week.  We start back on Monday, August 26.  

We have had a great summer it started off really busy with Jonpa leaving on a 50 mile back packing trip with the scouts from our ward.  Then Jongr and I had Day Camp and we also had our dear friends come visit from Arizona.  

 Here is Jontu at the beach with his good friend who lives in AZ now.  We went to the beach multiple times this summer and are planning to do it again this weekend.  It is definitely been a favorite thing this summer.

 We had a lot of fun playing in the backyard on Water Wednesday with various assortment of activities and friends this year.

 We celebrated Jonpa's birthday with some delicious key lime cupcakes and pizza of course.

 We had lots of fun going "Skylander Hunting" with dad. Jontu enjoyed getting this fun new shirt in the mail from Aunt Jessica and Uncle Richard's business Eye Power Kids Wear that they started this summer.  He plans to wear it the first day of school.

We spent some time at the neighborhood pool, although now that summer is coming to and end it doesn't feel like we went often enough.  We truly enjoyed our time in the water this year and it is fun to see the kids improving in their swimming skills as the summer went on.  

 Uncle Ben came for a work trip and got to stay at CASA JONES hotel, so that we could enjoy some time with him he gave up his Saturday at home to go geocaching in the hot humid Houston weather with us.  We were blessed to be able to see some more of our Houston friends who have moved back to CA this past week too, thank you Ollers!

 We made some really fun bow and arrows and have had a blast playing with them in the backyard and losing arrows in the trees and over the fences. It has been so much fun.

We have spent a lot of time at the parks riding our bikes and enjoying nature, even in the heat. Sometimes with our friends and sometimes alone.  Every time we are leaving the park Jonev will tell me "mom, I'm really melty".  I love that boy!   This picture was taken yesterday at an Eagle Scout project we helped with.  It was such a beautiful morning and location.

First full week of Summer Vacation

So apparently I need to take more pictures of all of the things that we do.  To celebrate the end of school we had a water balloon fight and played in the water with some of our friends in the backyard after the last day.   Then Friday Jonpa took off work and we went to lunch at Double Dave's yes that is a stack of dirty plates on the table.  The young jedi's got a kick out of how big it was, needless to say, they enjoyed themselves.  

 The following week has been a busy one, we have been swimming in our community pool, gotten sunburned (well that was me), had our normal summer Wednesday Water Day in the backyard, run errands, helped finish up the Scouts food, attended a birthday party, and gone to the library 2x already.  We also finished listening to Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke, it was enjoyable for everyone.  We were happy to find a new book from her since we love her Ghosthunter series so much.  We had to bring it in the house because Jontu was so excited to start the 3rd book in the Fablehaven series in the car next and they were enjoying the story so much.  (after getting back from the library on Saturday we all lazed around and enjoyed listening to the end of it).  

 Jonpa is spending this week with our Boy Scout Troop in Arkansas doing a 50 mile backpack trip.  Here is a picture of him leaving with the scouts on Saturday morning.  The picture below is a panoramic photo he took this morning as they were getting ready to head to church from the campground.  They start hiking tomorrow in the rain.  We are so excited for them, but we still miss dad.  Jonli said today that she didn't want to wait until Saturday for Dad to come home.

Sandcastles and Summer Fun

The AIA sandcastle competition was this weekend in Galveston and we enjoyed the day at the beach and looking at the sand castles at the end of the competition.  There were some pretty amazing creations.   

 Jonli and I played in the water. 

 A view from our spot on the beach, at one point during the day each one of the fence posts had a seagull perched upon it. We weren't quick enough to capture it before someone walked along and scared some of them.  

 Jonev enjoyed a day of digging and even got burried in this hole at the end of the day.  

 Jontu played with some of our friends and they ran in and out of the water for a while jumping in the waves.  

 Jongru playing in the waves, it was windy today so the waves were a little bigger than normal for Galveston. 

 One of our favorite sandcastles from the competition today, Downton Crabby. 

We tried to get all of the kids to look at us, but they were a little tired by this point.  This one was called "Summer is Coming".  Another one of our favorites was a Star Wars themed one called "Return of Jabba".  

Happy Birthday Jonli!

It is hard to believe that our little jedi princess is now 3.  We had fun celebrating her birthday starting on Friday with a small party with some of her friends. 

Saturday we took her to the toy store and she picked out some presents which she had to have wrapped and then waited to open until after dinner.  Here she is with her brothers before opening the presents.

 She wanted a pink castle cake for her birthday so I tried to throw this together for Sunday.  Let's just say it looked a lot different on paper than it turned out, but she LOVED it.

 I finally got the daffodils to bloom that I have been forcing for the past 16 ish weeks.  I am happy that they bloomed for Lindy's birthday.  It was great timing.

A picture of all of the kiddos after church on Jonli's birthday.  Thanks for the birthday bow ties Aunt Jenn, the boys all looked smashing for her big day.  

 Jongr had a presentation this past Thursday at school, his project was on the moons of Jupiter.  We have thought of quite a few more things that might be interesting to him for studying next year.  He did a great job though and we are so thankful for all of the teachers who supported him.

Conference weekend update

I asked a simple question, "What did you do today?" The answers varied in length and content. Enjoy!

Rodeo and Field Day

It was a pretty busy week for the young Jedi's.  Jonli, Jonev, and I took advantage of the rodeo being in town and took a couple of friends downtown to go and see the agriculture stuff.

Jonev in the corn box (you know, instead of sand) and on the tractor.  He was so excited about both of them. 

 Jonli waiting for the pig races to start, the kids absolutely loved watching the pigs race around the track.  They race so that the first one can eat the oreo cookie on the platter at the end.  There is also a little pig who jumps into a tank and swims across to the other side, also for an oreo cookie.  It is one of the highlights of the day for us. The kids always love it. 

We also bought some bacon flavored cotton candy to bring home and share with those who didn't come to the Rodeo with us.  (next time we agreed to stick with regular flavors)

Jongr and Jontu had field day this week too, it was lots of fun and a little cool, which was nice.  Here is Jongr with some of his classmates and his teacher at the end of the day.  

 This was one of my favorite events of the day, the kids had lots of fun, I caught Jongr here as they were coming back up the hill and he is being a little silly.  

If you look really closely here you will see Jontu on the right side of the screen pushing the ball that is closest.  Th little kids were even more fun to watch chase the ball around as it was pretty windy.  This was a fun way to start SPRING BREAK.  We are planning on going camping and finding some geocaches in a new area for us.  

Back up and running???

I have written off the blog for a while because every time I would try to write a post it seemed like something would happen and it wouldn't save it, or the pictures wouldn't upload, or I had password issues.  It was insane, so I took a breather and then kept putting it off.  Now its been much LONGER than I had planned and here it is finally.

So here are a few pictures that we took this week.  We have been up to lots of stuff since my last post: Grandma Jones and Aunt Laura came to visit, Jontu had a birthday, my friend Stacia visited, Thanksgiving with my cousins here, Jongr had a birthday, my parents came, Jonpa went to DC for training, I went to Idaho for Daniel and Becca's wedding, Christmas, New Years, Jonpa went on an overnight backpacking trip with the scouts, I had a birthday, the boys had a Hoedown at school on Go Texan Day, Jongr had his last Pinewood derby, and now we are getting our yard and garden ready for the spring garden.  These are the highlights of the last 5 months of our lives.

This past week we have been working hard at getting some new planters made for our garden in our backyard.  A couple of the boys friends were even over and they all helped carry buckets of dirt from the front flower garden to the back.  They worked hard, they really got into it and enjoyed using the shovels to scoop the dirt and had fun playing in the backyard before and after too.

 
Apparently Jonpa also really liked dinner last night because he said I just took a picture for you to post on the blog so you will have one.  I love him!  :)

I also find all kinds of random photos on my phone from the kids.  Here is a fun one that Jongr and Jonli took of themselves. 

Usually they look more like this. 

Fun huh?  Silly kids, they make me happy, but its annoying to have so many blurry and out of focus pictures to have to delete because they are usually of the walls, doors, floors, fingers, etc.