Swimming Lessons In The Books

The kids finished another year of swim lessons.  It was an eventful year, I am glad it is over!  All of the kids really improved especially the big girls.  I didn’t venture to far from the little kiddie corner for fear of someone going under, which happened almost every. single. day.  hence the reason we were glad to be done! 

Emma tried and tried to dive head first, but still didn’t quite get it.

Emma treading water.  It was a good thing I couldn’t watch her because the few times I did she barely had her nose out of the water and I was tempted to jump in and save her!  Her teacher really made her work hard and she made lots of improvement!

Emms jumping in!

Just and Jaci moved on to level two which had way too many kids in it and they didn’t get much attention and didn’t improve much at all (Justin that is)  He was crying by the end and even spent one day back in level one with Claire.  It was really too bad.  He did have a good time though and swims great with the family (when we go)  Hopefully next year will be a big year of improvement for him.

We liked his fun teacher, his name is Collin.

I could only get pictures of Ashley’s splash, she is always in and under.  She has had the least fear of all of our kids, which is nice.  She is doing really good.

Ashley’s head.

Ashley’s dive.

Going off the diving board.

Little brother had to be patient and wait and wait!  He LOVED swimming and was dunking his face in over and over.  He thought it was so funny, and so did we.

We always enjoy our good friends and playing at the park after swim lessons.  It is a fun tradition and will be great memories!

Trip Down Memory Lane!

Look what I found for sale in my very own little town!!  I about died and had to stop and take a picture or two!  It is not every day you see a classic like this! 

What do you think Kiley, the blue is ALMOST as horrible as our blue was, I am sure this is not original paint either.  When I got closer I realized it wasn’t a century, but it still looks just like our old blue babe mobile, or the blue bomb, or what other awesome names did we have for it??

I think maybe I should buy it and send it to Lexi for her school car.  I’m sure I could have it shipped pretty cheap??!!  What do you say Lex!?  Oh how funny!!

The BEST Hair!

Claire has the best hair after swimming lessons.  Really who has good hair after swimming??  She does!  It usually is all in one big curl and then when I take it down after it has dried she looks like this:

Tons of body, and perfect curls!

We are just loving swimming lessons, it has been perfect weather and that pool is really, really warm!  I don’t think the pool has ever been warm, but it is this year and its nice!

Sunday Shots

We had a great Sunday.  Church was good, Rett is in that impossible stage right now.  Ryan and I wrestled with him through Sacrament meeting.  The other kids just kind of fend for themselves while we are trying to keep the babe quiet!  He is a monster baby!  He just doesn’t want to sit still at all!  I finally took him out half way through, we go sit in the mothers lounge and he really doesn’t like that.  I am hoping he is going to start realizing that the chapel is better than the mothers lounge and he will be goo for us.  (probably just wishful thinking!)  I got to help do sharing time in primary.  That was great.  I miss primary a lot.  Especially since all of my family is there, even Ryan.  It was really fun though.  Emma gave a talk also, she did good. 

Sunday afternoon Emma put on a Baby Rap Show for us.  Rett didn’t want to do his part very good. 

He got his hair buzzed off for summer, he is all eyes now!

Claire sang us a baby rap too.

The weather has been so good.  We are loving it!  We have one more week of swimming lessons, the kids are getting really good now.  It is nice!

Strawberry Pickin!

Ash picked the strawberries and then had to take a self portrait!  What a funny girl, and yummy strawberries!

These Kids

This trio have been going and going this summer. 

Ryan got all of the bikes resurrected and they have put hundreds of miles on them.  They go on a few rides everyday.  They always pack a back pack with water and winter gloves so they can look for treasures along the way.  They have work gloves, they just prefer their snow gloves I guess.   They slept out in the tent every night but one last week.  I made them finally take down the tent, we had moved it, but it was time to be off my grass. 

Justin wears his socks, shoes, and jacket out every day.  I cant get him to like his flip flops this year.  I hope he changes soon.  He loves his socks and wore a hole in one pair so far. He just couldn’t figure out where the circle worn out of the sock went.  He just felt funny and looked down and the hole was there.  He couldn’t see where he had lost it!  He has a major tan line on his legs from his socks. 

Ash has read lots of books already, mostly simultaneously.   She wants to go to the library twice a week to trade in for another.  She is really doing well in swimming lessons.  I may finally have a kid I trust in the water.  almost.  I love the water, but it is too scary now that I’m a mommy.

Emma went to see the eye Dr/ Bishop.  He informed us what we pretty much already knew.  Emms has the Telford eye genetics and needs to get glasses.  She is just tickled pink!  We are not in a hurry to get them, I don’t want to have to replace them before school starts.  She is just dying and wants to go shopping every day to get her glasses.  Her eyes aren't bad, (yet) but she definitely needs them by school time.

Claire’s New Occupation

I know really, another chicken post…. we are just fascinated by these chickees.  They keep us entertained and busy.  It is great!  Claire bear’s job has been to get the chickens to the edge of the grass and then Ash and Emma take over from there.  She is hilarious to watch chasing because she is mostly scared of them.

As long as they go the right way(which they know what to do now) then her job is easy, and really fun to watch!

To the edge of the grass, because she never wears shoes!

That was so hard work Mom!

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary…..

The garden is growing quite lovely this year.  We love love love our raised beds, they are great!  Ashley has done most of the work this year, we have helped with weeding and watering, but she planted almost all of it and has been harvesting some of it already.  She is amazing!  I am happy to have her around! 

(she burned her hand on the exhaust pipe off of a little motor when she was working with Ryan.  It is pretty bad on her thumb and ring finger, big blisters.  She only nursed it the first day and is back to normal activity minus piano.  She should be back to it here soon.)

We are finally getting just a few strawberries which everyone is willing to help find, funny how that works!

Some have to be picked just barely pink, because they are just too yummy!

Little brother doesn’t like to crawl around in the garden because of the pokey bark so he gets up in the beds and sits, it is much nicer.  He is in the “cabbage patch”  which really is yummy spinach for my green drinks, YUM-O!

Emma with the bell peppers and tomatoes, just a few tiny ones coming on.

Ashley and I have worked and worked on cleaning up the weeds around the garden.  We are determined to get it planted in grass this summer and hopefully a few trees for our “secret garden.”  We will see how we do.  all the weeds are dead, just not removed yet, the hard part…   One really bad part about living on a big ol farm is all of that yard to keep up.  One of the best parts about living on the big ol farm is having that big yard!  We continue to work on!

Chicken Farmers

This chicken farming is for the birds!!  We have been letting them out because they are tired of being “cooped” up!  Ha, ha!  No, it is hot in that little coop and Ryan hasn’t had a spare minute to build their run so they have just been pecking around the yard which is fine in the day when we are home, but they have to be put away at night.  It took us 30 minutes to “herd” those chickens up the ramp back into the coop.  The ladies did not want to cooperate! 

Last night (the fourth night of herding them) Emma went out to start gathering them and we couldn’t find them anywhere!  Ash and Emma went running around the yard and house frantically looking.  They came back in and said they had found them, in the coop.  So they are totally trained after 4 days, that is amazing!  Now if we could only train the cows to do the same!

Outdoor Family Night

We held our family night outside this week.  Rett wasn’t a big fan, and didn’t hold still for very long.  He is doing the stink bug crawl.

Claire being a stink bug too.

Claire REALLY being a stink bug, I’m not sure what this fit was about something really important I’m sure!  This is a regular sight around our house.  The big pout!

Ash doing the scripture.

We obviously had smores for the treat.

Brother got some jammies on, now he could really get away from us.

Claire leading the song.

Oh how we love these warm summer days!