Kayaking

We spent some time in our kayaks over memorial day weekend! I had missed them! I don't think there's any better feeling than to glide around in the water in a little kayak......  The kids had fun riding with us too

Lucy in the boat....she wanted to stand up and touch the water the WHOLE time

big smiles from Macy

Lucy had SO Much fun that she passed out!! 

Lane said he wanted to try out the kayaks!  I was pretty excited.  He did AWESOME!!! a few pointers on steering the boat, and he was off!  He's a total natural!  Totally time to get him his own kayak....and maybe a little smaller oar :)

He is such a stud.....I love this little boy!!

Here's the big part of the lake we kayaked across..... Pretty isn't it!

Here's the little duck family that me and Lucy chased around :)  they were so cute!

at the end of our ride, here's the girls :) Both of them passed out, it was pretty hilarious!  So apparently EVERY toy we have from dirtbikes to kayaks, our kids find soothing and sleep inducing.  Oh well...:)  Looking at this picture, I feel the need to announce that YES, I am expecting and that is NOT just a large root beer gut I am sporting!  Baby #4 coming in November....don't ask if it's a boy or a girl, because we're not going to find out! :)

Memorial day!

Memorial day part 1!    This is going to take a couple posts to get all of our memorial weekend updated. With our internet, I would be up all night trying to download all of our pictures :)

This year, we went camping with our good friends, the Cherringtons (and also the Bolle's for a night!)  up at the Chain Lakes.  We stayed for about 4 days.  It was SOO fun, and a nice get away, and so fun to catch up with our friends!!  The kids did awesome, and had a blast playing...

lane found a worm.  He wanted to keep it for his pet

Lucy, Izzie, and Chance digging holes.  Digging holes, and playing in the dirt proved to be a favorite pretty much every day!

Jessica with sleeping kid :)  She was showing off their amazing  dutch oven pizza!  JEALOUS!!! It was a far cry from our hot dogs on the fire :)

Lucy and Macy at the campfire.  

I think Macy had her eyes closed in every picture I took that night :)

Noah ready for fishing!

We kayaked and canoed across the lake, down a little channel to a little spillway where  we  could fish without a million people.  The older kids fished, while the younger ones had a blast throwing rocks into the water!

I had to snatch a pic with Lucy in between throwing rocks!

Lucy  could have sat and thrown rocks for hours I think...

Me and Jade!


To be continued......

Visitors

These past couple months we've had a variety of visitors. And I need to give some props out to our little dog for being such a great guard dog!!!

Visitor number 1.  here she is hanging out in the driveway, where she stayed for about 3 hours!  Finally the dog got tired of barking at her and went and laid down.

She just hung out here and looked at the house forEVER!!!! And she came back every day for like a week!  Craziness

So the first time our moose came (this one was a boy moose), the dog was barking like crazy, the kids were outside in the backyard, and I was doing dishes. I heard the dog and went out to see who was here. Well i got out on the deck, and looked over to the corner where I park my van and there is a HUGE MOOSE standing there about to fight with the dog.  The girls were in the middle of the backyard,  about 100 feet away from giant moose.  So I yell to the girls to run to the deck.  Lucy did, but macy was just content to watch the fight.  So i ran out and got macy while the dog kept the moose occupied! It was kind of crazy!! Finally the dog nipped and bit and barked enough to chase the moose away!! WOO HOO!



Visitors #2 and 3 were a little different. Dog was barking again and so i run out and see who's (or what) is there and i look down at the lower front yard and don't see anything.  I kept looking and finally saw a brown thing in the tree line, and realized it was  BEAR!!! The dog chased him around and finally chased him across the open area and sure enough...a little black bear!  Crazy!!!


The second time, we were loading up and heading to the car for Tball, and the dog was barking at the backyard tree line, and lane says,.."MOM it's a bear!!!"  So i run to the kitchen door and look, and yup, dog is warding off a little bear from coming in the back yard!! So me and the kids go out on the back deck and watch!! :)  YIKES!!

we need a fence :)

Oh yeah, lane claims to have seen a bear on one of our walks around the lake as well.  I did not see it, he was riding his bike and was in front of me a ways....he whizzed back around the corner and yells that he saw a bear in the road, but it walked away! YIKES!!!   Not sure if that one is fact or fiction, but we were not wasting any time going around that corner back to the car!! :)  looks like i need to carry a gun on our walks too!!

Go White Sox!!

This year we signed Lane up for T-ball. His team was the White Sox!  We had 3 little friends from our ward on our team, which was fun, at least for us moms that got to sit through the torture.....i mean games.....together :)  If you've ever had a little boy (i'm going to generalize here because from my observations, the little girls did just fine)  in Tball you understand how painful this whole process can be at times.  From referee-ing bases, gathering your outfielders from joining another team across the field, trying to find somewhere covert for your player to "relieve" himself in the middle of an inning, keeping peace in the batting line-ups........it's interesting to say the least :)

We did see improvement in the team as the season went on, and Lane had some good hits, and a couple times he actually caught the ball with his glove!! All in all it was fun......though I asked Lane if he thought he would like to play again next year and all he said was, "nah..."   :)   Maybe we'll wait a few....or 10 years before we try organized sports again!! 

Beach Day!

We had a freakishly warm day several weeks ago in May, it was up around 80 degrees for a few days! We took advantage of it and headed to the beach! Of course it was freezing, but Lane was up for the adventure and dove right in! I love it.

Of course today...June 7th it's about 40 degrees, raining, and i'm about to go build a fire downstairs....go figure! :)

 Beach babes

 Lucy's not so sure of the water

 Macy had fun just walking around

Good times!  Hopefully the warm weather comes back before school starts again so we can continue on our quest for swimming, and fun summer activities!  Wish us luck!

Happy Mother's Day!

Hope everyone had a good Mother's day!  I sure am one lucky mama :)  I got a crown and breakfast in bed!  The me and the girls painted our fingers and toes.  Good times!

The Fort

HI!!!!

My backyard is finally transforming into my "fun kid zone"!! I'm so excited!!!  Scott has been working hard on our "fort"  here's the progress!

the main view

this will be all enclosed and sided, with openings for various in's/out's .  Notice the fireman pole.  That's my fav.  I'm still trying to convince scott we need on in our house somewhere!!

there's a little loft in the fort. those boards are the beginning of  one of the slides

yay for swings!

macy's checking out the views

she LOOOOOVES her swing!

"hello!"

an extra barrel to climb through 

macy's a big fan

here's where we built the slide.  Can you tell what it's made of?

Lucy is fearless on the swings

here's the slide!

awwwwwwwwwesome :)  There will be another one lower and off to the side, but we need some more barrels :)

Feel free to come and play ANYTIME!!!! Coming soon:  the pirate deck, swinging bridge, monkey bars, and a zip line?? :)

Photo Shoot

I tried to do a little photo shoot with Lucy and Lane while Macy was napping one day.  My photography skills with small children still need some developing :) But i got a couple cute shots

sassy Lucy :) This shirt stayed clean for about 5 seconds after the photo shoot :) then she was off to the  "fort" and I couldn't get her to take off her "cute clothes"  oh well!

We were taking lane's "5 yr old" pics, and he insisted on some of them being in  knight attire.    Can't you totally picture his senior pics?? hee hee

A couple more 5 yr old pics.  I need to re-do them because I didn't realize his hair was so wet :)  That's what I get for being in a hurry!  He's still pretty handsome though

I love this face of his.  This one totally reminds me of what he looks like when he giggles. If i could put videos on here I would totally put one of him with the giggles on because it's AWESOME. I love his giggle fits.  He sounds like one of those smiley face dolls that you push their tummy and they giggled for like 5 mins. Yeah....that's totally Lane....it's hilarious :)