The REAL big day!

 Here she is!  (Whew!  I was feeling like a wedding planner at this point.)  We had a wonderful day celebrating K-lady's baptism.  Here she is outside our church building...

 Daddy baptized and confirmed her a member of the church - the picture above is right before they went into the water.  We baptize by immersion to represent being washed clean of sins and being reborn as a child of God.  As part of the ordinance, we make covenants with God.  We promise to take care of each other and try our best to be good people.  God promises to bless us with His Spirit.

This is probably much too personal and serious for a blog, but I felt so humbled and honored as I watched my daughter and husband participate in this ordinance.  I felt like our family got a little closer to being together forever.  It made me catch my breath.  It was beautiful.

 Of course best friends must be present for such a wonderful occasion!  (don't they look like fire and ice?)  :)

And wonderful family and friends made it extra special.  I did not in a million years expect all these people to come!  2 Grandpa's, 1 Grandma, 3 Aunts, 2 Uncles, 10 cousins (I got to meet that sweet-as-sugar baby up there for the first time)!!  All driving 2-3 hours to get here, and seemed quite happy about it, too (which was even more amazing to me!)

 And wonderful friends-that-might-as-well-be-family, too.  I still can't believe they came - wonderful ladies!

There were FOUR kids baptized that day!  Quite a shock for our little congregation - the entire chapel was FULL for the meeting.

 Then everyone (40 people!) came over to our little house for a ham dinner - Dad, Joseph and Doug figured out how to glaze the ham with just a little help from Heidi and the instructions. :)  It was so fun - the kids just ran around and the adults chatted.  It was a great way to celebrate together!

These last pictures are from my little 'photo shoot' with K-lady a week or two beforehand.  We went to a lovely park here in town and caught some beautiful late afternoon light and had fun - though K-lady didn't have as much fun as I (NO MORE PICTURES, MOM!).  But I just couldn't quit - I loved being able to catch these moments.  My little K-lady is a wonderful person - I can't wait to see what she does with the rest of her life.  She is kind and caring, and gently negotiates and maneuvers her siblings (as a big sister and mother, I can say with good authority that these are essential skills for a happy home).  She is anxious to do the right thing and tries to do good.  She loves to laugh, is cautious in new situations, but quickly adjusts and adapts.  And lest you think she is too good to be true, she's also sassy.  She hates showing affection in public, and is quite concerned that her friends might be within hearing distance when I say, "Bye!  I love you!" as she gets out of the car at school in the morning, and absolutely refuses to acknowledge my expressions of affection.  :)  But I'll take the cold prickles along with the warm fuzzies, 'cause that's how most people are packaged, anyway.

We love you, K-lady!

Eight Years in Seven Minutes

My fabulous friend Heidi introduced me to this video site - very easy - I threw this together pretty quickly for K-lady, and I love the end result. ;)

The Party

We decided to party on the 18th - seemed like a good day. :)  K-lady invited a few friends (I made her keep it small because I'd been feeling like my brain might explode), and we had a good time.  My wonderful dad arrived the night before for the weekend's goodness, and our wonderful friends Heidi and Doug & their girls came down for the weekend. (please forgive the huge long post and overload of pictures - Heidi took pictures for me, and I love them all!) :)

K-lady wanted a rock star party, but, like I said before, I was in danger of loosing my mind if the party got too big, so we kept it relatively simple (none of that build-a-stage-and-bring-out-the-drum-set-and-karaoke-stuff).   I also had a little mini-personal-crisis about getting too carried away in the fluff of a party, and not remembering the importance of this birthday (in our church children are baptized when they are old enough to be accountable - 8 years old - so it's the beginning of making covenants with God - that's pretty important to us.)  In the end we decided a party would make K-lady happy, and not building a rock star stage would make me happy.  :)  Win-win.

Some of the girls, waiting for a few more guests to arrive.

Decorating their cardboard 'guitars' (crafty/gluey/sequiny/glittery things like this are so nice with girls.  They spent FOREVER getting their guitars just. right.  J-boy and his little buddy were too busy using their guitars as  nunchucks to bother with much decorating)  :)  The girls took these home instead of goody bags.

 

Monkey here was quite happy blowing bubbles while the girls decorated and the boys nunchucked.

 Then we headed inside for some nail polish - it was so fun having the dad's around!  They helped paint the girls' nails. :)

K-lady insisted on helping every other girl paint their nails first, THEN and only then would she allow her nails to be painted.  She was a sweet little hostess.

Another dose of uber-processed-foods for dinner - The dad's took care of making dinner (K-lady had requested cheese and pepperoni pizza, more dorritos, chicken nuggets and mini-sodas.  I really hope these things are appealing because they are rare in our home and she's a kid.  She will grow out of that, right???).  

 Dad helped me put up the decorations. It was so fun having him there!  

It kind of looks like she's sipping that soda in a worshipful way, doesn't it??  :)  (she really was in heaven to have her very own little can) 

And if the food by itself wasn't enough to make your tummy ache, how about a game of twister right afterwards???

Back to the kitchen for cake and candles and wishes and presents and ice cream (yes, all at once, we were a little crunched for time there at the end). 

She bestowed a huge hug on each gift giver.

And the girls rocked out a little right at the end.  :) 

K-Lady's big day (#1)

So Ms. K turned 8 this past month - it turned into a month long celebration, so this is the first of 3 K-lady birthday posts!  (aside: does that make up for poor Baby A's pathetic one-picture-second-birthday-in-the-middle-of-a-move.......  guilt guilt guilt....)
Anyway, it's a friend party year, and the party was planned for a week and a half AFTER the actual day, so installment #1 contains pictures from the birthday itself.
We started off with some decorations around the house and breakfast in bed (her choice this year was pop tarts and lucky charms and orange juice - ick!).  No pictures of that blessed event.
Baby A and I brought treats to school to share (she wanted cookies and a lollipop for each kid)

She was very silly and giggled the entire time the class sang her Happy Birthday. :)

 After school she had gymnastics, then we did dinner (hot dogs, dorritos, and blue jello), brownies (her request, since she'd have cake at the party).

And FINALLY, when she didn't think she could take it anymore, we let her find and open her presents.  :)

(sad little low quality pics snapped from video I was taking w/ my camera)

...to be continued...

How to have a lovely campout on Labor Day

Pick you location carefully (state and national park campsites are likely to be overrun w/ party animals for Labor Day).  We find it best to reserve our site far in advance.  We also find it best to camp on private property at Jake's new home: lake view (check), shade trees (check), big fire pit (check), room to play (check), fish for catching (check), ample facilities - showers, stocked kitchen, hammocks, corn hole game, volleyball, tractor rides & slip'n'slide (check), family (check), friends (check), friends' awesome camera (check).   

(that's the morning mist rising off the lake - it was magical!)

Be sure to bring your best friends along.

(We've already arranged the marriage between those two up there.)

Double trouble.

Warnings: We DON'T recommend letting mom get sick while camping (fever, headache, sore throat, loss of voice).  And please avoid stomach flu aftermath by J-boys of all ages (we had to go home a day early and didn't get to see all our OP friends at church on Sunday).  But it was still a great weekend!  Jake and Jen were amazing hosts - we are now officially way to spoiled to enjoy KOA ever again.  :)

I think we'll invite ourselves again next year.

PS - Labor Day marks our blogs 3rd year!  Happy Birthday!  :)

Summer @ a Glance

So what do I do when I haven't blogged about anything that's happened in the last 3 months?  Why, a collage parade, of course!  Because I am incapable of skipping the pictures that I love, but I'm equally incapable of staying on top of blogging in the middle of bedlam.  And I'm also incapable of actually remembering my past without visual proof in the form of pictures.  So here's June:

 

Wow, wasn't that a fun month? I think you should be able to click on the collages to make them bigger.  It really was a great month - trips to the park & library w/ friends, a baby shower for Heather, COSI with big machines and cousin L (see the pic of Baby A fighting J-boy for the steering wheel?  I love that one), the last day of school for K-lady, Father's Day, a chance meeting w/ Heather & Ryan at music in the park (lucky!), temple visits, a day trip south to Hocking Hills (WOW!), and an quick campout in Northern Ohio to visit Kirtland (you'll see a little more of that trip next month, since we woke up in July)

July saw the end of our Kirtland camping trip including fishing and Amish country on the way home, a gorgeous 4th of July celebration that lasted all weekend, a beautiful new niece to adore, K-lady twisting her ankle and breaking our last stroller (I've given away 3 in the last 2 years, and go figure the trusty indestructible umbrella stroller just couldn't take it anymore and gave up the ghost on the way home from the 4th of July parade), my last Sunday in Primary, Joseph's birthday (we love you!), loading up a moving truck, Baby A turned TWO, we unloaded a moving truck (my parents are amazing - that they can even stand to be around us after the torture we put them through year after year is nothing short of amazing....), we hopped back in the van for another 18 hours for a family reunion with nearly 100 cousins, and finished the month in lovely Cache Valley.  

And August!  We had a couple extra days to spend in Utah - we ran down to Provo for  a quick trip down memory lane and to catch up with some more cousins and old friends, we spent more time w/ mom, dad, Kendra, Grandma (happy birthday to you!), Dave, Angela, Bailey & Matthew, we crashed the Bill's family reunion, and when we could stall no longer we went back to our new home, woke up and took the kids to the first day of school, and started unpacking.  We went to a Ranch Rodeo - that's a talented bunch of cowboys up there.  Our 9 year anniversary was nearly unnoticed - I hadn't unpacked the calendar yet.  :)  

So I think that brings us more or less up to date!  We're getting settled in our new digs - I sure miss our old beautiful neighborhood and my wonderful sister and friends in Ohio!!!  And I miss my wonderful parents (with whom we spent almost a month and a half by the time we dragged ourselves out of the mountains). 

But we are getting to know our new town, and Joseph LOVES his new job (it's so happy to see him enjoying it so much!).  We're two hours from a bunch of friends and family, and that's perfect for a quick getaway.  So life is good.   If you want a more drawn out version, you can check out my picture-a-day blog (the perfectly ordinary days button in the side bar there).  I'm giving myself about 2 weeks to get a little more organized here before I go completely insane.  :)  And hopefully I'll be on here a little more often.  Happy blogging everyone!  Thank you, and goodnight.

a little time to play

I'm very deadline-driven - nothing like a deadline to get me to kick it in gear. So with the end of the school year fast approaching (not to mention a move), I figured it was time to tie up some loose ends!

K-lady and I made this for her teacher - the back ring says "love & grow." It was going to say "learn love grow," but the little set of metal stamps I bought was kind of lame - the A squashed flat on the first try! So we settled for a-less words. And I took the stamp set back to Harbor Freight and exchanged it for one that hasn't squashed yet. :) I followed the tutorial for this necklace from this website.

Then I slapped a few quotes together in photoshop and used up some of the misc. frames I've had kicking around (no need to move those again, right?) for some other favorite teachers.

And I needed more shelving for my stuff - this was harder than K-lady's desk - I bought cheap pine plywood that was super bowed. It would have been much easier and better to have bought something straighter and $10 more expensive. But it's done now and I learned something, and the books stay on the shelf, even if it isn't square. :) I can't get a good picture - it's wedged in the corner of the room far from natural light. But I LOVE having all my sheet music right by the piano where I can actually USE it (sigh...) These plans are also from Knock-off Wood blog.

And K-lady needed more shelving for her stuff (she really does take after me, doesn't she?). There is a set of plans for a hutch on the Knock off Wood blog that I used as my basis, but I adjusted everything to fit the desk and use scraps I already had - I only had to shell out $5 for one little 1x2 piece of trim! Yay! My dad and I are working on a little ottoman/stool to match the desk. But at the rate I'm going with this blog you won't see it till Halloween. :) (I'm sure the suspense is killing you).