First Day of school!

Yeah! School is back in. I know I shouldn't be so excited, but the kids get so bored and cranky towards the end of the summer, that we are all so ready for school to start each year. Plus I do happen to like when it gets quieter for a spell. Plus, they always look so cute when they go to school after being dirty everyday from playing in dirt.

TJ and Knightin had to have their pictures to, they aren't all clean and cute though. Well, maybe cute but certainly not clean.

Card Towers and Bucket heads

We had a lesson on the Tower of Babel, last Monday and with the lesson built card towers. The kids loved it and have asked since then to make them again. They didn't do very well last week, but are getting better. Kelten was so proud of himself that he got to a third level. Todd took the picture just as Kelten was putting on the top cards. Shortly after that Ki closed the bathroom door, which is a completely different room, and the card tower fell so Kelten yelled at Ki that he knocked down his tower, Go figure!

While We have been working on our carport, the kids have just been playing outside or watching movies. Not as supervised as they usually are, but having fun all the same and no one has got injured or died. The other day we turned around to check on the kids and Knightin was playing in the dirt with the bucket on. Too cute!! He is a funny kid.Thanks to Roger my brother-in-law we are movin' on our carport. We have all the sheeting that we can get up, plus we have the side wall framed in. Tomorrow we will do the back wall, and Tues. Roger got his framer to come over and help us do the trusses that connect the two roofs together, then we can finish up the sheeting. Yeah!

Our kids have decided that we have made them the best Jungle gym, they are constantly up in the trusses. They have died and gone to heaven.

Trusses

So our Trusses are up. Another milestone in our carport building experience. We are very grateful to my brother-in-law and nephews for taking the time to come over today and help us out. Todd and I would probably only have a few of them, instead of all of them if it was just us. We still have the ones that we have to build ourselves to tie the two roofs together, but we are that much closer.

Beams &Beetles

Todd and I are putting in a carport, that will eventually become a garage. This will probably be a slow process for us, since Todd only gets to work on it on his days off, and his days off sometimes have to be shared with other family obligations. All the same we took on this project and are moving forward. Before he worked his night shifts we got some more cement poured. Our slab that we had poured last year, really wasn't square, so we squared it up. Then during this time off we got the post up and the beams, YEAH progress. Of course these 2 days that we worked on it had to be some of the windiest days for Mona, making it even harder and slower, but we prevailed. We went and picked up the lumber to frame in our 2 walls today, and that will all sit for a couple of days, until Todd is off again WED. I am so excited to get a carport and storage. We have no storage in our house and it is driving me crazy. This carport is going to be big,(over half the size of our house) so we shouldn't be hurting for storage by time we finish.

We don't see very many big beetles around here, so when we ran into this fellow we had to take a picture. The kids got a big kick out of it, and TJ carried it around for awhile in a jar, chanting BUG, BUG, BUG! He was a bug sucker.

This is just a cute picture of my dirty Kni, Kni

Our homemade Light Saber pictures.

Peter, Todd's brother while in the MTC created some light saber pictures and since then he has been wanting to make some, so here they are, plus some other fun pictures.

I forgot some!

I had forgotten that we took some pictures in Coloma on our way home. The kids wanted to visit a ghost town, and a semi-ghost town is as close as we could get. They had some pretty cool old buildings and old machinery that they use to mine.

WARNING, WARNING lots of new post and pictures!!!

Well, it has been well over a month since I blogged, so bare with me as I catch up on all our ventures and share with you a whole heck of a lot of pictures.

These first Pictures were taken in Old Sac. My family did these when I was a kid and I thought that they were so fun, so we just had to get them done!

This Is a slide show of random cute pictures that were taken in CA as well as throughout the last month and a half!

I never posted the finished product of the face boards that Todd and I did for the youth of our ward. Also we have a collage of everyone in our family sticking our faces in them!

These next 5 picture are the pictures I turned into colored pencil sketches for a shirt for Todd on Father's Day! I thought they turned out cute!

California trip

Todd and our family have not been to CA for 4 years and pretty much have not taken a family trip in that time either, so we decided it was about time to do it. Todd has a very interesting schedule as a nurse, which we really enjoy, and with this crazy schedule, he has only had to request 4 days off and that gives us 15 days to enjoy. We were able to spend 2 weeks in CA and it was a blast and, much needed. This was the first trip to CA for the 2 youngest, and the first trip that was a long road trip. The did great though, so who knows we might just do it again someday. We did several things while there and of course took a ton of pictures. I tried to narrow the ones I liked, but it was hard, so I ended up doing several slide shows of the highlights of our trip. Sorry for the overload of pictures, but it could be worse, I could of uploaded all the pictures I took and it would have probably taken you hours to see them all, Haha!

On our way to CA, we stopped off at Saltair. The kids have been wanting to go back since we visited 4 years ago on our last trip to CA. They had fun playing in the stinky Salt Lake and playing with the many bugs flying around.

Our next stop was in Elko to get some gas, and we decided the kids needed another break, so we went and found a park to eat lunch at. Then before we left Elko we noticed this park out of the corner of our eyes. I think this is one of the coolest play sets that I have ever seen. The kids could have played on it for hours.

The next day after we got to CA, we took the kids to Bridal Veil. They have a small waterfall at least compared to the bridal veils up Provo Canyon, and the across the HWY from that they have a state park with a river. This is a place that Todd would go often growing up. The water was freezing, but that didn't deter our kids.

We also spent an afternoon at Sly Park Lake (Jennkingson Lake), another place not to far from Todd home growing up that he would go often. There were some geese swimming around while we were there and they were definitely not afraid of people. They came right up to our blanket where the kids were eating. The kids through them some food, and when they wouldn't give them more they started hissing at the kids. It kind of freaked them out. Todd and I were in the middle of the lake swimming back with Knightin when this was going on. The kids were screaming at us that they wouldn't leave them alone, and were hissing. So we had to try to explain to them in a very loud voice from the middle of the lake how to shew them away. These geese were relentless. They wouldn't stay away. Finally after many, many, many chases, they got the picture and didn't bother us much for the rest of the stay. Moral of the story, DON"T FEED THE GEESE AT SLY PARK LAKE!!!!

Hahaha, it's was still alot of fun!

That Thursday we got invited to hang out with one of Todd's childhood friends. We had a party at his parents pool and a BBQ. Then the next day we headed into Biggs, CA where I grew up to show our kids my old houses and old schools. From there we headed up to Redding to visit one of my old school friend that I have known since we were 7-8 years old. Our kids got along great. We did a lot of playing, some blackberry picking, went to Whiskeytown lake and did some boating and playing in the water. Ki got to go Knee boarding for the first time and did amazing. I think we will have to purchase a knee board and have some fun on my parents boat here in UT. Sat. night before we headed back to Camino we went and saw the Sun Dial bridge! I guess there are only 2 in the world and Redding has one. It really is a working Sun Dial. It was pretty cool. Taylar was a little freaked out with the sensation of walking on Glass, even though it wasn't see through and the babies, decided it was the coolest thing ever and were pretty wound up and excited.

Monday we took a trip down to San Fransisco. We saw Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf, the Wax museums, Giradelle's Chocolate factory, China Town, a big Cruise ship, and lots and lots of the city. After finishing in town we went to one of the beaches along the coast, and hunted for sea shells and played in the water and sand. the kids had a great time.

Tues. we got together with all the family there and went to Discovery Kingdom (six flags marine world Africa USA. good thing they shorted they name, heehee) Grandpa, grandma, Karen's family, our Family, Jon's family and Venisa's brother Ross all went. It was a warm day and the kids had a great time. It was hard at times, for when it comes to amusement parks we have a very split family, but the older kids did great when we dragged them around the smaller kids parks, then for the last couple of hours Grandpa took the babies and we set off with the 3 older ones to try some of the bigger rides. We weren't quite ready for the big scary roller coasters yet though, maybe in a few years. They tell us Marine World was the best part of the trip!

When I was in Elem school we took a Field trip to Old Sac and went to the train museum. I thought it was so cool. So Old Sac was on the list of things to do. We just spent the day there taking in the sites.

Saturday before we left we got invited over to Todd's aunt's house. There we played with cousin's and lots of water toys. They had a slip and slide, a couple of sprinkler beach balls, a couple of wadding pools, ducks, kitty's, and horses. The kids didn't run out of things to do. We got to eat good food and play for hours, then when it got dark we watch a movie out on the tramp. We also were able to get many fun pictures on the tramp. You'll have to check them out!

It was a great Vacation and we were sad to have to come back to regular old life!

DC Trip

Many of you know that I went to Maryland/DC for a cancer study. For those of you who don't know anything about it, I'm not sick and I don't have cancer. My grandpa on my mom's side and 4 of his siblings have died for a cancer called Carcinoid Cancer. It is a rare cancer and doctors are always trying to find out more about it. Several family members in the next generation and at least one in my generation have also gotten this cancer. Since this cancer is very prevalent in my family the National Institute of health was very interested in studying my grandfathers lines. They got their grant 2 or 3 years ago and have been moving through the voluntary participants. They are now working on my generation. My two sisters went in March, one of my brothers went while living there and going to school in May and my brother Rusty and I just went in the first of July. My last 2 brothers are a little young, they like the participants to be at least 30, so they will go later. While there I got to go through a series of test, which included a colonoscopy, endoscopy, swallowing a capsule which took pictures of the inside of me for 8 hours, a ton of lab work, a CT scan and a EKG. Because of things that took some time we had testing for 3 days. I'm glad we went in July, by then they had ruled out like 4 of the test, that my sisters and mom had to go through, yeah for me! Through this testing I came out negative on everything and found out I am very healthy and have a very strong heart. If they had found anything they would have taken care of it free of charge, and they will continue the study for unlimited amount of time, so they have invited us to come back every 2-3 years. I think that it is pretty cool, I get to help with research and get a free cancer screening every few years, for a cancer that could is a real thing in our lives, plus they will be able to detect any other cancers or problems they may come up. One thing that has proved nice about this cancer, is that it is very slow growing, so if you are watching for it you can catch it before it spreads and causes any damage.

After the testing finished, we still had 1 day before we left for home, so my brother and I went out and saw some of DC. This of course is something I have never done and was a lot of fun to see some of the things and sites that a lot of people never get to see.

Scout Olympics

Shortly after Day Camp for Ki we got notice that there was going to be a Cub Scout Olympics. We found this out at last minute when they called and ask if Todd could help judge some of the games. So we didn't get a lot of scout participation, but we were able to take Ki and Payton the neighbor and had some fun. They played kick ball, had a water balloon toss, several relay races, a fitness section where they did the standing long jump, throwing a baseball as far as they could, sit ups, and stretches, they played volleyball with a beach ball, and they got to shot rubber band guns. Lots of fun, maybe next year we will find out in enough time to get more boys involved.

Tay turns 10!!

Taylar wanted a Swimming Party this year and had been looking froward to it for about 6 months. She invited 7 little girls and they had a lot of fun splashing, giggling and screaming in little girl fashion. My neighbor took my two big boys, so she didn't even have to put of with her brothers on her big day.

Happy Birthday Taylar!!!

Scout Day Camp

Ki in June, got to be part of his first Cub Scout Day Camp. We had 23 boys and 5 leaders go and it was a lot of fun. The boys all got to shoot Bow and arrows, shoot BB Guns, pan for Gold, make a couple leather crafts, learn to make a rope, practice lassoing, and be crazy and sing and play around. There was a little trading post store there. Ki bought himself his first pocketknife and a rabbit skin. He can't wait until next year.