Breckenridge, CO

We have just gotten back from our favorite resort town, Breckenridge, CO. For the past 4 days, our family has been busy bike riding, swimming, playing tennis, board games, and going to the park. It was a lot of fun! While Dad w/ Cedric, Spencer, Jamison, and I went on a long bike ride, Mom was able to catch up on some sleep and relaxation with Kyle back at the condo. Overall, we bicycled close to 26+ miles. My Dad and I have officially decided that 2 1/2 year olds are the cutest ever. Cedric has been continuously making us laugh, and he also reminds us that the littlest things bring happiness. For example, we were in a biking town, and so whenever we past a biker, or bike shop, Cedric yelled, "BIKE!". Just the way he said it in excitement, made us smile. Also, the view of the mountains were spectacular. Like my Dad says in Spanish, "La vistas es impressionante." ( The view is impressive. ) Dad is teaching himself Spanish, and has stuck to it for quite a while. So it is pretty usual if you see him, and he tries to talk to you in Espanol, or he is talking Spanish to himself. It is pretty cool what he does! At first I was teaching him what I knew from school, but now he teaches me. Anyway, back to Breckenridge, it was a blast being there... here are some pictures...

" ET phone home"

Summer

It's been a full summer already and it's only just begun! The kids are keeping me running at full speed. Everyone thinks the heat is going to kill me being pregnant this summer, but I think it's the kids who'll do me in! We'll go to tennis lessons, piano lessons, walk dogs at the animal shelter, and check books out at the library etc. Then I'll come home and flop on my bed to rest. When I get up, the first thing they ask, is NOW what are we going to do??? If they aren't vegging in front of the wii (which drives me nuts) then they think I need to be doing an amazing song and dance to entertain them. So it goes!

Now that my whining is over, we really are having a productive summer. We were going to put in the final bedroom and bathroom in the basement for the baby, but since finding out that we're going to be having yet another boy, we decided a finished backyard would be much more practical! It is coming along so nicely and it's been giving the boys good lessons in hard work. So far we've put in sod, several bushes, garden boxes and are now building tiers for fruit trees and raspberry bushes. It's fun to look out my kitchen window and no longer see just clods of dirt, but actual green and growing things. My yard is turning into a small oasis is this S. Colorado desert area and it makes me very happy. Jamison in particular has been a huge help, I'm learning that 5 boys can be a lot of potential man-power for getting difficult jobs done.

Other summer successes have included taking Jamison to the temple to do baptisms. It was just him, Hannah, David and I and very cool to do together. He had entered in the family history names himself, and then did the baptisms. Jamison has also been working for two friends of ours. One doing construction, and another doing landscaping/pulling weeds. He's doing pretty well for a 12 year old. He did, however, say he'd fast for two meals today....breakfast and snack.

The best ever is that our 2 year old actually potty trained his own self. Yes, miracles do happen! What bliss. He's also completelyand utterly obsessed with soccer. It's all he can talk about, or wear. I finally had to buy all soccer clothes for him just to survive. He wears every single soccer outfit every single day. Sometimes he'll squeeze in some tennis, and basketball into his repertoire.

Hannah has been both to Girls' Camp and EFY in Oregon. She's had an absolute blast and has learned so much. She is really growing up to be a fun teenager. At EFY she performed in two skits. One was inspired by Melissa Hughett's blog a ways back when she posted a guy doing sign language to "Party in the USA" (thank you Marissa!). The crowd loved it and she ended up doing an encore performance. She also was in another act, the grand finale, where the girls had words to a robotic song posted all over their bodies, and they did a robotic dance displaying the words as they were sung (also found on youtube). Hannah may have them on face book. She was pretty stoked about it all.

Spencer and Kyle are our tennis pro's now and would like to take on their Dad. They only eat about 100 popsicles per day.

In the past few months, I've organized an etiquette dinner on an actual train, a personal progress over nighter, father's day BBQ with jump house and dunk tank, next will be youth conference at Mt. Princeton (Dad is flying in to be the guest speaker). After that I'm going on a 20 hour drive to Idaho almost 9 months pregnant for a family reunion! Then, I'm calling all activities quits for awhile and I'm actually going to happily let the boys veg in front the wii while I do a whole lot of nothing....well maybe not nothing. You know me! And then baby number six will be here and life will change forever!