Got Sand?

We went to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes up north of Kanab over the weekend with a bunch of the family. Brother-in-law Mitch and his Dad brought up their fun toys to romp with. The kids were in heaven.

Pretty girls.
The Griffiths came down from Spanish Fork, they are excellent campers. Kate saved our bacon lots of times by bringing things I'd forgotten, including bacon :)

For some reason I'm doing about 8 loads of laundry today, go figure.

Peter LOVED riding the Ryno, here he is in one of his cleaner moments. Most of the time he was literally rolling in the dirt or running away from me when I had a wet wipe aimed at his face.

Tessa and I drove thru the mud and it splattered us pretty good. Her question was, "Mom! Do you HAVE to drive thru the mud?!" My answer was, "Yes."

Here are the beautiful and handsome Livingstone siblings. Aren't they pretty? Ryan had his hand protectively over the can because there were bees galore there and they loved his CodeRed. Leah drank a bee but he politely didn't sting her tongue, she just spit him out and I like to think the bee and her were both a bit wiser after that.

Here are the Outlaws, it is fun that I get to hang out with my sister at Livingstone family gatherings, we have fun. Plus I'm super happy that my sisters Kate and Jess married such nice fellas, I like my brothers a lot.

Baby Stone was such a happy camper, I accused Kate of forgetting him at home the first evening of the trip because he napping and we hadn't seen his little pink cheeks yet. But he was there, the kids enjoyed fighting over who got to hold him. Good times. Although, I probably fought some people for the privilege of holding the darling little monkey. He is too cute. . . I don't need anymore babies.

Mitch and I took the kids to a big dune up the road that was just for kids to play on, no quads allowed. The kids tired themselves out hiking up and down and sliding and digging and, in Tessa's case, screaming about being stung by a bee (she can scream really loud, she is still alive though).

The sand was really fun to play in though. I think I vacuumed a pound of it out of the van this morning.

She didn't run him over.

Before the bee sting.

She is too cute.

This dude had SUCH a good time playing. He is a good kid.

Don't worry Amanda, Lindsey and Whit, they did "Make a pillow for his head" and no birds got him and he spit on his face a lot. Apparently it is hard not to when one is being buried in the sand. Who knew?

Valla and her Daddy. Surprisingly, she got sand in her eyes.

It was a great trip. We loved it and we hope we get to do it again sometime :)

Ward Campout

That's my Ryan. He is dreamy.

La La. She loved camping.

Tess playing washers. Nothing got particularly clean though. . .

Pete had the best time with his buddy Axle, they played with trucks and got dirty.

We brought Cuddles the puppy and she was a huge hit. She was good too, hooray!

Tess. The marshmallow roast was a huge hit, I'm pretty sure Pete ate 20 marshmallows. He stayed up for a long time acting crazy too. I wonder if the marshmallows led to his wacky behavior. . . Nah, couldn't be.

Weird boys.



This morning as we were taking down the tent we realized we'd put it up on top of the worlds largest concentration of ladybugs so the kids had fun playing with them. I love the end of this video, it is typical Tess. I have no idea why there isn't any sound. I'll try to get Ryan to fix it for us. In the meantime, think of it as a silent movie, I'm sure you'll get the gist.

Any Ideas?

I know, I know. I drew on the walls and furniture when I was a kid so I'm just reaping what I sowed. But I've sure reaped a lot of wall scrubbing. Each of our kids have gone thru the phase with the drawing on everything that is inappropriate. So I've got Pete scrubbing walls whenever he does his art. We're hiding all the writing instruments. But there are a lot of markers, pens, pencils, and crayons at our house. A lot. And you can be sure he will find the one that got left out. And I'm pretty sure he thinks cleaning up his mess is almost as fun as making it, so that's not a strong deterrent.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can cut short my karma?

This is him and his friend Axle. They both thought scrubbing the wall was super fun. Argh.

Yesterday

So dinnertime around here is occasionally a "miss" and last night was one of those. I'll admit it, I overcooked the chicken. So what?! I'd say most of the time dinner is a "hit", I'm allowed to have my moments so that they can more fully appreciate the yummy meals. At least, that is what I told myself. So here's the funny things we heard at the table:

Jeffer was displeased with the spaghetti sauce, he kept asking if I'd done anything different because it was NOT very good! "Usually the sauce you make is good, I think you should make it like you usually do." "Well," I said, "Usually I get it out of a jar, but today I made it from scratch and it took three hours and I kind of thought it was yummy." Ingrate. It was pretty good, maybe a bit thick, but good.

Alana learned from our conversation and very sweetly said, "I like the burnt stuff, it tastes like cookies."

It's funner to laugh than cry.

But all their dinnertime woes were forgotten when we got to have an ice cream sundae party and we invited Amanda, Oliver, Jessica, Mitch, Grandma and Grandpa over to celebrate our family's finishing the Book of Mormon again! Whoop-whoop! It was a sweet treat and everyone was really happy with our success. Now that the kids are a bit older and we've got 4 readers it keeps getting easier to read together. We just have one little distraction left running around :) Yeah us!

Slimer

We made slime yesterday. It was easy to make and the kids have been playing with it and fighting with each other over it ever since.

Leah put it on her head as a hat but quickly learned that it will goop to her hair. It washed out fine and we all got to laugh at her, I mean with her, so no harm done.

We colored it purple because Alana helped with the recipe and she is girly. They all think the next batch should be green. Here's the recipe:

8 oz white glue in a large bowl.
Add 1 cup water and stir until blended.
Add paint/food color to desired color, set bowl aside.

In a small bowl stir together 1 1/2 tsps borax powder and 1 cup warm water until dissolved.

Slowly add the borax mixture to the glue mixture while stirring constantly for two minutes. Knead the sticky slime with your hands until it's smooth and stretchy.

Store in an airtight container.

Samantha

Yesterday was the 13th Anniversary of the taking of the following picture.

Amanda and I got to be there to greet our lovely niece Samantha Kylee. We loved her from the start even though she looked like Yoda for a few hours.

Here she is sleeping with her Mommy. She was small and yellow but she was the apple of our eye. Everyone was in love with Samantha. I remember being seriously worried that I wouldn't love my own children as much as I loved my Sammo.

The famous potato picture. Granted, it was a big potato.

She was seriously the funnest baby. She was so smart and so happy and would do all kinds of tricks.

When our Jeffey came along I found out that I could love my babies as much as I loved her. And she quickly became Jeffey's FAVORITE, always. She is a wonderful big cousin to him, I think it is because she was so kind to him that he has always been kind to his littler cousins.

She makes the best faces.

It's crazy that the little dude in the picture is now serving a mission and that the little chick is a teenager! Aack!

She makes me smile.

She is beautiful and taller than her Mom (although that's not hard to do), she is still super smart and kind and a shining example to her younger brothers and sister and innumerable cousins.

We love you Sammo! We are looking forward to watching you do more nifty tricks.

First Day of School

And there was great rejoicing.