first day 2012

in order of departure...

taylor. 7th grade.

this is his first year in middle school and he was a bit nervous.

fortunately he has plenty of kids from the neighborhood, football and his old school to pal around with.

 the color is a little wonky on these pictures cause it's my phone.

in real life he isn't white...har har.

these eyes scream excitement and fear.

ryan's mom drives them to the bus so i say goodbye at the door and off he goes. sniff.

austin. 11th grade.

where did this kid come from?

he's not really a kid anymore, though, so i guess i should say where did this man come from but that's too weird so i will stick with kid.

we only have two more school years with him and then he's off to begin his own life.

that's scary.

we are trying to soak up all the time he will let us have before he's gone.

i was pleasantly surprised that he didn't even put up a fight.

the last two years we have had to threaten him with death to get him to stop and take a picture.

this was last year. memorable huh?

we hardly even had to ask this year, he just hopped right in.

such a good boy.

he still won't smile with his teeth showing. 

i think it's more of a stubborn thing than a 'i hate my teeth' thing but i will take what i can get.

 

emily. 4th grade.

holy cow she looks old here!

not sure when she grew but apparently it's been happening lately.

 

after the boys leave i have a little over an hour with just her.

it's been so nice getting that one on one time with her.

i get her breakfast, help her pick out clothes, have time to do her hair and walk her to the bus. 

it's fantastic! 

 emily and hailey.

hailey is nine months older than emily.

i am so curious to see how tall this girl ends up being.

so that was our first day.

everyone came home happy.

no horrible experiences that made them want to crawl in bed and never get out.

success!

only nine months to go!

insta friday x 2

one of these days i might get around to publishing a post that isn't an insta friday post but for today that's all i've got.

and to top it off it's for a the last two weeks. 

austin had his wisdom teeth out right before school started.

even though he did the conscious sedation he remembers everything. so glad we didn't have to pay the $300 that tiny pill usually costs.

afterward he didn't take one pain pill, one nap or have any swelling.

i think it's cause he's so stubborn.

 i had to look at the ground most of the time so i didn't end up on the ground.

that would have been embarrassing.

 i participated in a mug swap a couple weeks ago.

i love sending things and i love getting things so this was perfect!

this was the mug i got my partner and the mug rug i made her.

and this is the mug i received.

we are going to be great friends.

7th grade shots for taylor.

30 minutes after this picture he broke his front tooth again. oy!

 some last minute school shopping and a pretzel at the mall.

her fav. 

  first game of the season.

we won 42-16

 emily going after the bouquet at a friend's wedding.

 me and laurel at the wedding... 

 and out for a good time later that night.

praying for our kids as they head back to school.

  first day of school.

4th grade for this little one.

 7th and 11th for these two.

this was the first time in three years that austin didn't act like he was dying when we asked for a first day of school picture.

  had to don the sweater at the end of practice this week.

i do love the sweater/three quarter shirt and shorts thing, though.

indian summer makes me happy.

and i decided as long as the flowers are going strong there's still some summer left.

come on flowers! be good to me!

i sent this girl to school with a sock bun today.

she is so stinkin cute it kills me.

she totally rocked it! 

insta friday

  the smoke has been crazy with all the wildfires burning around us.
 it has made for some beautiful skies but mostly it's made my nose run.

it's been so stinkin hot these last few weeks. 

i happened to look at the thermometer at noon, one day, and noticed it was only 72 degrees.

i took a picture, posted it and not an hour later it was hotter than hades.

the cool morning was much appreciated though.

taylor wanted to go to pojo's for his birthday so we obliged.
he and emily played skee ball(my fav), air hockey, pac man and tons of kiddie gambling games.
those are their favorite.
just keep popping in the coins.
in the end they had almost 1700 tickets so they didn't do too bad.
maybe we'll take them to vegas.

we thought it would be fun to take some photo booth pictures.
bad thing is the area where you have to be is about the size of a quarter.
emily was up front and i just knew that hers was the only face we would be able to see.
we got the pictures back and i almost dies laughing.
in every picture all you can see is her forehead.
hilarious!

the birthday boy wanted to go to the drive in, and since it was on our summer list we were able to kill two birds.
other than the mosquitoes it was a great night.
and we actually made it through both movies.
the 2 a.m. arrival home was a little much but so glad we did it.

for his family party, tay wanted to go to the speedway.
it wasn't a great race night but we had fun with the whole family there.

 my darling little girl made a picture and used these 'stickers' to hold it together.
that same darling girl informed us, on the way to church, that "when i was in mccall i was trying to blow bubbles that looked like butt cheeks".
precious isn't she?

in preparation for fall, school lunches and snacks in general i started drying bananas.
i spent two days drying five bunches of bananas and got two quart baggies.
that's it?!
and the kids had them gone in about three days.
i guess i need to do twenty bunches in order to have them around for any length of time.

i also made spicy bread and butter pickles this week.
we've gotten a lot of cucumbers this year but not enough at one time to make it worth the trouble of making pickles.
after throwing most of them away, due to rottenness, i decided to suck it up and make some pickles anyway.
five pints isn't bad.

emily wanted to go for a walk and just had to have sadie come.
i finally figured out the reason.
roller blades+dog=no work.

 middle school registration.
eek!

and finally, we had taylor's last optimist jamboree on saturday.
a little sad that this chapter is closing but it's been such a fun ride.

insta friday

only three weeks left til school starts and we are trying to squeeze in all of the stuff we can before summer is over.

last friday we headed up to anderson ranch for some outdoor fun.

rob and taylor went backpacking with kris and josiah and melissa, me and the rest of the kids stayed at her family's cabin.

there is a creek right below the cabin so we spent a fair amount of time there.

this is the first day. 

emily was wearing a skirt but that didn't keep her from hopping in.

her, marley and kristian had a ball playing in that ice cold stream.

this is the end of day two.

not sure how the kids got this dirty but in the midst of playing all day they were covered.

covered.

head to toe dirt.

i love that about this girl, though.

she is a girly girl when she wants to be but more often than not she is just as dirty and scraped up as the boys.

she just does it in a skirt.

we took a package of 100 glow sticks up with us.

we came back with zero.

the kids made necklaces, bow ties and eventually put them all together and wore them as a giant bracelet.

when we got home i realized i had loads of strawberries that i needed to make into jam.

good thing it's relatively easy.

taylor had picked quite a few blackberries from across the street so we ended up with eight jars of strawberry and four jars of blackberry.

that should keep us for a while.

taylor started football this week. 

this is his fourth, and last, year of optimist.

four years!

it's bittersweet.

our dahlias in the back yard. 

they are gorgeous.

more of this dreaded task.

i seriously hate ironing.

i wait until there are about twenty shirts that need to be done, or til rob threatens me with death, and do them all at once.

if i can find something to watch on tv it makes it a little less painful. 

we have lots of fires burning in the state of idaho.

the smoke has been making the sun and sunsets gorgeous.

if only all that smoke didn't make me all sneezy and headachy.

the fruit of skye's labor.

i couldn't make it to peach picking cause i was making jam but she got me some anyway.

now what to do with them...

the first three days of football is, mandatory, helmets only.

last night was the first night of full pads.

they may look tough but i think they are adorable.

between the smoke and the clouds this mornings sky was beautiful.

last, but far from least, we celebrate this guy's 12th birthday today.

i was supposed to have a c-section on the 15th, the day after closing on our new house and trying to get as moved in as possible.

on august 10th we went on our walk through at 3:30 and were on our way to look for furniture at rc willey when my water broke in the parking lot.

two hours later this little 8lb 14oz baby was here.

he has blessed, and sometimes stressed, our lives for the last 12 years and we wouldn't want it any other way!

love you taylor tot!

happy birthday!