Sooooo....what happened to the whole summer?

I'm averaging one post every two months. Since my main objective for this blog has become more of just a journal for our family and publishing the blog book once a year (blurb.com, love it!). Waiting so long in between posts is frustrating, since I'm now going to do a huge marathon post. I'll move from youngest to oldest: Annie is just over 4 months. She is a little sack of sugar and is nothing but smiles and sweetness. When she smiles, which is all the time, she smiles with her whole body. She arches her back, raises her shoulders, which makes her cheeks squished and tight and her little gummy mouth opens. It's the funniest thing in the world. She rarely cries, she just yells or chirps a few times if she wants anything. She's doing all her jobs just perfectly. She goes right to sleep when it's time, lays on a blanket and gnaws on a few toys, rolls occasionally, smiles and laughs on queue, eats a lot and has grown to 98% for height, 50% for weight and head. Although it's still difficult to have an infant (sleep, barf, poop, etc), she's a superb baby.

Wacky Jacky is 3 1/2 and is a little champ, too. One of my favorite things about Jack is that he is really, so wacky. He has the funniest facial expressions. I wish I had a few hours and many many pages to try and describe how funny they are. The best and worst one is his blank stare which he does sometimes with perfect comedic timing and sometimes I hate more than anything when I'm trying to discipline him. I can't describe this properly, but because I always want to remember it, I'm going to write it down anyway. Sunny, my mom, Jared and I were talking to Jack trying to help him hold up his fingers to say that he's three years old (this was around his birthday). I put his fingers into position for him but he wouldn't look at them, and I kept saying "Look Jack, this is how you do it. Look! Look! LOOK!" and finally with his eyes really wide open and his face doing this hilarious stare, he slowly looked down at his fingers and stared at them. We all laughed uncontrollably for a long time, and I'm still laughing as I type this. We just got Jack a new bike. I had been wanting to paint Lily's old bike and fix it up so that I could save the environment and stop the out-of-control consumerism of our society, but I'm lazy and Jared finally convinced me to just get a new one. When we found one for less than what we'd pay for new tires, seat, and paint, I gave in. (The old one had already been through about 5 kids and was free, so it was pretty justifiable) He likes the big kid bike. He had been riding his tricycle for a long time. When he'd ride around with Lily and other neighbor kids, they'd all hop off their bikes and dump them over on the ground. He'd hop off his trike and then he'd push it over, too. Pretty cute. Here he is in a fuzzy pink robe that he loves because it's so soft. Anything super soft he rubs on his belly. Jack's pretty much potty trained now. It turns out we just had to drop the issue and ignore it and he did it himself. I think the big motivator was peeing outside, which he'll do anytime, in front of anyone, with no warning. It's pretty great. Here he is watering the sunflowers. Lily's 5 1/2 now and is so grown up. She's starting Kindergarten in a few weeks and is very excited. I'm terrified, but really excited to buy school supplies. Lily's been completely obsessed with My Little Ponies for a couple months. As I write this she is doing a pony puppet show for Jack and I. She has collected a bunch of ponies and only plays with them and watches the TV show almost exclusively. Luckily Jack also loves the ponies. Did you know there is large male-following of My Little Ponies? They're called Bronies. Google it. This picture Lily took all by herself, along with about 100 others all of ponies.I've been busy being a mom. Sometimes I feel embarrassed that I don't blog or post anything on Facebook, or talk or think about anything but my kids (exagerating, a little). There has to be some biological reason for it, because I can't help it. Plus really, with a 4 month old, 3 and 5 year old, it really is all-consuming. Last week, at one time I was working on 4 different parenting books, one novel, and a couple magazines. That says a lot right there. I'm trying to have my own hobbies and will hopefully get back to them some time soon. One thing that's been a struggle has been excersizing. The other day after brushing Jack's teeth he squished my belly and said "You're belly's still big. Is there still a baby in there?" Wah wah wah.

My dad snuck up and took this picture of me while I was going through the recycling looking for a lost $100 giftcard. Not cool.Jared's been doing a great job working out and dieting. He's lost something like 34 lbs and it shows. He's been doing a diet called Paleo; no grains, dairy, sugar, beans, carbs and working out at Crossfit. He has made great gains and usually isn't the slowest anymore. Ask him, he'd LOVE to tell you all about it. He's been doing a great job with the yard and garden this summer and has barely been sailing and misses it dearly. He's also got a new BBQ grill and has been doing a lot of fabulous grilling.

Jamal and Ruby are happy, little kitties. We hardly see them during the summer time.

Here's Jamal getting some kitty love.

So that covers everyone, now on to events: We did the Provo Childrens Parade, which is one of my favorite traditions. This year we decorated the new wagon and Jared pulled it. They got a trophy and carried it around with them for a couple weeks. It was pretty exciting.

We went to a rodeo. We love the Provo Farmer's Market, especially the face-paint lady.All in one week we had some of our very favorite people visit; Hannah and Eric were visiting from Denver, our friends the Bacigalupi's were visiting from Arizona, and the Papa's (just Tyrus and their 6 year old, Kylee) were in from California. It was a busy and fun week. I already reported on Han's visit in my last post. With the Bacigalupi's we had a sailing day and also went to Red Butte Garden for the first time. We love them so much, Gina's my other soul-mate.We also did a sailing day with Tyrus and Kylee, went to Pirate Island (a cheesy, pirate themed restaurant), and went to Thanksgiving Point. We had a great time with them, too, but still missed Julieanne and Gavin, who weren't able to make it due to Julieanne's baby coming soon. For Pioneer Day we went up to our friends the Barnes' parent's house in Bountiful. We swam in their pool, watched a parade, and fireworks. It was an action-packed day of fun. Here are Jared and Greg at the parade. Jared "had an itch" in his nose. Hehehe.The kids went camping with my parents. It was just a quick overnighter but they liked it.We went to Kennecott Copper Mine finally. We've talked about going for a long time and neither Jared or I have ever been there. It was really amazing. We loved the giant trucks and the whole thing was just incredible, I recommend it to anyone in Utah, especially if you have a little boy. She doesn't look like it here, but Lily also enjoyed it.

The kids have been going to swimming lessons for the last few weeks. They both absolutely love it and both have done amazingly well. I think Jack is in love with his teacher. It's been an extraordinarily wet summer. We had a couple weeks of rain almost every day and we had a good time playing in it. Here are the kids floating "boats" down the gutter. It's fun to see them do the exact same stuff I did when I was a kid, and even in the same gutter. We've gone swimming a couple times at the public pool. There are fun slides and fountain area. We all love it.

Here are the kids playing "caterpillar" on the kitchen floor. That's where you wrap up in a blanket and wiggle around. Pretty fun. Another thing the kids love to do is to make my bedroom really dark and then tell "scary stories". Lily was telling a story about a giant, black, invisible, flying horse and at one point was describing a spooky forest. She whispered slowly "It was dark, and there were scary creatures." and Jack said with his eyes all scary "Like chickens!" Which actually sounded like "Like Thickenth!". Then Jack's story (try and imagine his eyes wide open, talking with his hands, in his funny little voice) went like this "There was a MONSTER TRUCK! And it SMASHED CARS! And it BREATHED FIRE!" They're both pretty hilarious.We made a pretty awesome blanket fort that took up the whole living room.

We went on a trip to Krispy Kreme, you can watch the donuts getting made. Pretty cool. So 2 out of 4 of my parenting books suggested instituting chores for the kids. We made a list of suggested, very simple chores for them to choose from. Things like clean a window, set the table, dust something, etc. Every day they get a ticket for the chore and after ten tickets they get to buy a date night. So far it's awesome. Lily is so excited to do her chore everyday. Jack is a little less enthusiastic, but still seems generally happy to do it. We've also been trying to make them more responsible for cleaning up their own toys and messes, clearing their plates, and in general our house has been much, much cleaner for a couple weeks. I'm loving it.So that about does it, that's pretty much been most of our summer right there. It's been both busy and boring, fun and stressful. Tomorrow morning we're going to Denver, hopefully I'll post about that before winter is here.