Batting Cage and Lagoon in June

Maysen and Stockton left for Youth Conference this morning.  Mike and I walked them over to the church.  We will still in our pajamas.  We get dressed up for things around here!  Maysen is not too excited about going.  Stockton hasn't complained.  He does know that there are platforms where they are going, so that will be fun for him.

We had fun playing in the batting cage this morning.  Blake has such a good swing!  I had no idea that Skye and Larkin bat left.  I didn't expect that.  Kanyon was excellent and it was so much fun to watch Mike!

Blake

 Mike & Blake

Blake was so funny because as soon as he took the batting helmet off he would frantically look for his Dodgers hat.  I tried to get a picture of him, but he kept hiding.  This one was the best I could get. I think it is adorable because Larkin and Blake are making the same face.  Love that!

Larkin & Blake

 Skye

 Larkin

 Kanyon

 Mike

 Hard to see, but Larkin is feeding balls to her Dad

 Jorja's favorite past time

 Mike played baseball with his kids for quite awhile.

Blake

 Larkin

We piled Mike and his three oldest kids in our car and headed to Lagoon.  We had the room since we didn't have Maysen or Stockton with us.  Christen wanted to wait until Parker woke up, and I don't blame her one bit!  We went on Rattlesnake Rapids twice and got soaked to the bone!  It was great!  Especially since I was wearing my swimsuit.  I thought Skye and Larkin looked adorable in their matching My Dad is my BFF shirts.

Larkin & Skye (Blake's back & Jorja's on the fence)

Our pavilion we have had for years is being made into a giant pavilion. I'm guessing it will probably only be used for giant parties.  That is too bad.  It was in a great location.  We've been going to Lagoon as a family since I was little.  I wonder how long that pavilion has been ours?  I think over 25 years, probably more.  The new pavilion was okay, but it was next to the smoking section.  It was only annoying a few times throughout the day.  It also didn't feel as secluded as our old pavilion. It was still a lot of fun!  Grandpa was there.  He's not too happy because his doctor won't let him drive anymore.  He loves driving and has told me on many occasions that it is his favorite past time.  It sure is hard getting old.

Skye went around with Jorja and Preston for most of the days.  She LOVED all the scary rides!  Wicked, Spider, Rocket....she wasn't scared of a thing!  Larkin didn't want to go on any upside down rides, but she LOVED the twisty rides.  Musik Express, Tilt-A-Whirl...things like that. I went on Tilt-A-Whirl with her right before she left.  I told her I could ride it once a day and this was the time. I rode it with Larkin and Blake. We spun so fast!  I couldn't believe it!  I don't think I have ever had that many super fast spins in one ride before.  Larkin loved it!  Blake was terrified.  He was not happy when we got off the ride.  He is completely adorable when he is mad.  He does this growl that is just awesome.

Skye & Jorja

 Skye, Jorja, Preston

Jorja, Skye and Preston went on some rides by themselves.  I let them go before I asked Christen if it was okay.  She said, "Well, it is now!" She had never let Skye go off on her own like that before.  That is the difference between being the oldest child and the youngest.  They had a great time together.  I know they went on the train, the swings and Tidal Wave.  Apparently Preston kept saying, "What's cooking Good Lookin'?" to random people.  I'm guessing Preston might be a handful when he is a teenager.

Mike and Christen left around 9:00 or so, but they let us keep Skye with us.  We had a great time with her!  Lagoon is so much fun when the kids are this age.  Wanting to ride anything!  It was great!  We stayed until the bitter end.  Jorja, Skye and Preston were riding Wicked until the garbage cans were placed in front.  We had such a great time today!

Jorja slept in her room tonight.  Brooke and her family are now camping at Lagoon.  Jorja has been worried about Boing.  She didn't want to check on her before Lagoon because she was worried she died and then she would be sad all day.  Mike and I went and checked on her.  She was alive, but is not looking well.  Jorja has done everything. She has taken her to the vet, given her medicine.  It looked like she recovered for awhile, but that was short lived.  She has not been herself since she broke her leg.  Jorja had her out of her cage and held her for a long time after we got home.  Boing isn't going to be alive much longer. I have a beautiful picture I took of Jorja and Boing, but Jorja does not want me to put it up here.  Poor girl sure loves her frogs.  I'm glad she got a chance to say good-bye to Boing.

BROOKE IS HERE!!!!

Today was crazy, but super fun!  Preston had swimming and diving in the morning.  I also talked Stockton into going to diving.  He isn't diving with the neighborhood this year, but the pool he dives at has been closed for awhile.  It was fun to watch Stockton and Preston together.  Maysen and I went to the high school to see if we could get a signature on her paper.  We were so lucky!  There is one specific person who needs to sign the paper, and she was there!  Thank our lucky stars! I then took the paper down to Mike's work and we tried to fax the paper.  Hopefully this works and she can take the class!  When I talked to the college about other options they said she could do duel enrollment and pay full price.  Almost $500.  I said she is only taking the class so she can meet the requirements for the Regents scholarship. If I pay $500 it makes the scholarship less valuable.  Especially since Maysen's GPA and ACT scores are high enough she can go to SLCC for free, why would we want to pay for the class?  She would have to pay full price if she took the class now because she hasn't graduated high school.  Yikes!  It takes forever to figure out all of this stuff!

Anyway, the BEST part of the day is Brooke came!  I'm so happy!  It has been way too long since I have seen her.  Well, I saw her last year at Lagoon but I barely had a chance to talk with her.  She asked if she could stay with us the day before Lagoon so we could have a chance to visit.  I have been SO EXCITED to have her come!  I drew a giant heart on the date with Brooke's name inside.  I had the best time once they got here.  It was so fun to have her kids here and be able to spend so much time with them.

Stephanie, Stockton, Jorja, Preston

Shylee, Brooke, Timberlyn, Miranda

Kanyon, Kaydra

 Stephanie & Preston

 (Kanyon) Miranda (Preston, Shylee, Brooke, Stephanie)

 Timberlyn

 Kaydra

 Shylee & Brooke

 Stockton

 Miranda

 Stockton

 Miranda, Brooke, Timberlyn, Shylee

 Kanyon & Jorja had a great time playing together

 Miranda

So much fun!  The kids swam for a long time.  Night swimming is a lot of fun.  Brooke and I both got our kids to sleep.  Brooke, Timberlyn & Shylee are sleeping in Maysen & Jorja's room.  Kaydra, Kanyon & Miranda are sleeping in Stockton & Preston's room.  My family is sleeping in the motorhome.  Brooke and I sat in the front room and talked until 2:30 in the morning.  I can't believe how fast the time went!  Mike and Christen and their family arrived about 2:30.  I was so happy to have them stay with me!  Mike, Christen & Parker are in our room.  Skye, Larkin and Blake are in the guest room.  I was so happy to have room for everyone and so happy they wanted to stay with us! Mike was thrilled to be able to use the motorhome and pointed out several times that it was a good thing we had it!  Mike and Christen are probably going to be really tired tomorrow.  They left New Mexico after Mike finished working and drove straight here.  I'm so glad they came!

Shopping with Ella

Ella and I went shopping today.  The plan was to shop for a birthday book.  I have been trying to send my nieces and nephews on the Millburn side a book for their birthday.  I ended up taking Abby to the store last week so she could pick out hers.  Ella was excited to go to the store to pick out her own book.  We drove to a mall by their house.  I assumed it would be easy to find a bookstore.  I really didn't even think about it.  We could not find one!  As we were walking through the mall for the third time, a dress store caught my eye.  Ella loves to wear dresses.  All of Bubs and Ange's girls do.  I had a sudden thought and asked Ella if she would like to pick out a baptism dress for her birthday. She was pretty excited about that.  She picked out a white dress that has a little cut out from the waist down to the floor.  The cut out has hot pink in it.  She looked adorable.  The store was having a buy one get one 50% off sale.  I didn't want to buy a second dress.  I found a jacket thing that was hot pink and asked if that would work for the sale.  They agreed.  I definitely didn't go with the intention of buying Ella a baptism dress, but I can't say I'm sorry it worked out that way!

Ella and I stopped at Cafe Rio on the way home.  While I was there SLCC called me.  I have spent hours trying to figure out how to get Maysen signed up to take a statistics class there.  So annoyed that her high school dropped her class!  Anyway, the lady was very helpful and hopefully we can get this sorted out.  The lady directed me to a form we need to fill out.  That was the reason we couldn't add the class.  Not that the class had been dropped like the admissions office told me when I called.  One thing I'm worried about is she needs to have the form signed by someone at the high school.  Yikes!

Beehives Came Back!

The Beehives had a swim party at our house tonight.  I was pretty excited to have the girls back!  The older kids get to go to Youth Conference this week, so the Beehives wanted to do something fun. They chose to swim here!  That made me so happy!  Kristin brought a lot of pizza.  Most of the girls were able to come.  Sue and Kristin were there.  I also talked to Sunni for awhile.  She is the new advisor.  It was such a great night!  Jorja had fun playing with all of her friends.  They played tons of different pool games.  Jorja also convinced Mike to make homemade soft serve ice-cream.  They made chocolate.  It was a little too chocolaty for me, but most everyone loved it.  I bet it was perfect for Stockton.  Pretty great day.

Sam's Birthday

We had a birthday swim party for Sam.  Well, we usually get together the first Sunday of the month, but yesterday we went to Erica's graduation party.  We changed my family party to today.  It worked out well, because now we can swim.  Last time we had a family swim party our filter broke and we were unable to use the pool.  Sam was nice enough to let us do this on her birthday.  My dad brought Kentucky Fried Chicken and an ice-cream cake for Sam.  It was pretty fun.  Mike snapped a few pictures, but for some reason they are pretty blurry.  Oh well.  Like my Mom would say, "It's better than a kick in the pants!"

Stephanie & Abby

 Dad

Maysen is going to start an Internship with Sam next week.  Here they are working out the details.  How exciting!

Maysen & Sam with Cathy and Gayle in the background

Anne loved the pool.  She even let me hold her!  She does not like going to me at all.  Matt was trying to get her to be happy about getting out of the pool.  I held out my arms and said I would hold her thinking that that would really get her anxious to leave the pool.  Nope.  She was very happy to have her Dad leave the pool and to stay and play with me.  It was great!

Catching Frogs

Tonight we went to Steve and Shannon's house for Erica's graduation party.  They had ice cream with a zillion toppings.  It was really good!

It rained really hard last night, they even closed Redwood Road.  The fun thing about that much rain is it made the frogs come out.  They were croaking like crazy!  Mike took Jorja and Preston on a frog hunt. Sherry went too.  She was all dressed up and had a great time.  Jorja and Preston were so happy!  They each came home with several frogs. Preston is thrilled to have his own pet.

Jorja

 Preston & Jorja

Steve got put in the bishopric today.  He is the first counselor.  That will be a new adventure!  Spencer is in town as well, so it was nice to see him.  He leaves this week for a few days in California, then he is headed back to Harvard.  We are hoping to see him on our trip back East in July.  That will be fun and kind of weird.  I'm only used to seeing Spencer in Utah.

Softball Party

I woke up around six and headed out to see where the kids ended up.  I found Preston on the floor in the computer room.  Stockton said he fell asleep around two.  He does look pretty adorable.

Preston

 Stockton was awake

 Jorja was on the couch

Maysen was in her bed.  I'm not sure how long she stayed up, but I think it was quite awhile.  Stockton went and took a nap shortly after I woke up.  Mike and Jorja picked some flowers from our yard a few days ago.  They were really pretty.  I forgot to take a picture then, this is what they look like now.

Mike and I went to Bubs' house this morning.  We helped him take down his deck.  His deck has been falling apart and is quite dangerous. It also breaks up his small yard.  I think they are going to love having the grass areas connected.  We got a lot done, but Bubs still has a lot of work ahead of him.

Jorja had a softball swim party today.  She was pretty excited about it. Her coaches brought pizza.  The girls swam and played in the batting cages.  We found out one of her coaches graduated from our high school the same year we did.  His wife was two years younger than us. Mike remembered them, but I don't have a great memory and I'm horrible with names.

 Jorja

The girls had a lot of fun.  They stayed for a long time, which was great! I wanted to get a group picture of the girls before they started leaving. Too bad I accidentally bumped my camera setting.  I'm not sure what I moved it too, but this is not the effect I was going for.  Oh well, you can kind of make out the outlines of people.

I am pretty exhausted, but it was a fun day.  Jorja was so happy.  I love that.

School is in the Books!

Today was Preston's last day of school!  We have now finished the 2014-2015 school year!  Stockton and Jorja both finished with a 4.0 the entire year.  Maysen had a 4.0 for three quarters.  She got an A- in math her first quarter.  She missed an A by .14%.  Kind of frustrating/annoying, but still super good grades.  I never got around to getting Preston's teachers a thank you gift.  We ran to the store to pick out a gift card before school.  He picked out a Home Depot gift card for them.  He was pretty happy about it.  Preston only had school for 1/2 a day, then we got to play!

Well, really Jorja got to play.  She invited some friends to come swim and have pizza.  They had a great time!  Jorja was so happy.  It has been awesome to watch her come out of her shell.  She sure does love these girls.

Jazzie & Jorja

Hailey, Natalie, Jorja, Kate, Jazzie

The girls are sitting on a hose draped across the swimming pool.  That was Jorja's invention to getting water down the slide.  Mike usually rigs up something to take the pool water and recycle it.  This worked as well, although the slide water was cold!

Natalie

It made it more fun to squirt.

Kate

Jazzie

Hailey

Jorja & Natalie

The kids had 'stay-up-all-night-night' today.  They look forward to this all year long.  Stockton took a nap to prepare.  I go to bed.  I have no intention in partaking of this tradition.  It is always fun to see where they end up in the morning.

Jorja's Last Day of School

Maysen and Stockton were more than happy to sit this school day out. Today was Jorja's last day of school.  She wanted me to take her to Leatherby's like I took Maysen and Stockton yesterday.  I convinced her to let Preston come.  Then I convinced him he wanted to come.  He wanted to go to Jamba Juice.  I said, "Okay, but that's weird."  Then he asked which was more expensive and promptly changed his mind.  Oh boy.  I took Stockton to diving and picked up some things at the store. Today is Judy's birthday.  She does scouts with me.  I got her a card and a cupcake.  Preston and I signed the card and knocked at her door. No one was home.  I knew they were going on a trip soon, so I texted her to ask when she was leaving.  She was already in Colorado.  Oh well.  We dropped the card in the mailbox and will eat the delicious looking cupcake later.

Preston

I had a great time with Jorja and Preston.  Preston wanted to order the same thing Stockton did yesterday.  He didn't care what it was, he just knew he wanted the same thing.  One more day left of school for Preston.  I can't wait to be finished!

Letter

Today was Maysen and Stockton's last day of school.  Yay!  They had a few classes and then had yearbook signing.  When Stockton was in his English class someone came in and brought him to the front of the class.  They announced that he had earned his letter in diving and gave him his certificate.  Kind of weird, but better than nothing.  Who knows if they will allow divers to receive letters anymore if diving does get officially discontinued.  Stockton got a tiny blurb about diving in the yearbook.  Josh didn't get anything.  They even had to track down the athletic director to get his certificate.  Glad we didn't have to do that.

Stockton (Melissa, Eden and another girl)

The kids texted me at 1:15 to come and pick them up.  Maysen had texted earlier that there wasn't really anything to eat for lunch and could I take them out to eat later.  I took them to Leatherby's.  The ice cream is huge!  Stockton couldn't even get his past the rim.

Stockton

Mike stayed home from work today and worked on sprinklers all day long.  I'm glad he knows how to fix things, because I sure have no clue how to do it!  Our sprinklers are such a mess.  He didn't get it all fixed, but he got a lot of it done.

Right before I went to bed I decided to check Skyward to make sure the kids grades are still okay.  Right now they all have straight As.  Not one A- to be found.  The annoying thing though was Stockton's technology teacher gave him a zero on his final.  A zero!  Just because I checked him out for Overstock Lagoon Day.  Luckily he had a 100% in the class before.  This dropped him to a 93.33%.  He needed a 93% to get an A.  I wrote to his teacher about it because I want to know why he didn't get any credit.  He also got a zero on his French quiz.  I wrote to that teacher too.  Even though he has a 98% in French.  He did finish three classes with over 100%.  Math, English and AP Geography.  He's a pretty smart kid.

Ice Cream Cup

Maysen texted me this picture while she was at lunch.  Looks like her pottery came in handy today!

I moved scouts to today because of the Compassion Experience from yesterday.  I just asked if the boys wanted to come over to swim. Preston (and a lot of the boys) have swim practice for 45 minutes everyday after school.  Scouts was right after.  Only Griffin and Burke were able to come.  That's okay.  We had a good time.  The pool was so warm.  The boys kept yelling that they were swimming in a hot tub.  It was great!

Compassion Experience

For Family Home Evening we took the kids to the Compassion Experience.  It is the story of two children who were born in third world countries.  A boy named Jey and a girl named Kiki.  They had a trailer set up that showed how they lived at different stages of their lives. Everyone was given an iPhone and headphones.  This narrated what the children were experiencing.  It was very humbling.  We have been so blessed to have been born in this amazing country.

Preston

 Maysen, Preston, Jorja, Stockton

Jorja had her last softball game tonight.  I dropped her off at the park with her coach a couple of hours before the game.  Mike and I met her at a different park to watch her play.  She played catcher and did a fantastic job!  One girl tried to steal home.  She chased her back and threw the ball to third and got her out!  Jorja said that was her favorite play all season!  It was great!  Jorja has LOVED softball.  The coaches said they are planning on playing fall ball.  Hopefully Jorja can play with these girls again.  How fun!  She didn't know one single person when she started and she had never played before.  Amazing that this shy little girl has loved this as much as she has.  Softball has totally started to bring Jorja out of her shell.  She was not shy at all around these girls.  She would sing cheers with them, dance on second base and speak to the coaches about letting her try catcher.  Mike and I kept looking at each other through the season, 'Who is this girl?'.  It has been awesome to watch her grow!