June

Calvin is getting big, sometimes he just will ask for his picture taken. I'm glad he does because he is growing fast!

Below is Roslyn on some steps I made. I was thinking of making them then doing a retaining wall to the side of them but this project has been put on hold.  We are working on other retaining walls and a few other projects.

Uncle Andrew came and visited this month.  So nice to have him.  This was Sunday morning at sacrament meeting.  It has been nice having church at home, but at the same time we will be excited when we go back as normal to see all of our friends.

Roslyn loves to lead the music at church.  I think she likes that she gets her own special chair and stand.  At our sacrament meeting we always have one child give a talk and then Michael or I will give a talk and then we always have a musical number.  It has been fun to have the kids prepare and perform so many different musical numbers and to have the kids playing the music for all of the songs we sing.

Alden will often play the piano for Sacrament meeting but sometimes Calvin or Benson have a song ready and will play as well.

Badmitten.  We're glad they had a chance to learn a little more how to play the game.  Andrew also brought a number of rackets, which was fun because everyone could play.

Cement! I guess this was one of the projects that took time this month.  There was a strip of grass that we switch out for cement that I moved to the back of our yard where it'll be nice to have some more lawn.  We then hired some people, who were super great and did a great job, to come and put down cement.  We now have a circle drive and more area for the kids to ride bikes and play basketball.  We also have more parking area. (It also helps prevent erosion on that side of the house.  Nice to have one project done!  

Zoo trip.  I had promised the kids that we were going to go to the zoo during spring break in March..but that is when everything shut down.  Things have started opening up but now we have been a little tight financially and the zoo by us was pretty pricey.  We found one not too far away that we could buy a pass for much less than it would cost us to visit our zoo one time.  The pass gets us into a number of other zoos as well,, so it really worked out well.

This was another little outing with Uncle Andrew.  We went to a park not too far from our home and Andrew spotted an armadillo.  The kids and I have always wanted to see one, it was neat to see him so close sniffing around looking for bugs. 

The older boys all went and took an art class at a home of a friend.  While they were gone the two younger ones and I went and visited a couple of little parks.

Father's Day.  There aren't words to express how grateful I am for this wonderful man in my life and in the life of my kids.  He isn't a completely perfect person but he is about as close as they come.  He blesses our lives each and every day.

Tara shirts! We love having fun matching fourth of July shirts.  For the last number of years Tara has sent us some and it has been so fun to have the kids matching.  Also she just finds/ makes great shirts because these shirts are always their favorite shirts that they wear all year long...and for many years. We are starting to feel more and more like Texan's so it was especially fun to have Texas shirts.

Above is my and the kids gift to Michael for father's day.  It is not something he really asked for and I am not totally sure this is something he really wanted but I felt it was needed to have something to organize everything in the garage and to put all of the chemicals up high off the ground. (Before we just didn't have any shelving in the garage.) The main gift to him was that he didn't have to build or put them up. It took me a number of trips to the hardware store making sure I had the correct things and then just drilling, stud finding, and organizing everything. He did think it was a great gift, that he didn't have to do any of the decision making or the building of it all.

We finally moved our basketball down onto our new cement slab. Below is the kids on all of the crates of retaining wall blocks that we are using to build our retaining walls.

Above is a star wars puzzle that my parents bought for the kids at the goodwill. As you can see it was missing a number of pieces making it a more difficult puzzle...it also wasn't rectangular but in the shape of darth vader. To even make it harder it was two sided where both sides look fairly similar. We did as much as we could and then put it out to get rid of.

This is a note from Alden I found under my pillow one night.  It has been fun that Alden will randomly put nice notes under Michael and my pillow, this time he also left $10 for each of us. 

Carrots from our garden.  We were surprised how many we ended up having. 

Evan loves puzzles. He started this one day but was going to give up...it is a harder puzzle, but Alden and I came in and joined him, even together it took us a bit but we were able to get it together with all the pieces we had.

Family Reunion.  We got in just a day early which was nice because we got to have one extra day to play with a few of the cousins at grandma's house. With COVID we were just starting to feel the need to get out and be with people.  The reunion was perfect, because it was just what we needed.