July

Roslyn loves to play the piano and will sit and play for long periods at a time.  The boys decided she ought to be able to take lessons as well, so we made her a bag, gave her a book and a paper to mark her practice.  She loves having her turn to practice. (Which is just playing around on the piano.)

One Saturday evening, we had eaten a late lunch and I didn't feel like making dinner so we had something that I often had growing up, a big slice of watermelon.  We called it Grandpa night because my Dad would often in the summer cut up watermelon this way for us for dinner and then we would sit down to watch a movie.  We watched my Dad's all time favorite movie, Top Hat. It was a fun nice night.

Alden recently moved rooms to the guest room.  In the process we had a bunch of things to go through, this is a shield that he made that we decided it was time to go, so we took a picture for memory sake.

Zoo picks! Our zoo pass got us into the Waco zoo for free, so that was one of the trips we decided to make this summer. We went first to Whitney State park, spent the afternoon swimming there and then camped out that evening.  The next day we went to the Mammoth National park and then to the zoo. It was a great little trip other than I forget that when the weather says it will be cooling down at night to the upper 70's that it really means that it will feel like the upper 80's all night. It was a hot night because even for it to feel like the 80's it wasn't until the morning hours. But we survived.

Us the morning after camping. They had showers, which I usually don't care to use while camping but after such a warm night I welcomed a nice cold shower.  Nice to have older kids so I could leave them for a minute to take a shower.

Whitney state park, swimming at the lake.

Our pretty girl one Sunday morning. Below I believe Benson is preparing for nursery class that he teaches each week.

Alden and Calvin were invited to a friends house for most of the day.  We spent the day playing at parks.  The three littles loved it!

Painting our prayer rocks. For Come Follow Me scripture study we had read in Alma where he discusses prayer and how all things denote there is a God.  We went outside and talked about the creations we like in our yard and then we each picked a rock to paint for a prayer rock.

This was just before we left to go visit Dinosaur valley state park. Tara sent me a fun t-shirt that she made.  She is always so thoughtful and fun. We all wore our special t-shirts. 

Since we weren't going to make it to Utah this summer I wanted to try to make some mini trips with the kids.  At the end of the month we did the Waco trip, this one was earlier on we went to Dinosaur Valley State Park.  I didn't realize how much water there would be, if we ever make it there again we definitely will need to bring our swimsuits. We had a great time finding dinosaur tracks and playing in the water. Alden even caught a little fish in his hands, the boys had fun trying to catch and release little fish.

At the family reunion Roslyn was given some fun new dresses and bows that will match with the new baby. It'll be fun to have these two cute little girls.  We've put most of these away for later but couldn't resist letting her try a couple on.

Flowers in bloom.  One miracle this month was how well everything survived while we were gone to the reunion.  We had prayed often for our plants and had tried to set everything up as best we could before we left so everything would be watered.  Between the two things it worked. (The drip system we set up worked while we were gone but as soon as we returned it broke...we fell so blessed it stayed together the whole time while we were gone.)

Above is our hibiscus. Below is a plant I thought had died over the winter but it came back and we love it!

These are some buds that we found and planted this year, fun to see the pretty flowers that came.

At the family reunion.  This was the last day we had a dance party and then had ice cream afterwards.

Let's make a deal, a family tradition.

Daddy with his sweet little girl. 

We wanted to get a family picture with everyone in their special Tara shirts! It is always fun when we can all be coordinated in fun outfits.

The reunion was a lake house. All of the kids loved being able to play with cousins and play in the lake, whether it was on boats or just swimming in the water. Benson didn't want to have anything to do with the water for the first couple of days but towards the end Michael and I bribed, encouraged and got him in the water.  After that he couldn't be kept away from it.  He loved the boats and the lake.

Playing play dough with aunts and cousins.

Roslyn's cousin Lauren watched her while we went with the adults to get our pictures taken.  Roslyn loved being with her, so much so that when I came back, Lauren went to hand her off to me but Roslyn said she wanted to stay with her.

Learning about some of our ancestors.