Pictures

Today I went on a walk with the girls and took some pictures just for fun!!! These are all in my neighbor's yards. They didn't mind though...









Cyrus took this one of Sam and I...I love it!!!

Yes, they dress themselves...

She appeared in this particular outfit on a sweltering day in early June.

And do their own hair

Sometimes they even cut it!!!

The things people say...

I don't really have that many kids. Four is not a lot, considering some people in my genealogy were well into the double digits on family size...and lots of them weren't even Mormons...but you would think I was nearing a record number when I walk around with the kids here in Marin. Here are just a few of the funny things people have said to me...

1. Those aren't all yours are they?
2. Look! It's Mother Hubbard.
3. Finally got your boy did ya? (Like we would have stopped if Hannah had been a boy!)
4. Boy, you've got your hands full (Not really that funny but since someone says it to me at least once a day and usually multiple times during an outing, it is funny.)
5. You've been busy!
6. My personal favorite is when they count the kids REALLY LOUDLY. 1....2....(getting louder with each number)...3...4...4 kids!!!! Are they all yours? This one disturbs me a bit. Do they not teach children how to add in their heads in California? Maybe I should look into private school because, honestly, I went to some pretty crummy schools growing up but I know four when I see it and it certainly doesn't take me almost a full 30 seconds of counting to come up with that number!!

Now, Cyrus and I want to have more chidren. We love our family life--our kids bring us more joy than anything else we have ever done. I wonder what people would say if they saw me pregnant on top of having all those kids...heeheehee, I bet it would be interesting!

My boy

Boys are different. My boy runs around like a maniac and loves to be taken care of by all the ladies in his life. He screams like a girl and likes to hit people just to see what their reaction will be. He likes to get dirty for no reason at all and go down slides he is way too little for. My boy is a wuss when he is sick (just like his dad) and his favorite pocket is down the front of mom's shirt (again, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree!). Yes, Sam has certainly added some variety to our home: the former petticoat junction. It is amazing the effect one little person can have!!!

The girls had their last swim meet of the year...and it was the funnest!!! We were swimming against a team just one mile down the road whose kids go to school with the kids on our team. There are so many fun things that went along with that meet. In the first place, everyone met at 7:30 am and decorated our cars in team colors and drove the mile to the meet together, honking our horns and screaming the entire way.




When we arrived, there was sort of a cheer competition when the Lightning (who used to be called the Waterlogs) did their team cheer then, of course, we had to do our team cheer EVEN LOUDER (GO WATERDEVILS)!! The kids swam then they had a "Hambone" race where the best swimmers in each age group for each team then each of the coaches did a relay. It was like five minutes of screaming and cheering. We lost the meet (they were deeper than us in the upper ages) but won the hambone. It was an actual hambone from a pig that someone had bronzed in the 70's. Gross!

The last event was the parent races. Boy was that fun! Parents first did traditional strokes (very funny to see how old the parents in Marin are...I thought some Grandmas were racing but they were Moms!), then the parents did a ridiculous relay involving one parent pulling another on a floaty. The pulling parent had to put a jump rope around himself and the one on the float had to hold the jumprope like reins and wear a checkered visor. They had to go all the way to the end of the pool, switch all the equipment with another set of adults who then headed down the pool. Boy was it funny. So many parents are such great sports here!!! Maybe it's because they are older and have lost the "super-cool" but I was so impressed with how jazzed these moms and dads got to do something so silly. It was so fun for the kids!

After the meet, all the kids could jump in and swim and play together for a bit. It was so much fun!! The girls dove off the diving board and swam all over the place. I can't believe how much better their swimming has gotten this summer...and they have had so much fun.

Boy will we miss swim team!! I wish I had gotten more pictures of the festivities but I go some of the girls swimming. Hannah was scared to be swimming in a new pool so I had to stay with her until she dove in for freestyle so I only have her doing backstroke. That lady has a great butterfly but she doesn't want to do it at meets yet. Oh well!


Hannah with a bad case of nerves:




Carolyn doing freestyle:



Hannah backstroking:



Carolyn backstroking--silly kid forgot her goggles but still had a big smile!:



Carolyn doing breaststroke:



Cyrus drew devils on the girls back. I didn't get Carolyn's but this is Hannah's!!



Sam's getting ready to be a swimmer...he is always trying to get in the pool, now he just needs goggles...



The best part of the meets for the girls was playing with their friends. They had so much fun chasing Brenden (the love of their lives) and plotting crazy ways to tease the other boys. Aaaah the life of little girls. This is Haylie. She and Carolyn are both planning to marry Brendan. Only he's Catholic, not Mormon so I don't know if that will be possible.







Just one more cool pic...

Plays

For the last couple of weeks, the girls have been making up plays with their friends and putting them on for both sets of parents. The plays are so cute and fun to watch but sometimes a bit hard to follow. They are mostly based on books the girls are reading or have read combined with a bit of imagination...today, Lisa, the other mom and I decided we were attending a summer theater each week.







The girls work so hard getting the plays ready! They practice lines and have costumes and costume changes and they decorate our neighbor's back patio all up and even put up a sheet for a backdrop. It is really a fun and imaginative thing for them. They usually spend the better part of a day getting everything ready and then put on a 15 or 20 minute show for moms and dads!!



One of the funniest things that happened during the play was Sam made his way up to the stage at a very important scene involving much discussion. Carolyn looked over at him and without missing a beat said, "Hello Uncle George." We all laughed and this week when we had a play and I arrived with Sam, everyone said, "Hello Uncle George!" What fun!!!



During the play Katie had a little troube with a booger.



Luckily she got it out and after some investigation was able to continue!!

FHE

Tonight for family home evening we did the thankful basket, a lesson Carlee made up for our FHE Enrichment night. We made a paper basket and each of us wrote down some things that we were thankful for...

Here are the things they put in the basket (I am not going to fix the Spelling because it is so cute!):

*A bellessing of mine is that I have a family (Hannah)
*Not poor--have money (Carolyn)
*Thankful for school and freedom (Carolyn)
*Mom hugs me (Katie)
*Heavinly Father loves me (Hannah)
*Im thankfull for my sisters (Hannah)
*Cars, bikes Computers (Carolyn)
*Books, Warm Clothing (Carolyn)
*Chruch of Jesuse Christ (Carolyn)
*When I was very sick daddy gave me a blessing. I felt better (Hannah)
*I am thanthfull for my family (Carolyn)
*Lights (Carolyn)--we had a power outage last night that scared Carolyn. I thought it was sweet that she was thankful for light after that!

I promise we didn't tell them to write any of that. It was a really fun and sweet family home evening...one of the times when I was glad we do it (even with Sam screaming YAY YAY YAY all through it--he certainly likes the hooray portion of FHE that we do). By the way, the picture has nothing to do with Family Home Evening, I just wanted to post a pic and didn't have a different one of all the kids.

Sam

Sam is trouble. Today, he dumped out the mop water all over the floor while I was on the phone, pushed a chair over, got up on it and opened the knife drawer and emptied it all over the floor, climbed on his high chair tray, pulled half a roll of toilet paper out and generally just caused havoc. Also, he leared to turn on the hose all by himself. There goes the water bills.

Hannah plays with photo booth

Monterey

We went to Monterey to go to the aquarium. It was fun. We played in a park and swam in the hotel pool and went to the Aquarium both days for a total of seven hours of wrestling Sam. The girls loved it. Hannah loves nature and sat and watched this eel for like 20 minutes. They dressed up in fish aprons, explored, made things and just had a blast! Really, they had so much fun and hopefully learned a little bit too!

I thought it would be a good idea to go down for two days. But it turns out we could have done most of what we wanted to do in a day trip. Staying in a hotel is so much fun for the girls though...they think hotels are fancy. When we got to Monterey, we decided to find a park to let the kids get some energy out...Dennis the Menace park which was a really nice park. They had fun climbing equipment and an old train we could play in. The kids had fun. Sam got dirty so he was right at home! Also, poor Sam had to wear a girl coat again because he got his all wet. Everyone is going to think we are raising a cross dresser with how often he wears that purple flower coat.










The Aquarium was so fun. The girls loved all the hands-on stuff that there was available and Sam loved this jumping water bed thing they had in the baby area.





There was this sun fish that was huge and bizarre.




Sam liked the Jelly Fish. They had this mirrored room that made it look like the Jellies went on for a really long time. It sort of mixed up Sam, and he walked right into the wall. Twice. The girls kept wanting to make him do it again but he wisened up. We got a good laugh. I wish we'd gotten a picture!




We, of course, did the 17 mile drive and Cyrus convinced himself he should play at Pebble Beach but I said no. That guy looked up and found a time he could play and was conviced it was a good idea. Its a good thing someone keeps their head around here! We took a picture near the golf course instead.