Grandma Sandy's Visit

Thank you SO much mom for coming to visit. We always love to have you here.

My mom was in town from June 26th through July 11th. She was here for all of our birthdays as well as the Independence Day activities. I love it when my mom comes to visit. We talk and laugh and work together so well. She is always a help around the house, and did dishes the whole time she was here. IT WAS AWESOME!! Such a treat for me. - We didn't really "do anything" while she was here, and yet we had a blast. Our time was filled with morning walks, birthday parties, a 4th of July BBQ, shopping, sewing, speed scrabble, and puzzles. PERFECT! She is so easy going and just fits right in while she's here. A nice addition to the family for a few weeks.

Below are some fun pictures from her visit...

4th of July - Waterslide Fun!

Playing 'Space Shuttle' w/ Kyle (I'll explain another time!)

Kyle's comforter during fireworks. (He's a little daredevil and afraid of very little, but the fireworks scare him to death. Go figure!!)

Playin' with play-dough!

Great Read...

Lynette let me borrow this book to read. She gushed about it and told everyone she knows how much she enjoyed it. (Which is saying a lot for Lynette because she's not much of a reader!) Wow! She wasn't kidding. What an amazing, almost unbelievable story. Yet it is TRUE.

Some of you may remember this story in the news. It happened back in April of 2006. There was a van from Taylor University (a Christian college) that was hit on the freeway. Five students were killed instantly, one survived, three staff members also lived. The identity of the two girls this story was about was accidentally switched at the scene of the accident. (One girl's purse was next to the other girl 50 feet from the van and they were enough alike in coloring, and build that she was positively identified with the wrong ID.) So to make a long story short, one family buried their daughter while another family took care of an attended to their daughter struggling for life and in a coma in an ICU. After five weeks and the living girl starting to recover it is discovered that she is actually the daughter of the other family, and the family taking care of the girl in the hospital had actually lost their daughter in the accident. It sounds totally unbelievable that the identity of the girl in the hospital wasn't discovered any sooner, but because of the accident her face was swollen, she was in a coma for weeks, and the two girls had so many of the same traits. Also, the family who ended up burying the "wrong daughter" had not identified the body because staff members from the college had done so and they did not want those haunting memories of seeing "their daughter" that way.

So that is the story, in a nutshell. What is amazing and inspiring about reading the book is how much these two families relied on God and Jesus Christ for comfort through their ordeals. Their faith in the Lord carried these two families through the whole ordeal. I would recommend this book to everyone who can get their hands on it. I'll probably be getting it for a handful of my relatives for christmas this year. It is THAT inspirational.

Anyway, thanks Lynette, for giving me the opportunity to read this book. Even though these families were not LDS, they believe in God and Jesus Christ, the Atonment, and life after death. My faith has been given a boost and I have been totally uplifted by reading this book.

Slave Labor...???

I'm not sure weather to call this slave labor, or future blackmail! Currently Kyle LOVES to help me with the laundry. "I be a big big helper mommy! I do da yandry." I had to catch the moment on camera for future reference. He actually put this whole huge load of whites into the washer all by himself. (It was no small feat, he was stuffin'!) He gets away most of the time without even cleaning up his own toys (I'm not patient enough), so when he asks to help me with the laundry I figure this is one habit that I'd love to foster.

He said something that was super hilarious while loading the washer that I just have to share. Although I should probably be embarrassed to share, it is no secret, so hopefully you can get a laugh out of it like I did. He loads the washer piece by piece of clothing, one of the items he picked out of the basket was a over the shoulder boulder holder. Without missing a beat he said absentmindindly to himself, but out loud..."woah! its a big one"... and then proceeded to add it to the machine and move on. It was funny, because I haden't heard him make a comment about any of the other items of laundry.

The "Fruit" of my labor!

Hooray!! Today I harvested my first Cherry Tomato of the season! These plants have seriously become my babies. I started four tomato plants from seed back in March, and they are actually growing! The bushes are full of little green tomatoes. I can't wait to eat more. (My mom and I promptly rinsed this one off, split it in two, and enjoyed out little fruit.) I can't wait until we get a fence up and can put in a whole garden!

Summer Fun!

So the slide show below isn't from Kyle's party on Saturday, but from the previous Saturday. I haven't downloaded the pictures from the party yet. His party was pretty much a duplicate from the previous Saturday, except there were a lot more little kids. I'll post pictures from K-man's birthday party in the next day or two.

Anyway, we decided to beat the heat this summer with a fun big water slide. It's quite the hit in the neighborhood! Fun for kids and adults.

Oh no...its way too big...

I just realized that when I published the post the picture was WAY to big to be able to see it all...I'll try to resize...

My Paper Crafting "Crowning Achievement!"

Okay, so some of you may see this tomorrow at Kyle's little birthday party, but for those of you who live away, I just had to show this off. There are going to be quite a few people at Kyle's little birthday BBQ, and I was stressing about what to do for a cake. I definitely could not justify buying one when I knew I could make one, but with all the people who are going to be here, just one sheet cake wouldn't have been enough. So I was stressing. This is what I finally came up with, and I am totally pumped!!


It's a paper cake!! All the kids (and some of the adults!) will be able to take a "slice" home with them as a party favor! Each slice is filled with candy and a little toy.

So I honestly can't take credit for coming up with the idea, but I've always seen it done as a wedding shower or baby shower cake. My Cricut die cutter machine did all the hard work for me of cutting the boxes out of paper, and then I just had to stamp them up and fold and glue. I can take credit for the "bow" on top. The idea just came to me and I went with it!

Back to the cake dilemma...I made cupcakes!

Anywho, its been forever since I've posted, but this turned out too cool not to share!