July 2019

After our trip the summer has flown by...we're knee deep in buying school supplies, adjusting our sleep schedules and preparing as much as possible to head back to school.

We've made many more trips to the library and have probably checked out a couple hundred books this summer.

Dale finally got to start adding things to his fish tank. He put in the drift wood he's been trying to water-log in our kiddie pool the past several weeks. Then he got plants, inherited a black skirt tetra, and put in 2 albino plecos. He also rescued a fish tank from a lady we knew. The tank was covered in muck and the water was nasty. It came with a bunch of corydora catfish and tetras.

Judy celebrated her 33rd birthday. Dale made me a sugar-cookie fruit pizza. None of the kids liked it so we had to eat the whole thing! I also reported for jury duty but have yet to serve on a jury...hopefully soon. We did a Bob Ross night for young women's and I'm really enjoying painting.

Kimball completed the Book of Mormon in less than 2 months after his young men's president Jarad Norton challenged the YM to read it in 2 months. He has been enjoying putting the girls to bed sometimes and has been a huge help this summer watching them when I have to run errands. He asked if he could host a pot-luck with all the families who have kids his age in our ward. There were 4 other families at our house and it went quite well. He did all of the planning, made a shopping list, helped cook, set up chairs, and did a lot of the clean up.

Cameron was mowing the lawn one day. Later that night we had sat down for scriptures and suddenly he says "oh no, there are grasshoppers in my pocket I need to take care of!" and he ran off to feed them to his turtle Shelly. His primary teacher challenged him to fast from screens for a whole week and he rocked it! He even left the swimming pool early when they turned on a movie. He spent most of the week building Legos in his room to avoid temptation.

 Lily was teasing Cameron on our trip, calling him a booger-head or something. When we told her not to anymore, she said "I'm 4, I don't know anything about noses" in the most innocent tone ever. She turned 5 and got her first loose tooth! She is so excited to be starting kindergarten very soon. On our trip, she compared all of the houses we saw to Florida or Colorado houses. It was fun seeing them from her perspective.

Becca amazes us with her increasing understanding. She is now speaking in 10+ word sentences, can count higher than 10 and loves reading letters and numbers to us. She started saying her name as "Betta" instead of "Bebba". She went through a phase where she wore the boys' super-hero capes everywhere and it was adorable!