Taco Time

We were so excited to have Tyler (a.k.a. "Taco" since that's what AA called him from the beginning of his time here) fly out and stay with us for two weeks this summer! We packed a lot in while he was here! 

 Our good friends were so kind to offer to take us out on the water. Everyone had a blast...even Anna and Audrey loved tubing! Sadie and Nate tried wakeboarding for the first time and LOVED it! Ash pulled a muscle on one of the wild tubing rides so she wasn't ready to try the wakeboard. Next time! It was a beautiful day on the water.

 Dave and I took Tyler and Sadie to the Denver temple early, early one Saturday morning! It was a special date and they were all smiles in this picture because they knew we were heading to donuts.

 It makes us smile to watch Anna and Audrey use the little table Dave made for Ashlyn's first birthday. They love to draw and it's looking like they both might be lefties (Audrey is for sure a lefty).

 Audrey and Anna LOVED Taco and he loved them right back. After Tyler went home, they went around the house for a few days calling out "Taaaaaco" while looking for him.

 We took Taco with us to visit Blanche, our 95 year old friend.

 We decided to be a little crazy and take the kids camping (the crazy part was taking 2 toddlers camping). One of my worries before we adopted was that we wouldn't be able to do "older kid" activities if we were tied down with a baby (make that two!). I was determined to not let that get in the way of enjoying things with our older kids. It wasn't the most relaxing camping trip but everyone had a good time. No doubt the highlight was the game Ash and Sadie taught us from girls' camp. I don't even know what it was called but we were all laughing so hard.

 Everyone spent a lot of time by the river. We were lucky to have perfect weather.

 Nate got a really cool glow stick/flashlight from a friend for his birthday. One night Nate tossed it in the air (quite high) and it got stuck in the tree. This picture doesn't do justice to the height. My goodness. I felt so bad for Nate that he wouldn't get his glow stick. It was stuck for sure. Then Dave said "I'll go get it." Just getting on the tree was a challenge. It was sure entertaining to watch. Dave got high enough but the stick was too far out on the branch. So we threw him a roasting stick and Dave was able to grab the glow stick with that. He was the hero of the night, for sure!

 Tyler really wanted to shoot a snake while here. Dave took him on many hunts to find a snake and they kept coming home empty handed! Well, I guess that's a good sign that they aren't wanting to be near our house! Tyler's two weeks were up and we were getting ready to drive to Utah to pass him off to his family. Dave had a morning church meeting. He was still hoping so badly to find a snake for Tyler, so he threw his snake catcher in the truck just in case. Sure enough, on his way home, he found a rattler about 1.5 miles out on the dirt road. He called me telling me to hurry and get Tyler outside and ready! I couldn't believe the sight of Dave driving up with a snake catcher with a MAD rattler in it! It was exciting to say the least! And Tyler got his rattle souvenier.

 While in Utah, we had the wonderful chance to meet up with dear friends! Shauna, Lisa and I were all born within a week of each other (same year) and we've all been good friends since we were 5. It's been too long since we've all gotten together. We also got to see another good friend, Kristin, but sadly we never got a picture with her!

 Audrey and Anna

 The kids made a cool rope swing while we were camping. Everyone loved using it!

There was one relaxing part of the camping trip! Dave took the older kids on a hike up a steep mountain right by us. Anna and Audrey were napping in the tent. I sat with my feet up on a camping chair and read until I dozed off. It was soooooo relaxing...and then they woke up!

Nate's Birthday Party

 Nate had a cowboy birthday party. He dressed the part and looked like a cute little cowboy. They got to shoot a bb gun, hunt for fossils, play "pin the gun on the holster" and some other games.

 We went to the zoo on Nate's actual birthday.

Nate with his cowboy buddies while they were on a fossil hunt.

Summer

 Audrey and Anna LOVE raspberries. So we have "raspberry parties" and ususally we sit on the floor and share a bowl of raspberries. They love feeding me. They like them so much, that now they do better having their own bowl.

 Audrey and Anna LOVE the swings at the park.

 I think this was Anna wearing Nate's Davy Crockett hat while pulling Audrey in the wagon.

 We hurried over last Wednesday morning just in time to see Moroni placed on the temple. It's so exciting to see the progress being made!!!

 Ash, Sadie and Nate slept out on the deck many a nights this summer. They felt safer up here rather than on the tramp where animals could crawl over them. :)

 Dave was running with Anna and Audrey and looked down to find them holding hands.

 This horse is a highlight for these girls. Now they can climb up on their own and they rock that thing back and forth so fast with the biggest smile ever.

 They love this creature!

 Audrey and Anna trying hats on before bed. If Dave is wearing a hat, they always want to wear it so he let them wear their own hats (that they will never keep on in the sun).

These girls have recently become green smoothie lovers. They've liked them, but now they can't get enough of them and they love using a straw.

Sleeping Babies

Almost every single night they are connected in some way. It's a highlight of the day to check on them before bed and see if they came up with a new pose!

Chopped!

We love watching the cooking show "Chopped". We recently introduced it to our kids and they loved it. They've been such good sports with all of my health stuff and we thought it would be fun to have a little "Chopped" competition with the kids. You would have thought it was Christmas Eve. They were so excited all day long. They were just dying to know what the mystery ingredients were! 

 It was tricky deciding on the mystery ingredients since we had a couple experienced chefs and one not as experienced. We decided to not make it too hard this first time. The mystery ingredients were: chocolate chips, strawberries, pistachios and nilla wafers.

 I can't explain how enjoyable it was to watch our kids run around the kitchen trying to make up the best dessert. They had just about every kitchen gadget out! They all took it so seriously.

 They always do this pose on the show when the buzzer goes off. You can't touch your plate once the timer goes off!

 They had names for their desserts and I'm forgetting them at the moment. Probably because one was a really long Hobbit name. They were all wonderful! Sadie melted chocolate and then froze little swirled discs. It was a fun touch to her plate!

 Ash made a strawberry jam/syrup to go over her dish. I loved her chocolate shavings.

 The girls definitely won the "presentation" aspect but Nate won overall (he could hardly believe he could beat his older sisters!). Transforming the mystery ingredients is a big deal on the show and we thought Nate did the most transforming of each ingredient. He made a toffee/chocolate/pistachio mix with crunched up Nilla wafers. It was actually really tasty! He served a strawberry/chocolate smoothie that was surprisingly not as sweet as we expected to be.

 We had so much fun, that the kids decided to give us a chopped challenge! They loved going to the store without me to pick out the mystery ingredients. They kept saying we were going to just die when we saw them. While trying to get them to spill the beans on the mystery ingredients, I guessed sardines and I thought I was right with their reations. And yes, that sounded awful! So we were both pretty surprised that our ingredients didn't seem quite as bad. The worst part was SPAM. Yep, we used SPAM, powdered donuts, marshmallow cream and that disgusting easy cheese in a can. We had so much fun cooking!

 I made a rosemary buscuit (with crushed donuts), fruit salad (with the marshmallow cream) and a SPAM/pasta dish with a homemade cream sauce (and the easy cheese).

 Dave creamed me with his dish. Dave had a hash brown cake with eggs and a cream sauce.

The judges said my biscuit was too dry and they liked how all of Dave's ingredients were piled into one dish. The paper in front of them had a list of "chopped appropriate" comments. Earlier, they watched the show and took notes of things to say while commenting/judging.

Happy Birthday Nate!

We have a family tradition where we watch old family movies featuring the birth and first several years of that person's life. It is one of my favorite things to do. We laughed and laughed watching Nate tell this story with so much enthusiasm!