Fourth of July

Once again it is the 4th of July.  Our kids love this day.  It is one of my favorites as well.  Especially on our street.  Our neighbors throw a huge neighborhood party at lunch time.  It is a bike parade and a BBQ. And they think there were around 400 people there this year.  This year I made all my kids' matching outfits for the 4th.  I made Reid's shorts solid though because he wouldn't wear the gingham.  I am lucky he wore the shirt it made.  It is getting harder to get the kids to all want to join in.

Once again I decorated the car with lots of torn up streamers.  This year I did mix it up a little with a red, white, and blue chevron car.

Poor Dean fell asleep before the parade began.  How cute is his little bow tie.

All the kids ready to start the parade.  This year our neighbor played the national anthem on his guitar before the parade began and there were a couple people playing bag pipes during the parade and some police on motorcycles led the parade.

My dad and Dean.  I love this with Dean pointing to where he wants Grandpa to take him.

The chef's had to wear swim goggles to keep the smoke out of their eyes.

We then went to another neighbor's that night for fireworks.  It was such a fun day.

Like Mother Like Son

Reid has definitely inherited some of my genes.  He loves to create things.  And he does it all day.  Recently he has been making these guns out of paper.  He had a whole collection of them, but I forgot to get a picture and by the time I remembered they were destroyed by all the kids playing with them.  Anyway, here are 2 of them.  The bigger rifle one can cock too.  I am always amazed when he comes out of his room or our office with one of his creations.  His friends love it because he makes them all kinds of things.

Reid also looooves nerf guns and his newest thing is taking them apart or organizing them. (once again like his mom.  I love to organize) He takes them apart to either make them shoot further or to try to create new guns.   He took the 2 guns above apart and so now half is yellow and half is blue. One use to be all blue and the other all yellow.

Here he made some little boxes to hold all of his nerf clips. (has he been looking on pinterest??!!)

Here he made a box for his nerf darts.  Oh and I forgot he labels everything.  (Pinterest????)

This is his nerf dart box we bought him and he made a compartment in it that holds his clips.

Here he is taking apart one of his guns to try to make it shoot further.  He calls it a modification.  There were so many pieces in this particular nerf gun that he couldn't put it back together by himself and so Daddy had to help him which was a long process.  He might have learned his lesson after this one.

More summer fun

The Hazar's were in town this weekend and so we had a fun weekend.

The kids and David went swimming at my in-laws hotel pool downtown.

They love when Daddy swims with them because he plays with them the whole time.  I totally remember swimming with my dad and how great it was.  Getting thrown into the air.  I still have such vivid memories of standing on his shoulders while he squatted down in the water and then he would jump up and we would push off his shoulders and do a back flip.  Those were the days.

City creek.

Here we are in front of our town home we bought to rent out.

Summer days

The kids have been outside all summer.  I use to have a system that I used so I could regulate how much TV the kids were watching, but since it has been warm my kids leave the house at 9am and don't come back.  Not really, but seriously they are gone most the day playing with their friends and outside.  So I haven't needed to use my system anymore.  Here they are out in front of a neighbors house causing trouble.

Dean can hardly stand they his siblings are outside all day and he is not.  He is always pointing at the door and grunting or crying if I don't go towards it.  I take him out here and there, but not as much as he would like.  He loves when Clara takes him out.

Clara and her friend London riding around with their American dolls.

Why do kids have to be kids

Alvin came downstairs screaming that his fingers were stuck and then I saw this.  He actually had one finger on each hand stuck in it, but one of them came out with soap, but this one did not.  His finger was getting swollen and so I could not get it off.  I ended up having to saw the toy with a knife.  It was a little scary trying not to cut his finger along with it.  Anyway, I ended up getting it off, but it was a little stressful for a moment.  Alvin is getting so mischievous lately.  He got into my paints downstairs in the basement and painted the walls and ground of the unfinished part, one day he was screaming downstairs that he was stuck and so I finally ran down there and he was holding up an extra door that had tipped over and he almost couldn't hold it anymore.  Lately he has been cutting everything into little pieces.  The other day he cut up my older kids' flash cards.  Not only do I not want him to ruin the flash cards, but I also hate all the little tiny papers all over the house.  AHHHHHH! KIDS!

My Bro's Band

My neighbor across the street is in a band and mentioned to me that he was on the search for a new singer and so I mentioned that my brother is an amazing singer and so then they met him and loved his voice and now he is their lead singer.  The name of the band is Frequency One and they have a ton of performances coming up in the next couple months.  This was the first one they had with Porter as their singer.  It was so much fun. And Porter sounded amazing.

I cut his hair the day before and I loved how it turned out.

Here he is singing All Along the Watchtower.

Peoa Rodeo

We went to Peoa for a Junior Rodeo.  I signed my kids up to ride the sheep, but it took to long for that part of the rodeo and we had to leave to go to a party so they didn't get to do it.  I was dying to have them ride the sheep.  Too bad.  Maybe next year.  My dad grew up in Peoa Utah. It is about one street long. It is close the Kamas.  His family had a mink farm and my grandma lived in the same house until she passed away in her 90's.   I grew up going to my grandma's every Sunday and staying there for a week in the summers.  I have so many memories playing in the fields by her house, throwing cow pies as frisbies, swinging across the river, climbing trees, collecting sticks, pulling thistles from my grandma's lawn, feeding stray dogs our leftovers, going to the Marchant store to get penny candies, going to the rodeo, and parade, eating ice cream every night before bed, learning to sew with my grandma, going to "skull island" (what we named it), painting my grandma's fence, waving to my grandma in her window as we left her house, and I am sure there are many more memories that I don't remember, but I will never forget the fun we had.  When we went to this Rodeo this year my dad was in heaven,  He loves seeing people he knows that still live there and talking to people that know his family.  He could have stayed there all day.  It was a lot of fun to be up there.

Lots of fun climbing trees.