38%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Though I love blogging, I've had to scale back due to higher priorities, like my kids, my husband and my home. So my percentage likely would have been higher a few months ago!

How much do you like blogging?

Getting Organized

One of my New Year's goals was to get organized. After moving into a new home in January after a double move, things had really gotten into disarray around here. So for the past week I have been spending lots of time trying to finish the unfinished, as well as cleaning, unpacking (yes, after having lived here 6 months I'm still going through boxes and unpacking can you believe it?), and organizing.

I have to say it is a great feeling though. I can just feel more peace in my own life and that of my family too! Speaking of things we did today, I found this great couch on Craigs list, a sofa sleeper for only $25!!




It was advertised with a garage sale for tomorrow, there was no picture and all the stuff I had been seeing for weeks was just really outlandish looking and not my style at all. On a whim I emailed this gal and she emailed me a picture of the couch. I loved it! So we unloaded all the seats from our van and went to take a look at it. Yep, it was as good as it looked in the picture, actually even better!

We got it home and put it in our basement rec room. The kids already love having a sofa down there and it will come in handy when we host Laren's oldest Sister and her 7 kids later this month!

Favorite Things Swap

I participated in the Favorite Things Swap and the person I swapped with was Mary and she sent me such great things! I love them all! Thanks so much, Mary!



She sent me this cute book that has sentimental value, called: "I Like You" by Sandol Stoddard Warburg that her Mom originally gave her when she was a teen and then she gave that copy to her husband and this was another copy she had.

She sent me some great smelling lotion and perfume from Victoria's Secret. It was the first lotion and perfume she ever wore.

She got me some pink Scrapbook paper because she loves to scrapbook and pink is her favorite color.

And she sent me a cd of her Favorite Songs. I have to say, she has great taste in music too!

And she packaged it all in the cutest box, that I would love to know where to buy those and some pink bubble wrap. It was beautiful and so fun to come off vacation to this great package on my doorstep!

4th of July SPT

4th of July

We got up early and drove 40 minutes to a town to the North of us to watch a 4th of July parade, a family tradition. Every year we meet up with my Sister's family and we go and watch the parade together.

My Sister, Kallie (on left) and Me watching the parade.

The cousins always have so much fun spending time together. In this case it was watching the parade together!

Seeing the Servicemen and Women in the parade was very heartwarming. It brought tears to my eyes to know that these brave young men and women courageously fight for our freedoms selflessly, for the rest of us. Of course, I cannot help but think of my dear friend Amy who is a single Mom serving in the United States Army.




Some of the other entries in the parade:



I love how these Long-horned Steer stay in their lines and march along without any person leading them. There were only 3 guys marching at the back of the entire group of them.



After the parade, we went to a Park a few miles down the road to have a picnic. It is a beautiful old park with gorgeous mature trees. The perfect place for a family picnic!





Then we came home and in the evening had a BBQ dinner, just our family and at night set off some fireworks of our own in our backyard. And I forgot to take pictures of that. But it was great, the kids loved it and it was easy! I'm so glad we opted to do that over a professional display this year since it started raining and was really windy, both of which started right after we finished our small homemade display!!

Jellystone

Camp Jellystone

Because we are putting so much money into our landscaping and hopefully getting kitchen cabinets, we decided to do a less expensive vacation close to home this year. We went to Camp Jellystone up in Estes Park. It is just less than 2 hours from our house. We had a great time, aside from the first night when I was up there by myself with the kids and Tyler got sick in the night and I couldn't get cell phone coverage and had to pack all the kids up and take them into town to call Laren at 2am.

Tyler on the hike. He was adamant about wearing his hat, and he always put it on backwards. Sometimes I could sneak and turn it around on him if he was distracted!


Every single day they do craft activities at Camp Jellystone. My kids loved to go and participate. They also went and rode the wagon with Yogi Bear.


We played in the game room air hockey, pool and some other video type games that my kids wanted to play.

Kyle playing me air hockey.

We played miniature golf and went hiking a couple of times. My kids played at the playgrounds.

We swam at the heated pool, it had gorgeous mountain views.

My kids participated in potato sack races, hula hoop contests and tug-of-war. They had a tug-of-war for adults too, but Laren messed his knee up a couple of weeks ago and I was watching Tyler.

Laren and Tyler at the Pavilion watching the "contests."


Alyssa won the Hula Hoop contest by being able to walk while hula-ing and hula on her waist, knees, etc... She was ecstatic to have won this T-shirt.

Alyssa and the T-shirt she won hula hooping.

There were probably a dozen or more different species of birds there. It was fun to sit at camp and watch the birds. One of our very favorite things was to sit around the campfire in the evenings, watching the fire, singing camp songs, telling ghost stories, roasting marshmallows, making smores, stoking the fire, searching for pine needles for the fire, and trying some new camp recipes. Kayla made pizza and we also made cinnamon rolls by roasting the refrigerated dough on a stick and then rolling it in butter and brown sugar.


Rilyn with "Cindy" bear.


We sat up one night and looked at the constellations in the sky. The Big Dipper was right above us. As we stared at the North Star we couldn't help but think of President Hinckley and how he slept under the stars as a child and realized the constancy of it's brightness.

After I had went to bed with the little ones, Laren was still up with Kayla and Kyle when he went to the bathrooms and came upon another camper with a HUGE telescope and he offered for Laren and the kids to look into it. They saw some amazing sites, including Jupiter in a fair amount of detail. The telescope filled the entire back of his pick-up truck, it was that big. He was visiting from Nebraska.

We took some gorgeous hikes and while we were on one I came upon these beautiful flowers that I had to take a picture of.







One of the days we drove into Estes Park, that was 6 miles away, and went into all the little shops and went to the Scandinavian Festival and had some ice cream.


Another great thing was having a warm shower!!! There is nothing like feeling clean, even while camping!! They had cabins you could rent, or you can bring an RV or tent. It is pricier than most other camping places, but well worth it.

Visiting Camp Jellystone was lots of fun. We will definitely go back in future years. We made some great memories there. It was like Summer Camp for the whole family!



Bye Yogi, see you next summer!!

I Can't Wait!

I Can't Wait...

Carolee gave the challenge to do 10 things that you can't wait for, so here goes!



1.) I can't wait to get my kitchen cabinets.



2.) I can't wait to get my yard finished.

3.) I can't wait to clean my floors and not have dirt tracked in, dirtying them instantly.

4.) I can't wait for Laren to get home.

5.) I can't wait for bedtime.

6.) I can't wait to be wealthy!


7.) I can't wait to see my girls first softball game.

8.) I can't wait to get up to the mountains with my family.




9.) I can't wait for my laundry to be finished.

10.) I can't wait to get my haircut.



Now I'm tagging Heidi, Amber and Cristin to share 10 things they "Can't Wait" for.

Homerun!

Homerun Hero!!!

Kyle at the plate.

Kyle's baseball season ended with a crescendo this past weekend. His little team started off kind of struggling at the beginning of the season. They were always one player short of what the other teams had and some of the players, including Kyle, were new to the sport. Well, Kyle had played T-ball several years ago, but that was it.

They only won 2 regular season games. And then right about the time the playoffs started the team was really getting it together.

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The "Indians" Dugout. That is the name of Kyle's team.


They were playing like a team, they were getting good hits with the bat, they were passing the ball to each other. Well, all of the teams had a chance in the playoffs. It so happened that our little team (who had to play with only 8 players in the playoffs, less than regular season because of players being gone) ended up winning the game in their bracket which put them in the semi-finals.

Coach Macarenas adjusting Kyle's position before batting.

They won the game 13-10. Kyle scored his first homerun ever in that game with a grounder straight out into right field almost to the fence. He ran those bases like he'd never done before. He was so elated, I think he floated around to homeplate. Of course his Mom was on her feet in the stands whooping and hollering it up for him!

The rest of the crowd was cheering, but no one was prouder than Laren and I. My good old cheerleading days came right back to me and I was in my zone cheering for my son. Only this time, my eyes were filled with tears knowing all that had gone into that homerun. Knowing all the hours he'd spent practicing batting, even when he was tired and ready to be done before the coaches were at practice. Kyle ended up scoring 3 points in that game, not including the points for those who he batted home.

Kyle and Laren after the big win.

Because of that win, they they were paired against the top team in the league. They lost that game, but ended up finishing third overall! Even though we spent most of our weekend in the sun at the field, it couldn't have been more perfect watching our son learn and enjoy the benefits of teamwork. You can imagine how Laren and I felt today when taking Kayla and Alyssa to softball practice and Kyle brought along his mitt and ball just so he could get in a little practice himself. The sport really grew on him.

Kyle and Mom after the big win. His expression doesn't match the elation he had though. Notice the button I'm wearing with his picture on it. Also in support of the team and game, I tried to find the closest thing I had to Orange (his team color) in my closet for that game. I was also sporting a pretty good sun-kissed face after the games.

PS... Amber, notice the grass in the picture with Laren and Kyle, that is what we grew from seed in our front yard this past month.