Updates, June and into July

In June Joey went to Boston with his good buddy Scott. They took in some baseball at the "green monstah" and visited the basketball hall of fame, and ate alot of really yummy food (which he delights in showing me pictures of.) So he got back on Father's day, and the kids were excited to see him. (Joey, I am so happy that my kids get to have such a wonderful dad. Keep up the good work!)

We went to Lake Powell for girls camp this year (June 23-26). It was exhausting and fun, and hot, and tons of work, and did I mention exhausting? Joey took off work to watch my kids...which was awesome...none of the guilt of having your best friends and family doing you a huge favor and watching all your kids for you! I got a text the second morning I was gone that Jack had fallen and had to get 9 staples in his head! Then on Friday and Saturday I was on the phone ALOT with my sister Sam, who was at the hospital to give birth to Josi. It was very exciting. The six hour car-ride home from camp with lots of rowdy beehives watching a barbie movie?...not so much.

The day after I got home from camp, Tif Christensen came in to town with her 5 boys for a visit. This was a really busy and fun time for us. We had such a blast! The boys love each other so much. Cannon came later in the week.

The boys found a frog in the yard and refused to pick it up. I even offered 50 cents to whoever would do it. What a bunch of city kids!


Finally, Jack's love of money won out....he looks calm in the picture, but he sure wasn't! Carolina and Grace each earned 10 cents for touching it!

A Wendy's pic-nic in the theatre...good times!

Tif and I took the kids swimming, which resulted in another trip to instacare...Carolina fell in the bathroom ( she later told me she was on the counter trying to get soap on her hands and fell off) and had to get stitches...caution, gross pictures to follow!

I took Jack with me. He got his staples out and Carolina got her stitches in!

I love how beautiful Carolina looks in this picture. She love to wear this hat when she is outside.

Next up, my visit to see my mom and Samantha in California, the Emig family reunion, and other equally exciting summer happenings. I know you all can barely wait.

Goo Girl thinks she's a rock star

My mom bought this outfit for Carolina Jones when she was little, and now it is Grace's turn to use it. She walks into church in this get-up, acting like she owns the place. It is pretty funny as she insists on the sunglasses too. Grace is very popular with the adults in our ward. She is the loudest singer in the primary, and she struts around the church-house in the most confident of ways. Cute is her currency, and she knows how to wrap everyone around her little finger. People think she is so amazing and smart, really she is just extremely short...which makes her seem really advanced for her age. She is quite a ham. I love this girl!

What We Did Today

So, this is a break from trying to catch up on my whole summer. I present: "What We Did Today". This is a blog post that actually tells about my current life, today...not last month, not even last week! I feel like all I am ever doing is playing catch up.

The Girls were in a little "ballet" today. My friend Amy's daughter Aubrey (age 11), puts on a ballet every summer. She gets all the little girls in the ward and has practices and then puts on the performance at the church. It was so cute. It was "Hannah and Gretle". Here are some pictures of my girls and little clips. This is the kind of thing only grandmas really like, so the rest of you can skip this post. This dance is the "bird dance". Carolina is the tall one, and Gigi is the shorty.

It was fun to put make-up on the girls and do their hair. Ash came to help me. I didn't take pictures of them in their costumes...wahhh. but I took some others. Enjoy Grandmas:

Grace smudged her mascara right away...still cute.
Sisters.

Here, trying to do a "ballet pose".

In the dressing room, waiting for showtime.

After we got home and I realized I didn't take very many pictures:

Fi grabbed the tutu, then got really mad about it!

So my next post will go back to my usual...catching up with my summer.

Randomness

So, I never put baseball pictures of Tyson, and he sure hasn't let me forget about it. Here are some pictures of him. He did really well this year and progressed alot. He really improved and gained confidence in hitting, and fielding too.



This is what I call Ty's goofy picture face....he loves to do this every time I take a picture. In fact I have a hard time finding a picture where he is NOT doing this!


There, that's better...isn't he handsome?

He is number 27.

Ty gets really mad when he gets a strike, and we are really working on sportsmanship.

Okay, some pictures of Fiona...she is growing so fast.

More randomness....when Grace wakes up in the morning, her hair is CRAZY. It is like a poofy cloud around her head. The other day she woke up from a nap on the couch, and I just had to capture the look for my blog...enjoy. Also, she is not posing. This is her, "I'm annoyed at you" look, which makes me nervous for her teenage years!

Gracie recently told me she wanted her hair to be "as long as a giraffe's neck." So I have stopped giving her her signature "gigi bob".....we'll see how it goes.

Then Cort Got Hurt

Cort got hit by a car while riding a scooter. It was really scary. I had Ash's kids for a couple of days, and I took one funny picture of Henry in some of Fi's clothes. Notice, I look a little frazzled. I just kept looking at Ash's kids and had to stop myself from crying. It was such a relief that Cort wasn't hurt worse than he was. He is still in pain, but he is alive.....
The following is an excerpt from an email I sent my mother-in-law:

"Well, I had my grandma visit this last week, ran the young women 2 day fundraiser garage sale, my uncle and other grandma came for a cousin's wedding, lots of baseball, planning for girls camp, and oh yah,....the whole Cort getting hit by a car thing. Having 8 kids makes me realize how easy 5 is, ha ha. Did I sign up for this? But it is so strange, I have been feeling an overwhelming sense of joy and well-being. Maybe Cort's accident put it all in perspective...he could have died, instead he will be okay. I am so grateful for family and friends who love me...and an AMAZING husband, who I love more today than when I got married. Life is good."

So even though Ash was out of my life for awhile, I had a birthday party to throw, because Carolina Jones turned FIVE!! Carolina is an amazing little person. She has strong ideas and opinions about almost everything. She is so smart, like crazy smart ( I know all parents think this about their kids....) But alot of the time, I look back on my day and see how she worked me. She will be an amazing woman, strong and independent and well, bossy. These kind of people are not the easiest kids to raise. But I just remind myself that the same things that make her challenging as a child are actually really good qualities when found in adults.

She is really creative. Grace and her play, and pretend alot. They create whole fantasy realities. They are always talking in different voices of whatever character they are pretending to be. Right now they love to play "the Chipettes" from Alvin and the Chipmunks the squeakquel. CC is Britney, and Grace loves to be Elinore.

For Carolina's birthday we went to the park with cousins to play, have cupcakes and open presents. Here are lots of pictures:

The girls...

The boys, sans Dougie...he was there, I promise, but was running around during the pictures and somehow didn't end up in the shots. Sorry Angelique!

I was glad to have Brooklyn there....could I rent her sometime KK?

I had to put some pictures of her opening presents. She is so fun to buy for because she loves EVERYTHING!!! Look at her face in this shot, she love horses right now.

All this last year, Carolina would pick up things in stores and ask for them. I would always say no, and then she would come back with, can I have it for my birthday? (Robbie does this too) I would always say yes. So I started getting nervous as her birthday approached. So I told her she could pick 3 things she really wanted. Alot of thought and consideration went into this. By the time her birthday rolled around she had all her presents planned out for her 5th, 6th and 7th birthdays.

So I got her the squeakquel from Grandma Connie, which she wasn't expecting. I love her look of pure disbelief.

I couldn't resist this picture of GiGi with a cupcake. Notice she ate all the frosting off.

Happy Birthday Carolina Jones!!!

More May

My computer has been broken since the spring. It has all my pictures on it. My brother was able to save them all, and it looks like he may even be able to fix the computer too. It is great to have a computer super hero as a brother. I haven't been able to blog though. I think that blogging without pictures is pretty boring. I just put some pictures from my camera onto my laptop though, so now I can get caught up on my journaling. And because this is a journal for me, I have to go back and document what I have been doing this summer.

May, as I stated in a prior post, was ALOT about baseball. But it was also about school winding down. Wow, the end of the school year is a busy time! To follow are pictures of Carolina's pre-school graduation, the dance festival and other randomness.

This is Carolina Jones with her teacher Miss Cindy. This is an amazing teacher. Carolina had such a great experience in preschool this year.

This is the dance festival at Aspen. If you click on this picture, you can see Ty front and center. The picture with Jack didn't turn out.

Just a picture of Fi. I wanted to document what she was looking like. She got her first 2 teeth when she was 7 months old. She is a tiny, skinny girl, who is super long. She is extremely wiggly, hardly ever holding still. My mom says she just looks like a blur on skype. She love to hollar at the top of her lungs.

My Grandma Jones..."AHA" came to visit for a week after having been in Almo for memorial day. I love these pictures. My girls never leave her alone. I love having her here with me.

Here they are dressed for church!

This is Jack, with best buddy Brody! They were on the same baseball team.