New dishwasher

Our old dishwasher finally gave out on us. So here is our new Maytag dishwasher. I have to say, I love it. It actually cleans my dishes. Yea! We have had to replace a few things recently: our reverse osmosis water machine, our sprinkler box, and our water pressure regulator. money, money, money!!!

Beau is taking after Safia! Oh NO!!!

Saturday morning we worked hard and got all the bedrooms cleaned up and the rest of the house and doing the last of the laundry (at least for the day). Then we spent a couple of hours cleaning up the toy closet so that the kids can play with their toys again. It was a nice feeling to have the whole house clean again. Then I went back to the girls room for final inspection and found that Beauchene had gone in there and emptied the shelves of all the clothes and knocked down some of the dresses. I really don't need to go through this again!

Elody - 3 months old picture with her bear and yellow duck

My sweet little girl is getting so big. She smiles when people look at her and talk to her. I even got her to giggle today. She sleeps for an 8-9 hour stretch at night, nurse, and then sleep for 2 more hours. She can roll from her back to her front and she even once rolled from her front to her back. She loves to be held, but I can get her to swing in her swing for a little while to do dishes or prepare a meal. She is precious and we really enjoy her in our family.

Safia's first day of Pre-school!

Safia started pre-school this week. I along with 4 other moms have created a co-op preschool for our 4 year olds. We will each take a week and teach preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays to these active little kids. So far she loves it. It has been nice to get her out of the house to interact with friends.

Labor Day workday at Great Grandma Nora H

On Monday, Labor Day, Matt took the four older kids to Great Grandma Nora H for a family workday. They put up a new fence and coated it with a stain. They also took a lot of old stuff to the dump. I stayed home with the little kids and did laundry all day. I figured it would be better to hold my baby here and try to get something done during her naps. I also made bread and homemade pizza with some of the dough. We love my veggie pizzas.

Friday and Saturday at the Ranch Labor day Weekend

Friday evening we went to the ranch to spend the night and Saturday there. We were the only ones there even though the cabin was open to the whole family for Labor day weekend. We took the beast Chienne with us this time. She really enjoyed her freedom instead of being cooped up in her kennel. Saturday was a little boring for me to not have anyone to visit with. The kids played together and Matt read. I spent some time thinking about our family reunion that will be there next year and wrote a list of thing that I would need to bring and wouldn't want to forget.

Then.....Matt tells me that Talon was riding the 4-wheeler and crashed into a fence making Jaren who was behind him go flying. They were both ok, but we have had to set down some rules. Then.....Matt took some of the kids down to the shooting range. He had shot most of the clip with his .40 caliber pistol and then stuck it in his back pocket rather than on the bench since all of the little kids were around. Angelique, the sneaky girl that she is, very carefully snuck out the pistol from his pocket while he was helping Talon shoot. She held on to it with both hands, aimed it up the mountain, AND SHOT IT! while Matt's back was still turned. He was shocked! He turned to see her and she had blood dripping down her head. When he had determined that she hadn't shot herself or anyone else he asked what in the world she was thinking. She replied that she thought that it empty. The recoil was so powerful that the back of the gun put a gash in her forehead. All of the times Matt told the kids to ALWAYS treat a gun like it is loaded finally sank in for her! He put a handkerchief on it and brought her up to the cabin. We both were just saying to each other and to ourselves over and over, 'I am so glad it wasn't worse, I am so glad she was aiming at the mountain and not anyone else.' We packed up, cleaned up and left. When we got into town, we called Dr. Dave. He said that since the bleeding had already stopped, that we should just keep a butterfly bandage on it for 5 days.

Matt took the kids repelling!

On Saturday Aug 29th Matt took Jileigh, Talon, and Jaren repelling along with Ben and his boys, Nate and Candy and their kids and Amanda with her kids. The only kids who ended up going off the cliff were Talon, Austin, Colton, Kelsey, and Morgan. Matt said that it took each kid 10-20 minutes to get up the guts to actually go over the cliff. Then the guys went off a 150 ft cliff. They were gone for almost 6 hours. The top two pictures are of Matt and the bottom two are of Talon and the cliff that the kids went off.

Friday morning Angelique woke up with the stomach flu. Saturday at the repelling adventure was Jaren's turn. Beauchene had it here at home all morning and Saturday night was Safia's turn. Talon came down with it Sunday night. Yuck!

Talon's 11th birthday

Friday was Talon's birthday. We spent the afternoon cleaning up the house after Matt and the kids got home. This was the first day that Elody would not take a long nap. It was driving me crazy that she would only take cat naps and being very demanding of my time of all the days. We had Grandma H and several of Matt's sibling's families over. We swam, grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, ate homemade apple crisp bars with homemade ice cream. Yum! We had to take a picture of Amanda's stuffed hamburger. Jileigh entertained the kids for a while with a game of musical chairs. We all had a really nice time. Grandma H and some of Matt's siblings got together and got Talon an MP3 player. We got him the watch. Ben got him the sugar free chocolate bar, and Candy got him the Bakugan stuff. Afterwards, I had Amanda cut 3 inches off my hair for me. It is really in the falling out stage after having a baby.

We got a new King sized bed!

Desperate times call for desperate measures. We finally invested in a king sized bed. We actually got a really good deal at Costco. I have never seen a deal that good. Anyway, now there is room for Matt, Beauchene, Elody, and Me to sleep comfortably. I don't encourage my children to sleep with me, but sometimes they just won't stay asleep unless they are with me.

Elody's 2 month picture

My little Elody is 2 months old here. This is my favorite outfit on my little girls.

Family weekend at the Ranch

The weekend of Aug 7-8 was Matt's family's turn to use the ranch so why not. The kids' got too much sun and we probably ate too much food. But we sure had a good time.

Talon's "Arrow of Light" ceremony for Cub Scouts

Talon loves scouts. He earned his Arrow of light in Cub scouts. He also earned a certificate for earning all 20 badges. After he receives the arrow of light award, he walks across all the scouts to the New scout leader which so happens to be his dad.

Stage 1 on our summer project - unloading the attic storage space

I finally decided to start our summer project. Today we unloaded everything except for the Christmas tree out of the attic. Then we will sort through it, organize it and put it back up in the attic. Anything that I don't want, will go to D.I. My motivation was that I couldn't find my 2T summer clothes for Beauchene nor my 3-6 month summer clothes for Elody. I found them!

Elody's Baby Blessing

Today was my little Elody's baby blessing.

After church we had a luncheon at our house with Matt's family. Most of his siblings and his Mother were able to come. We had a potato bar and Green salad. It was very simple. For our dessert Matt made a pan of granola apple crisp bars and a peach ones too, made with whole grain flour and served with whip cream. It was very yummy.

The kids had a ball with their cousins.

After we came home, we took pictures and then I took off Elody's dress. Shortly after while I was holding her, KABOOM! All over her and my dress.

Matt's brothers and b-i-law left to right: Aaron, Ben, Ryan, Matt holding Elody, Nate, and Jake.





(This post doesn't look very organized, but this program is not very user friendly. Just know that I tried.)