D family Reunion 2010

My family rented Matt's family's cabin for the weekend for our family reunion. The kids thoroughly enjoyed their cousins. I enjoyed visiting with my family too. Even our dog, Chienne, had a boyfriend to play with. This little dog, George, was head over heals for our Chienne.

At the talent show, Jileigh and Talon did a skit/song called Roadkill stew. They were a crack up. Beau and Italee were buds, Jileigh and Phoebe and Millay were buds, Angelique and Sabra were buds, Safia and Tabitha were buds, and Jaren and Silas were buds. Talon was gone to scout camp until Saturday at noon. He was all over the place playing with different cousins. Elody was so sweet asleep on my mom. My mom was willing to just sit and hold her asleep to keep her asleep.

Responsibility charts

I felt like June wasn't very organized, so I sat down at my computer one day and came up with these responsibility charts for the kids. They have complied well to them and the chores have gotten done and my house has been able to stay cleaned up. At the end of the day, I give the kids paper dollars for all the chores they did and if they read etc. and then they use those dollars to get certain privileges. Last week I took them all the see Toy story 3. No I didn't pay for them all. We know the manager and he let us in for free.

Elody's road rash

At the park Elody was trying to climb up onto the bench at the picnic table. She got up and then went over and landed on her head. The poor thing!

4th of July fun

A free side-of-the-road find

I was driving home one day from picking up Talon from swim team practice and saw this dresser on the side of the road with some other furniture with a sign in front of it all saying "FREE." So I hooked up my trailer and went and loaded it up with Candy's help. The drawers are well built, but I could see that it just needed refinished. So Matt graciously refinished it for me. Now it is in my room!

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Teething

This week has had it's challenges. Elody has had a bad cough and throwing up a little. I finally looked in her mouth and she has her two top molars trying to cut through. Teething seems to be really hard on her.

Also, Angelique has been sick since Sunday with a fever and lethargic. I finally looked down her throat and it was red with white spots. So I swiped her throat with tea tree oil. Later in the evening I looked at it again to put some more on it and it was normal looking. I still put some more on, but was impressed with the tea tree oil. Angelique is also teething her molars.

Update on the chicks

One of the kids favorite chicks is Afro. She is the free rare bird that we got. She is called a pollock. She isn't the brightest of the bunch, but the kids like her. The chicks are two months old now. Come to find out, we have 27 of them. I ordered 25 and got one free and then 2 died. I don't know how we ended up with 27. They go through a lot of food. We seem to be buying a 50 pound bag of feed ($15) every two weeks. We like to let them out everyday to scavenge for bugs especially in the evenings.

Scrapbooking

My girls have been asking me for a while it we could scrapbook the pictures. I finally found a good day when the house was clean and we didn't have any plans to go anywhere.
We made quite the mess, but we got a lot of pages put together and had fun doing. The girls have quite the talent in making creative pages.

Beau's creation

Apparently, Beau has learned from the best. Fortunately, they were washable markers. He was so proud of himself and said that his drawings were, "Cool!" It was hard to get mad at him. We gave him and Safia some magic erasers and they cleaned up the walls.

Father's day

Yesterday was Father's day. We invited Matt's dad over and his brother and his boys over for dinner. (They are both divorced.) We made marinaded and grilled chicken breasts, oven roasted diced potatoes, a big green salad, steamed and sauteed green beans, and boiled beets from our garden. It was all very tasty! Then for dessert, Matt made apple boysenberry oatmeal cookie bars with homemade custard-style ice cream. It was too good!!! I had seconds and then ate was Beau didn't eat. Needless to say that when I stepped on the scale this morning, I had gained a pound. So well worth it! Then we just hung out in the back yard and watched the kids play together on the swingset. It was so nice to see the kids interact and get along so well and build relationships! Even Matt and Ben had a really good long talk. They didn't even leave until 10pm. I had already gone inside to put the baby to bed and call home to talk to my mom. I wanted to make sure she knew she was loved!

Talon's first swim meet

Saturday was Talon's first swim meet. I took him there at 8 am and the meet started at 9 am. I left him there, went and picked up my bountiful basket, picked up Jileigh from her young women's leaders house since she just got back from girls camp, then went and bought some eggs from my friend, came back and made my breakfast and then went back to the meet. I walked up just after Talon had his first race. I was sick that I missed it. He was second place of his heat in the back stroke and today we found out that he got 4th place for the event. Good Job Talon on your first race. Later he did the breast stroke and got 7th place and then later he did the freestyle and he didn't place. But... he did a great job for his very first race swimming!

Baking mania!

Friday Matt was home in the morning, so we (the family) got the house cleaned up and started baking. Matt and I made 2 dozen each of apple cinnamon crisp muffins, blueberry muffins, and pumpkin muffins. Then he left to work. Then I got started on the bread dough. I made a pizza, 3 regular loaves of wheat bread and a cinnamon bread loaf. By the end of the day, my house was a mess. The kitchen from baking all day and the house because I wasn't keeping on top of it. Oh well. At least we won't be hungry for a while! :)

Sisters sweet moment

Elody is finally starting to let us at least comb her hair. I caught her letting Safia comb her hair and play with her. It was really sweet, so I got a picture of it!

Elody and Sariah's birthday party at our house

We hosted Elody and Sariah's birthday party at our house. Candy made a cake and Matt made Fig/dried cherry granola bars. That was our healthy alternative to cake. Elody really enjoyed it and so did we. Elody received a few cute outfits and a dress.

Freak hail storm in June

I just so happened to take a picture of our garden on Elody's birthday a week ago. So here is a before picture of it.








We were expecting an isolated rain shower, but not this. I hailed and it hailed hard. The hail were bigger than peas but not as big as marbles. It started coming down a little and small and then it came down hard and larger. It literally shredded my garden. The hail covered the lawns. And while this is all going on, we couldn't find our camera. Finally 1/2 hour after it was over, we finally found it and took some pictures of what was left. We were so sickened by the damage. We were supposed to go to the park to celebrate Elody and Sariah's birthdays, but we decided to do it at our house instead.