Many faces

Oh this boy. 

He really makes me laugh. 

I really love this age but I think that I say that about every age.

Brooklyn went a little crazy just taking picture after picture of him.

Some of the things that I want to remember about Rexton at this age:

You love the color Green

You fall asleep with both of your hands behind your head.

When I tell you that I love you - you always reply with

" I love you too - mom" 

There is something about the way that you add my name at the end 

You can do everything yourself!

You rarely sleep in your own bed

You love putting your "puppy" on his leash {an old Disneyland lanyard} and pulling him around

You like to build train tracks

You can play pretend with Hudson for hours

You want to eat what everyone else is eating - every sauce, every condiment, every dressing.

You LOVE to help me cook - when you hear my mixer start you come running {and you are good too}

You love to pretend that you are a superhero with Hudson {right now you are always Ironman}

Your pet peeve is to be interrupted - you want to be heard.

You love to snuggle up to Jingles and often with have cat fur stuck to your dirty face.

You always have a dirty face.

Sometimes you leave the first letter off of words when you say them

{ajamas aka pajamas}

You think that you have super powers {super climber and super strong}

You love to go to grandma's house on Tuesdays.

You have sound effects for everything.

Eliza - 10 Days

before you were conceived I wanted you

before you were born I loved you

before you were here an hour I would die for you

this is the miracle of life

A good Idea - or so I thought

This year I was a judge for dutch oven cooking at 11 year old scout camp.

{One of the highlights of getting to be Primary President}

At the camp out I saw that one of the men there had these GINORMOUS marshmallows. 

I had never seen anything like them before.
I had to have them for our campout. 

Little did I know what a disaster that would end up being. 

SMORES are not the easiest thing to eat as it is but this was ridiculous. 

They were everywhere. 

When you ate it it looked like you were making out with a marshmallow. 

YUCK!

We saved the rest and brought them home to use in Rice Krispy treats.

This one is not mine but I will claim him!

We took Brigham's great friend, Jaysen with us. 

Those boys had such a great time.

One marshmallow was enough for even the 11 year old boys!

O is for Ocean

This was no Hawaiian beach for sure. 

Northern California beaches are COLD! 

The wetsuit rental was well worth it's money.

Charles was able to get Hudson out on the boogie board once.

These kids are sure lucky to have a dad that is so willing to play so hard with them.

We were proud of him giving it a shot. 

Cold is not Hudson's favorite.

Sandcastle building with Dad.

Trying to stay warm with Mom.

Hudson did this all on his own after he saw me make one saying "Pacifica 2010"

They had more fun playing in the sand than they did in the water.

This is how Eliza spent most of her time at the beach.

Totally Wicked

Brooklyn was able to go see Wicked in San Fransisco before it leaves town for good. 

She has been listening to the soundtrack since Charles and I went to see it in January. 

She did not think that she was going to be able to make it before it left but we had a friend who was getting group tickets which reduced the price greatly allowing her to go. 

She paid her own way and had a wonderful time. 

At the last minute 2 of her friends, Lauren and Danielle, got a ticket too.

Brooklyn was lucky enough to talk Grandma and Grandpa into going too. 

It did not take too much convincing.

They were able to have dinner together and then ride BART into the city. 

Brooklyn LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it.

She really appreciates the theater. 

And I know that I am her mother but she looked beautiful as she walked out my door. 

I spent extra time blow drying her hair out and straightening it for her.

She looked so grown up. 

You cant tell too much since she pulled it back once she got there.

I was a bit sad not to be able to share this with her. 

Thank you grandma and grandpa for filling in.

Summer Days

These two can play pretend for hours and hours.

Even though we have acres that they can go exploring on, most of their playtime is spent in the little backyard right outside my kitchen window. 

There is so much shade so it is normally pretty cool.

All they need are a few stuffed animals and the backyard can become just about anything. 

I also love that it is so close to where I usually am working that I can hear almost every word they are saying.

As a side note - so I do not forget - this little car was bought at a garage sale and we had to get it because it had wood paneling on the sides just like the car that their dad was driving at the time. 

Charles loved his Jeep Grand Cherokee with wood paneling.

and Charles does not LOVE cars but that is a whole other story for later.

Choke Hold

All 3 of my boys share a room. 

Charles and I have known from the beginning that we would like to have 1 girls room and 1 boys room. 

Kind of like the room in 7 Brides for 7 Brothers.

Our cousin {in law} grew up this way and he told us that he thinks that it one reason why all of his siblings are so close. 

It has its pro and cons. 

Yes, there is fighting about who messed things up.

Yes, the big kids have to pull more than their fair share because the little ones spend more time messing things up than cleaning it up. 

Yes, lights get turned on when older ones come in to go to bed and possibly wake up little ones.

Yes, they do ask to have THEIR OWN ROOM. 

However.....when there are moments like this I would not trade a shared room for anything. 

Rexton can usually be found in someone else's bed. 

If not Hudson's or Brigham's then the girl's will do too.

I just do not know how either one of them can sleep like that.

Especially Brigham. 

He really is a good sport.

B is for Blessing Day

Eliza Juliette was blessed by her father on Sunday August 1st. He was joined by friends and family.

She cried {more like screamed}during most of the blessing. Luckily Charles was not phased by it at all. 

Eliza wore the dress that both of her sisters wore. It is the bottom of my wedding dress and is very sentimental. My grandma, who passed away last year, helped turn my dress into this beautiful dress for the girls. It has grandma's signature rolled roses on the front and back of the dress. Grandma thought that they should also be on the back because little babies are often over your shoulder and she wanted some of the decoration to be seen then too. 

This was the only picture that I grabbed the whole day. I am glad that we thought to do this before church because the rest of the day got a little crazy.

After church we headed over to Grandma's house for dinner. I made a HUGE pan of Penne Rustica and other family and friends brought the rest of the meal. We topped off the night with brownie sundaes with homemade hot fudge. Yummy! I believe that our numbers for dinner {including babies}was 40. It is nice to have so many family and friends that are so close but we were sad to miss some important people that live too far away.

Circles

Do my kids realize how fun it is for me that they have curly hair?

Everyone but Brigham has curls.

When I do Rexton's hair for church I have to squirt it all down and then I scrunch it all up to make the curls come out. When he looked in the mirror he started brushing all of his hair forward and flat.

I told him to stop and that it looked so handsome.

"Mom - I don't like the circles on my head!"

Oh please my little boy - let mom do circles on your head for as long as they last.

Dinner by Chef Emmelyne

    

Emmelyne has been cruising through some of her summer goals.

This one was "Cooking dinner for the family"

Emmelyne picked the menu and learned to make 

Stroganoff and Sticky Rice

she added a side of cantaloupe and canned pears to round out the meal.

Great Job Em!

Trashing the camp

The little boys have been on a bit of a Tarzan kick this week. 

They love the music from the movie which I can not blame them at all. 

Can you go wrong with Phil Collins and N SYNC?

One of their favorite songs is "Trashin the Camp" 

The boys got out all kinds of pots and pans and kitchen utensils to create their own version. 

It was a little loud, but hey, when isn't it around here?

It is great "get up and dance" music. 

When we have the IPOD on Pandora and it will come on our station the whole house starts singing along and dancing like a bunch of apes. 

30 miles and counting

                            

One of Brigham's summer goals was to ride 150 miles over the summer and one of those rides was going to be 30 miles. He is always excited about being able to spend one on one time with his dad. Charles is so happy to have someone in the family to go ride with him. Brigham charted the course that they would travel on with the help of his dad.

They took off on a Saturday morning and rode to Royer Park {a park that I remember going to as a child} and then came home. Brigham used my bike and kept up with Charles great. He used the electronic odometer that Charles has and stopped right at 30.0 miles and called me to tell me that he had done it. I was so proud of him for accomplishing this huge goal. I know that I could not have done it right now. Way to go Brigham!

They were mostly on the road riding but this part is on a bike trail.

Here he is showing the 30.0 mile mark. It happened to be right in front of our neighbor's house {the Runte's}

"G" is for Grandpa's Birthday Bash

Different Grandpa reached a big milestone this week. We will not say which one it was to protect the innocent but lets just say Brooklyn was busy cutting out a lot of Sevens and Zeros.

We invited grandma and grandpa over for Chinese Night in honor of his Chinese birthplace.

Brooklyn worked hard making decorations. 

We ate Orange Chicken, Chow Mein, sticky white rice, egg rolls for dinner. 

The kids had worked on picking lots of blackberries to make Grandpa a blackberry cobbler. I told them that if they picked enough for me then I would even make homemade ice cream. It was all so yummy.

During dinner we had grandpa answer trivia questions about the 1940's. Him and grandma were a good team.

After dessert we had 2 other games. 

Guess how many Milk Duds {one of grandpa's favorite candies}were in the jar. Too bad Dad did not pay attention and ate some out of the jar before the game even started.

Then some participated in a game to see who could handle having the most Altoids in their mouth before it burned up. That one was kind of a dud since I guess that they did not get very hot. Grandpa always has a tin of Altoids at his house.

We are so lucky to have a grandpa who loves to play with the kids, read with the kids, and just hang out with them. We love you Different Grandpa! 

{Look how cool he is - Eliza is spitting up all over his hand and he is not even phased by it.}