School Days

Well, summer ended and school started. Boooo! Good thing Tianna were so super excited. ... otherwise I might have stayed in my happy state of denial and kept her home until Labor Day.

But rain or shine, school began on August 19th. Our little First Grader sure was cute!

 She is in Miss Red Thunder's class at C.S. Lewis Academy (a charter school)

Luckily I could pretend summer wasn't over a little longer with Adelia because she didn't have to start school until September. She goes to Miss Jamie's Sunny Days Preschool every Monday and Wednesday. On Tuesday and Thursdays she goes to a neighborhood preschool where the moms take turns teaching. 

Adelia was so happy to finally get to go to school like her big sister! 

 She also had to bring a poster showing all she did this summer.

A--Added another candle to her birthday cake when she turned 4 in June
D-- Doing things together as a family
E- Entered the Little Miss Pleasant Valley Pageant
L--Lakes, pools and plenty of Sunshine
I--Inner super hero came out at the Orchard Days Kid's parade
A--attended the local fairs and festivals..

 Linaya was pretty happy about Adelia's first day of school. I must admit, it's kind of nice having a 2 hour break from each other during the day. She likes being with other people and I like having her gone while Linaya naps because I have some ME time for a bit... which translates to having time to do dishes etc in peace.

We sure love these smart, social, and vibrant little girls of ours. How blessed we are....

Early in August (sadly all pictures are missing now???)

On August 3rd Luke and I attended my 10 year High School Reunion.  In so many ways I can't believe it's already been 10 years...but considering all that has happened it's also like it was a lifetime ago.
It was fun... a bit expensive for what it was worth. Not many people were there but it was fun to reconnect with those who were...and visit more with those i have stayed pretty close with, but haven't seen too recently. All in all, I'm glad we went.

Our table: Luke, Me, Mindy Mays Langford and husband, Jay, then we also sat with Heather and her husband, David, and Kristen and her husband, Stuart

The week following was a busy one.  The Hopes girls came to stay at our house while their mom and dad were at Youth Conference. We played REALLY hard........... too hard to take many pictures actually! 

We hiked to a waterfall up Payson Canyon, went to the pool, went shopping, to parks, and to the park in Payson during the end of the Tour of Utah events which had lots of kid activities.  It was a fun week but boy, was I tired! Being in charge of 6 children (well, Nati hardly counts as a kid these days...) but still. Between that and Shrek rehearsals every night, I was BEAT by the end of that week! 

At the Grotto

At the tour of Utah event they had a really neat motocross show.. click on the picture and make it larger (then look in the tree) The motorcycles went SO high! It was awesome!

The weekend after our crazy, busy, guest filled week we took it pretty easy.

Luke decided to teach the girls how to rappel. What better place than your very own rock climbing wall (or something!) 

He loves showing his girls the things he loves to do. *what a good daddy!*

Luke's work had an interesting company party this year. In lieu of the typical party, they paid for all of us to go to the Demolition Derby in Nephi. It was really cool... especially since one of the employees was participating. Jason was involved in one of the coolest moments of the night. A car ended up entirely on top of Jason's car... luckily he and everyone involved was safe.

The only downers to the company party was the lack of socializing. It was too loud and with sitting in bleachers we didn't really get to talk to anyone much. Oh.... and the baby got really restless and couldn't sleep for the noise. But hey, it was still really fun and good old classic fun.

I love Summer. It's always sad to see the end of the warm, long evenings and fun summer outings. 

Super Hero... it's all in a day's work.

The kid's parade in Santaquin's Orchard Days had a Super Hero theme. 

Obviously, we had a lot of fun with this

They were definitely the most fantastic super heros there! They each won in their age divisions. Tianna second place and Adelia won first.

Meet "FLAME" the girl on fire!

Doesn't this red hair just suit her personality?!!!

Meet "Color Burst"  she and her rainbow friends save the day 

It really was a lot of fun! Following the parade they did games and such at the park. We then left the festivities and went to the Red Barn to use Tianna's winnings coupon for ice cream. 

That night we went back to see the movie in the park. 

I love living in a small town ;) 

Pioneer Day

Gotta love that extra bit of celebrating we get in the middle of July every year. (unless of course your husband has to work... in which case you get to do all the parade stuff and celebrating by yourself!) 

We recruited some friends and went to the Fiesta Days parade in Spanish Fork.

The kids sure love a good ol' parade

The neatest entry was a SEA of 1,000 young men dressed like Helaman's 2000 Stripling Warriors. They had "We'll Bring the World His Truth" playing from speakers while these young boys marched passed. Talk about a chilling experience!!! And so eye opening to see how little and young many of them were. I'm sure that's how it really was for those Book of Mormon heros. 

 Had Luke not been working, I would have joined the cast of "Shrek the Musical" and marched alongside the Onion too.

Just like last year, we had Luke's work friends and their family's over for a 24th of July
barbecue

We had a great turn-out

By the time we cleaned up and everyone left, we were far too tired to drive to Spanish Fork to see the fireworks.... 

However, right after putting the girl's in their bed I glanced outside and saw, from our very own back door, the SF firework display in the far distance. We actually could see several firework shows from various locations.  

I got the older girls back out of their beds and we snuggled on the back steps enjoying the fireworks in our pj's. 

Lovely Sunday and THE GREAT FAIRY TEA PARTY

This particular Sunday was extra relaxing for some reason. Luke came home from early meetings and did his best to get Linaya to nap.... it ALMOST worked until Mom popped her head in with a camera. Oops!

After church we ate a yummy dinner on the back patio and spent the rest of the nice, warm Sunday evening in the back yard laying on a blanket, playing frisbee, and playing with the kids.
LOVE days like that!

To make up for not waiting around for the next available time slot at the Lavender Festival  I told them we could have one out our house with all of their friends. We even invited a girl from our ward who was waiting in line with them at the festival who also didn't get to go that day.

Saved ourselves a lot of $$ too :)

JULY 19th, THE GREAT FAIRY TEA PARTY

Tianna made all of the invitations by hand and she and Adelia delivered them to all their friends.
I baked the cookies and made the punch and the girl's basically did all the rest! They decorated, set the table, fashioned us all with the appropriate attire, and decided on the activities.

We danced and danced and danced.......... ate treats, and watched a Tinkerbell Movie.

My name was "Fawn-- the Autumn Fairy" I figured that way I could justify making pumpkin cookies in July 

glued to the TV

I invited one of my friends over for some sanity :) 

It really was super fun and the girls were quite happy about how their party turned out. I love when I get to do something simple (really... easiest party EVER!) and they love it!