Fieldtrip to Petco - July 24, 2008

Erin holding a ferret - she wants a pet so bad and can't wait until we move to get a dog. I think she'll be the one that takes care of our dog the most. She has always loved petting the dogs in the park.
Bubba (you can kind of see her new haircut in this picture) & Kehli looking at the parakeets. Two years ago we found a parakeet in our front yard and the kids still talk about it. Unfortunately it died two days after we went out and bought a cage, seed, toys and everything else we needed for it. I should have known better.
The kids all loved looking at the lizards, snakes and spiders - they must get that from their Grandpa Heath! Brett & Erin are trying to figure out how they can talk Mark into letting them get a small, caged pet. Good luck with that kids...
Back to the ferrets. I think the girl was sad that she let them out in the first place. The kids just didn't want to put them away. It was a fun "fieldtrip" mostly because it was nice and air conditioned!

Birthday dinner, Pioneer Day Celebration & Bubba's New Haircut

The girls (Lisa Ellsworth, Marissa Hillman, April Homer, Carol DuRee, Rebecca Carter, Cami Rhoten, and me) celebrated July birthday's at Red Robin. Carol DuRee and I both have birthday's in July. I couldn't wait to eat the Whisky River BBQ burger with onion straws, garlic fries and a strawberry lemonade. My breath sure smelled good at the end of the night. I was too full to eat the whole free sundae, but a few bites were perfect. Thanks for a fun night girls!!!


Our Ward celebrated Pioneer Day last weekend with a picnic and games in the park. Erin and her partner, Anthony Rhoten, took first place - way to go!! Brett ran a race, but ended up on the ground instead of crossing the finish line. Kehli and her partner, Molly Stillwell, were very cautious but did great. Kehli is in the white shirt and pants next to Molly in the blue dress. Erin and Anthony are both wearing green shirts. I ran the last race with Marcia Stillwell. I'm sure we would have won if Caiden hadn't have gotten in front of us. Marcia is in the red shirt, I'm in the dark shirt. We ended up coming in second place :-(


I was sitting at swim lessons yesterday and looked up at Bubba to realize that she had cut her own hair that morning. I usually don't do their hair since they are getting in the pool so I had no idea. She took the hair on both sides, right next to her ears and cut them right off. There was no other way to fix it except to cut it all off. It was finally growing out. She cried when I told her we would have to cut it all off so I thought that would be punishment enough. But when the girl was all done Bubba said, "Oh, I like it. It is sooooooo cute." I'm guessing this won't be the last time she cuts her own hair. Mark almost cried when he saw it.

Changes

Wow - I'm so impressed with myself!! I actually figured out how to make changes to our blog and add a list of links. I'm trying to not get so excited about it or I'll spend more time at the computer playing, and I don't really have tons of free time as it is.

Mark is starting to get pretty stressed out about our house not selling. We had hoped to get started on our new home at the end of August or September. The bank says we can start without selling, but I'm not real comfortable with that. We have another showing on Tuesday afternoon so we are keeping our fingers crossed that something may come of that. Our house is always in the top 2 or 3 on everyone's list which is discouraging. They either want a 3 car garage or a bigger yard. We'll see what happens this week...

These pictures are from Brett's first swim meet on Friday. The first is the back stroke (which he didn't know he was swimming) and the second is during the freestyle. He ended up swimming in four events instead of two and came in second in the freestyle. That is his favorite. He did very well especially considering it was his first meet and it lasted 3 hours. He's also one of the youngest on his team. I've decided that I enjoy watching him play baseball better, but swimming is good for him and keep him active. My pictures didn't turn out too good because I didn't realize we had to be at the meet an hour early to get a good seat. I had to zoom in about 100 times so they are a little fuzzy. I'll do better next week.

Trip to Utah - July 2-6, 2008

We go to visit with my grandparents in Magna the first and last nights that we were there. The kids had fun being tortured (tickled) by Grandpa and he was so happy to get hugs from them all. We had to tell them to slow down because Grandpa just isn't as fast as he used to be.

Brett got to ride down with Mark's parents a couple of days early so he could spend some extra time with his cousins. They had a great time taking turns riding the "hog" up and down the street. We went to the Bit 'N Spur Rodeo in Tooele on July 4. The kids favorite part was the muttin' bustin' at the beginning. They thought it was so funny to see those kids riding the sheep. If we had known that they were so interested we would have signed them up - maybe next time... Brett liked wearing that pretty pink cowgirl hat that belonged to his cousin. ha ha

Erin & Bubba in a tree near where we took a whole family picture. I'll have to post those later. It was a challenge getting 34 people to look in the same direction at the same time, but the pictures turned out good all things considered.

Evan loved being outside for 3 days straight despite the heat. He was a good little trooper in the car for two days there and back. If we could have just figured out a way to keep Bubba from picking on him. We decided to take Mark's truck instead of the van because of the price of gas. We figured out that we saved close to $400 not driving the van. It was worth it!!


Kehli & Addie (Ken's youngest daughter) had a great time together. They are about 4 months apart and always pick up right where they left off the last time we were together. The middle picture includes Jared (Ken's youngest son), Kehli, Addie & Kendall. The picture on the right is Bubba, Addie & Kehli at an aquatic center. We spent Saturday afternoon at the Deseret Peak Complex swimming and getting cleaned up. Some of us hadn't taken a shower in a couple of days so it felt so good to get wet! Maybe that is why it took so long for the rest period at the pool - the chemicals were really off balance!

It was a great trip and now the kids are asking when the next family reunion is. They will have to be patient until 2010 because we only do this every other year.