Cousin Camp

{top left:Easton, Max, Caiden. Bottom left: Braden, Lucas, Hailey, Riley...Liam and Brynlee were too young to attend and Reese was there but too little too}

I had this idea...i wanted to start a tradition and have all of my kids' first cousins (on joshs side) over for the day for a "cousin camp" once a summer. I'm hoping it will be something they look forward to, love and remember. 

    I had the whole day scheduled and it went mostly according to plan. Cousin camp was from 10am-4pm and I had different activities set throughout the day with lots of time to just play inbetween. 

     To start the day off we made awesome spray paint T-shirts...the kids put strips of masking tape on white shirts however they wanted. 

Then we went outside and they picked what colors they liked and I sprayed....

We let them dry all the way while we ate lunch...

Weren't my helpers cute?!

Boy table:

Girl table

Shirts were dry by then and ready to take the tape off. The kids were so excited...especially Easton, he kept saying "this is SO awesome!". They all immediately put them on. 

Then I stacked them in this pyramid'ish shape that I hope to build and recapture each year! Most of the pictures went something like this...

Then I had to go to a meeting for Braden's school so my sister inlaw Heidi was so nice to come watch the kids for an hour. During that hour I left them with a movie and popcorn and candy and promises of water balloons when I got back. 

They had a blast throwing water balloons

and playing in our inflatable pool. 

Oh and what would cousin camp be without Popsicles!!

silly girls!

For the boys the day basically consisted of playing power rangers and discussing who should be the black ranger and why. 

Whether they were in the back yard, house or in the pool, "GO, GO, power rangers!" is what I heard. 

Just a side note. Caiden was SO mad at anyone splashing, jumping etc in the pool. He walked around the pool giving himself a WIDE perimeter haha poor guy. I put his regular clothes back on and he was happy to go play on his scooter. 

  After awhile all the kids wanted to get dried off and re-dressed for scooter and bikes until pick up time. 

It was such a fun first annual cousins' camp. I couldn't have asked for it to go

any better. I loved seeing them play together and grew a deeper love for my niece and nephews. 

San Diego Trip

Rachel's dad let her use his time share this summer and she picked San Diego and graciously set up a mini reunion for some of us that were roommates in college. 

    She had an entire suite set apart for me and the kids. Picture quality is awful as the kids were sleeping and lights were off when I took these But we had a kitchen, big bathroom, master bedroom, front room with pull out bed/couch, two flat screens and a patio! It was GREAT! I was able to save a ton of money and bring stuff to make breakfast lunch and dinner while we were there so we didn't have to eat out at all

The kids got settled in

And Reese found a cute baby in the mirror

Rachel and Chris were incredibly helpful with the kids whenever we were out at the beach or pool! I couldn't of done it without them. 

Reese enjoyed the beach much more this time. We did two beach days and she ate TONS  of sand (first time I've ever seen A baby poop sand-gross!)

Braden had SO much fun in the waves. They were the perfect size for him. 

2nd beach trip of the week josh was able to join us!  I taught the kids how to dig their very first tunnel and how to make "drip castles" apparently out of the group I was the only one who knew this...so the adults joined in also and had a competition going for tallest drip castle

*inportant to note I taught my kids (and every other adult on the trip with us)how to make "drip castles" ... Can't believe noone else had done them before!

It was a great beach, not too crowded and free parking right next to the sand! No bathrooms though. But a bucket and grocery sack got the kids through haha

    We came home from our adventures each day to rinse the sand off, fix dinner and head to the hotel pool where Chris would entertain the kids teaching them to swim and dive. 

After that I would bath them all, give them second dinner haha and they would CRASH 

   The last day we were there we went to the San Diego zoo. Me, josh and our kids, Rachel&chris, Lauren&Chris, Ellen&Nate, Susan&Charlie and there Daughter (so mad we didn't get a group

Picture!!!) it was really nice to see all those girls and their guys again, especially ellen who I feel most close with (besides rachel)

The weather was overcast and eventually turned rainy (as we were on the top

of the double decker bus of course) which made for a nice, not too crowded day at the zoo with all the animals out and pretty active. 

    I am beyond grateful to have met Rachel (and now Chris). So glad we will be life long friends. She means so much to me and we always have a good time together. I feel so blessed that she was generous enough to present us with this opportunity and that I could show my kids a great time!

My Birthday

I was in San Diego visiting rachel and chris on my birthday. 

   They had me plan the day with anything I wanted to do. So i decided we would start off by going to waterfront park which was amazing!!!! The coolest play ground I've ever been to.  Too bad they don't let anyone over 12 actually play on it. 

Then we drove to and walked around Seaport village. Cute shops and a marina made the day entertaining. It was crazy hot so we grabbed lunch and sat in the shade under big beautiful trees and watched kites. 

Rachel had Riley and Braden help her make our traditional cupcakes. Josh surprised me and showed up that night instead of the next day!

   It was a perfect way to spend my birthday :)

Foreign Exchange Students

A lady in our ward is the director for a foreign exchange program thats works with a university in China, there are also a few friends that work for this company so we have been asked a few times if we were interested in hosting. It hasn't worked out for us until now and we finally said yes!

   We had the BEST experience with it!

We filled out the paperwork, back ground check etc and promptly got two packets telling us information about each girl coming to stay with us for two weeks. It had their names, ages, interests and a note to us from them. We were so excited and the kids kept asking "how many more days until the girls from china get here?!" 

    We cleaned out the office and got their bedroom set up, candies on their pillows, new lunch pails for them to use while they are here, American flag key chains... We also made a poster to great them with. 

The night finally came and we went to pick them up from a meeting point at one of the host families house. 

Everyone was so excited to meet each other, they all loved the kids since its rre in china to hve siblings. 

   On the drive home I tried asking how their flight was and when it took about 5 minutes and had motions to translate "airplane" I knew it was going to be much harder then I thought!

   As it turned out, it was hard to hear in the car and they just needed a few days to get used to speaking english all day. They have taken It for 7 years but we still used google translate a bit. After adjusting and us learning to giving them more time to think about how to say what they wanted we all communicated pretty well. 

   They went to school Monday-Friday 9-5. I dropped them off and picked them up. We spent evenings and weekends together playing board games, shopping, beach trip and just staying up talking. they loved the opportunity to cook their own food and taught us how to make some tummy dishes. They LOVED our kids and the kids loved them back. They played every minute they were together. 

The next couple pictures were the jet morning with us. Getting to know the kids. 

Tina and Yvonne (their American names they picked)

We did a beach trip one day that turned out to be a bit crazy. We hit bad traffic first which delayed us and then we realized the brakes needed to be fixed ASAP. So that took over an hour as well. 4 hours later we got to the beach and ha a lot of fun (besides having to park super far away!) Yvonne LOVED swimming and boogie boarding. Tina slept in the sand and just enjoyed watching. This was the first trip our kids could actually play and enjoy the waves. 

   We ate ruby's on the pier and let them see their first west coast sunset. I don't think they cared haha

(this was also Reese's first trip to the beach-more about this in the post dedicated to her alone)

One day for class the group had to learn how to prepare a spaghetti dinner, I volunteered my kitchen and it was a say. The students and my kids played for hours and we got some yummy Chinese food after the spaghetti was done. 

 We were sad to see them go after 2 short weeks and wished we had more time with them. Josh and I still text with them daily. They were really nice girls and we hope to see them again!

4th of July

    Our 4th of July was a good, relaxed, family filled day. 

    We woke up slow, did our tradition "star hair" and tattoos ...

Got packed up and went swimming at Aunt Vickie's.  I didn't get any pictures of swimming this year but Braden and max loved jumping off her rock walk into the pool.  There was lots of squirt gun fights and kids being thrown in. 

   Since Josh's parents moved and no longer had prime fire work spot we all went our seperated ways after swimming this year. We went home to see if we could see our cities show from our front lawn...if we stood by our brick wall we could just barely see a few. We will definitely make better plans for next year. The kids were so tired it didn't matter and I saved a few sparklers from last year sober did those in our street. 

Braden was brave enough to try...Riley wouldn't even think about it!

Max was brave too!

To prove I do exist ...

So blessed to have a day with my family that was extremely happy and safe.