Summer 2017

Summer Days

Summers are my favorite.

These pictures are from a day in 2015, but days like this are perfect in my book.

I spent the day swimming with The Circus, and then we hit a movie in the park that evening.

I could live forever in a summer day.

One Last Party

Can you guess who made this chip mess all over the kitchen floor?

That would be the culprit, cleaning it up.
What was he doing to make such a huge mess you might ask?
Beating Brynn with a bag of Doritos.
The other end popped open while he was hitting Brynn repeatedly with the bag and...

The puppy boys were given quite the treat.

Our city hung banners on every street corner advertising one last party before the end of summer, so we decided to check it out.

The cool thing about this was all of this was free. 
You can't beat free with 6 kids.
Plus 3 neighbor kids.

There was a car show which was pretty lame, but we found a few treasures hidden in it.

This would be your Japanese Ferrari...

Look at the size of that light!

Tayler scaled the rock wall clear to the top.

Chatting about clouds

And the whole reason I showed up in the first place...

 

 

I love fireworks.

 



Uses For Central Air

Sometimes central air is useful for more than just cooling off your house in the summer.

summer in the frontyard

Pure awesomeness.

br />
Have you ever had a really bad day?
I mean really bad?

Usually a day could be perfectly fine and then one little thing just ruins my mood and I spend the rest of the day trying to shrug it off.

What if your little thing that ruins your day goes viral?

And people start using your name as a phrase for messing up.
"He fecked it."

Still, it was amazing to watch, wasn't it?  Like a train wreck that you just can't look away from, hand covering gawking mouth with bulging eyes and you're torn between laughing hysterically and sitting in shock for the poor dashed Olympian dreams.

Have I ever had a moment like that?
If I have it's completely blocked from memory and I should probably keep it that way.

That was a tangent.  I opened up the internet today and I saw references to it on msn.  Obviously it just rolled downhill from there for me.

So on to what I was really going to post about today.

I love summer.

I base the success of my year pretty much on how good my summer was.

I think my favorite parts of summer are the parts where I'm hanging out with my circus in the frontyard.



The new thing is to tie a jump rope around Strider, who is the Clydsedale horse of Corgi's and have him pull you on Cali's little bike.

He loves it, so much in fact that the force of his pull snapped the jump rope in half.

At least once a week we get a knock on our door.
"Can you play night games?"

And it's randomly different groups of boys who come around and ask.
Last night the boys who wanted to play night games had played before, but they've never been the ones to show up and ask.
I can only imagine that seeing a yard full of girls can be intimidating for young boys.

They hung around the outskirts of the yard for a few minutes, not saying anything.  Not crossing past the fence that marked the line of our yard.

"You do it."
"No, you do it."

The girls were clueless.
They paid them no mind.

Until finally one stumbled past the fence, just barely, and without any preamble or howdy-do blurts out something along the lines of, "yo, night games?"

They always say they're going to go play at this house or that house but lately they've ended up in our yard.

Screaming and yelling.

I love it.

Terrible pictures but it was getting dark and I was trying not to be the embarrassing mom :).

One time, a group of boys showed up at our door and asked for Brynn.
And it was just Brynn, hanging out with a bunch of boys.

I find it amazes me, but then I stop to think about it.
So many of my best friends were boys.

I had my girl friends, but I found I was always much more comfortable hanging out with the guys.
So there we have it. 
I "complained" about it on facebook.  That Brynn was the only girl in a group of boys and one of my guy friends commented, "just like her mom.  And you turned out pretty well."

Lessons learned in our frontyard this summer:
Strider is super dog strong.
Boys aren't so bad.
You get to play night games an hour longer when you're in your own frontyard.
Mom has issues riding Cali's bike.
Dinner tastes better when we're all sitting on the porch eating it together.
Bodyrock is easier to follow through with when you're doing it together in the frontyard amidst peals of laughter. I should get a video of the girls trying to do it.  Cali does one squat jump and she's all giggles.

And it doesn't matter if inside the house is just a little bit cooler, there's just something about hanging out in the yard together.

west's family reunion

One summer evening we headed up the canyon to meet up with The Man's family for dinner.

I love living where the mountains are.
Is there a place where you can have both mountains and ocean beaches with year round warm weather?
That would be my heaven.

We were told as we pulled into the campground where one of West's cousins had a spot, that there could only be eight people per spot.

At any given time.

As family continued to roll in we ended up pitching in to pay for another spot, even though none of us were staying past dinner.

Do you ever wish you were one of those people who are always photogenic?

with cousin Morgan

The plan was to potluck with Italian food.  The idea was conceived at Jammy's funeral.  The food was varied in variety and pretty tasty.

We brought hotdogs :).

The kids appreciated that.

Tayler took her hotdog roasting and marshmallow toasting business seriously.
It's written all over her face.

Brynn found this giant moth.
It was dead, but that didn't stop everyone from being fascinated with it.

Sweet little baby Elsa.
Sweet until West stopped to smile and say "hi" to her.
She started screaming and trying to get away from him.
I guess that's another reason to not have anymore babies :).

I think we needed to buy another site... or two...
luckily I think the camp hosts got tired of harassing us about it.

I feel I'm incredibly lucky to have married into such a fun family.
The support and the love the my kids and I have felt from them as we became West's family has been overwhelming.
Better people you'll never find.