Baking Cookies

The girls really wanted to make cookies a few weeks ago and Nate thought it was cute and took a few pictures.  I didn't remember he did until I downloaded from the camera, I love that the two pictures he got show how it always goes, Jack trying to sneak in and torture his sister.  And Sophie has a big poof of flour all over her nose.  The cookies were good, we didn't even let them cool to slap some ice cream in the middle.  Next time.

Foam Day and BBQ

Last year our little town started a new tradition of Foam Day.  Basically they fill a field with foam with fire hoses and then let everyone loose to play in the foam.  It was crazy and crowded.  Jack braved the foam.

Bella saw the foam and said no way-I think it was also the big crowd.  Sophie and Nate waded into the little kids area for a while.

They had another area set up in which you could rinse off, the water was apparently freezing.  I will see if the kids want to go next year, I couldn't tell how much they enjoyed it, well besides Bella, who didn't.

Later that evening we went to a BBQ in which I made this cake:

It is supposed to look like a flag, which it sort of does when you cut it.  I had seen it all over the blogosphere and wanted to try it out.  The ice cream was homemade by our BBQ hosts and was really good.  I am not usually a strawberry girl, but I really liked it.  We also had some fun on some 2 x 4's with ropes on them, four people are on a team and have to cooperate to walk on the boards.  There is some video here which shows the team I was on winning!  And yes, yelling right, left incessantly is necessary. But I admit, we have more practice than the other team.  It was a fun day and we capped it off with some fireworks, which is always nice on my birthday.

Family Talent Show

At our recent family reunion, we had a talent show.  It was fun to see what everyone prepared and see the kids perform.  Above are just a few snapshots of how it all went. Bella played the piano despite being terrified.  She memorized the easy version of Can You Feel the Love Tonight.  Grandma Miskin told a story.  Jessica sang a song then Sophie played the Harmonica or Hanananka as she called it.  Terry made a pinata which the kids later got to break open.  I  spent a lot of time being crazy while they were doing that because all the pinatas I have seen at parties before don't go well.  Someone always gets hit, I mean, it's the basis for America's Funniest Home videos.  But this one went down just fine, probably because of my extreme bossiness.  Louis did a rap, he is going on a mission this fall to Columbia and we are all very excited for him.  The Christensen Kids plus Jack sand If the Savior Stood Beside Me.  I had no idea Jack was singing with them all until we were there-still not sure how that came about.  Alice played a song on the piano.  Roger filmed the whole thing and will someday distribute copies to the family.  Marshall played some original music.  And the Flake family sang On Top of the World.  Nate and I sang, but I don't have any pictures of that.  nd Manasseh was the MC for the whole thing and told some jokes. 

NaNaNaNaNa-they say it's your birthday!

I love my birthday, it means I survived another year!  I made Nate take this picture in Disneyland.  I am very excited to be 33-maybe someday we will eat at Club 33.  Have a great day everyone and eat cake!

Cousins!

For two weeks in July, we hosted our Texas cousins!  The kids had so much fun and everyone was really worn out by the end.  We spent a day at BYU dropping off Morgan to EFY.  Then the rest of us walked around while Jessica and I showed the kids our old stomping grounds.  It always feels like we were just there, but it has been ten years since I graduated, and there are new buildings and things are different.  We played around in a few of the buildings that have interactive displays.  They ran around the tree of life for a while.

  L to R: Finn (9), Jack (10), Cade (6), Sophie (2), Brandon (13), Makenzie (10), Kellen (4), Liam (3), Isabella (7)  We had already dropped of Morgan (15) at EFY, we were quite a sight with our large crew.

Then we had ice cream at the Cougareat.  It was a hot day, and by the time we were finished everyone was really tired.  Cause don't they all look thrilled to be waiting for their ice cream.

Hostas

Jack is going to be in fifth grade this fall-I can hardly believe he is already that old.  I remember fifth grade really well.  His teacher is planning on teaching them about inheritance and some genetics this year.  So a few weeks a go we went and helped pollinate hostas with his teacher to make some cross breeds and then later in the year the kids will grow out their seeds to see what happens.  Jack and a friend we there and at first you could tell they weren't all that excited about school in the summer, but after going over what they were going to do and why, they really got into it.  There were a lot of varieties of hostas with dozens of different traits, they picked traits they liked, then pollinated the two different plants.  It was a really fun morning.   The whole project made me excited for this school year.  I love that his teacher took time out of his summer to start a project with his students. 

Baseball Season

We have just finished up Isabella's second baseball season.  Last year she did t-ball, and this year she played coach pitch.  She had a great time!  After watching Jack play, she is pretty particular about what positions she plays.  She tried to go from catcher, to pitcher, to first base, to short stop.  It's pretty funny that she has caught on to which positions get the most play, especially since she doesn't seem to really want to go after the ball.  We had fun watching her this year, though we melted during a few games. 

I have shockingly few pictures of Jack's baseball season.  A lot of his games were after 8, so I stayed home and put the girls to bed, and since Nate coached, we couldn't switch off going to games.  He played catcher and pitcher and second base this year, in the picture, he is catching.  His season had a lot of rain and cooler weather.  And I broke my camera at his last game.  I pulled it out of my pocket to stick in my purse and all sorts of dirt blew into the lens, it then made an awful noise and the shutter popped off.  I was very sad and had a hard time picking out something new.  Finally I settled on a Panasonic Lumix, which I like so far. 

Jack's team had a good year, at this age they get to play on the same team two years in a row, so some of the kids had played together before.  Nate coached for both years and that worked out really well for our schedule.  Jack has a lot of fun and is looking forward to next year.