I went camping and took no pictures. It was that bad.

Well, it wasn't that bad.  We took all three girls camping last night and I got less than 5 hours of sleep. That part was not fun.  But I know all three girls enjoyed themselves (not sure Cecily's clothes will ever be the same color again), and I've always liked cooking things over a fire and finding things to entertain oneself outdoors. It was certainly not worth the effort of packing up all that stuff and setting up all that stuff to (not really) sleep outdoors for one night. We are planning on at least some of us going camping with the Watts', Strattons, and Coombs' at Flaming Gorge in two weeks, so this was our trial run.

This last week went by really fast. I don't know exactly what I did all week. Mostly prepared for camping and tried to entertain the girls, I guess. I'm too tired to figure out anything else.  So you get some cute pictures of Cecily to quantify my week.

This was Emilia's birthday balloon from Nana, but Cecily carted it around and played with it all week.

Emilia is 6!

It's crazy to have kids that get older, isn't it? Pretty soon I'll be saying, I can't believe she's 16! or I can't believe I'm old enough to have a 16 year old!  Although Wilda told me she has a 40-year-old this year.  I'm happy mine is only 6.

We threw a Frozen-themed party for her. And she invited 18 girls.  Good thing only 11 came.

Cera, Emilia, and Maia making snowmen.

Just kidding.  I am a crazy person. 13 girls age 3-9? Sheesh.

All the lovely princesses

But they all seemed to love it, so I guess I did good.  Plus, I have an awesome Momma who drove down and helped.  And it was in the evening so Steve was home to help.

It was pretty easy to come up with activities, since every little girl in the country wants to be Princess Elsa or Princess Anna.  Pinterest was full-up with "Frozen Birthday Party Ideas."

More Olaf-making

We played pin-the-nose-on-Olaf, had a scavenger hunt with lines from the songs on Frozen, "froze" our retaining wall (drew snowflakes on it with chalk), built (playdough) snowmen, made necklaces, opened presents, ate cake and ice cream, and watched the movie.

Opening presents

We had the party on her actual birthday.  That day we also went to the McDonald's play place near our house for lunch.

 After church today, we drove up to my parents' house for a birthday dinner for Megan and Emilia. Emilia was super excited to get another Equestria Girl (a My Little Pony human-ish thing). I had once vowed to never have one in my house because they are a little creepy.  But alas, my children's desires have once again thwarted my plans.

Emilia, Nana, Haylee, Dylan, Mira (in front, facing Nana), and Grandpa (behind at the table)

What did we do this week?

Hmmm.  What did we do this week?  Whatever it was I didn't feel it worthy of pictures apparently, but I didn't take any. I have been preparing for Emilia's birthday party.  Birthday parties are huge productions at my house, because I couldn't possibly do anything part way.  Thank goodness Megan is doing the cake, so I don't have to freak out over that this week.

Cleaning off the back patio on Thursday was quite the task. Emilia had decided at the beginning of the summer that she needed to make a fairy house on the patio.  This consisted of three paving blocks stacked to make a house.  Then she put in some of her doll furniture and some play food.  It was cute. That is, it was cute until a friend came over to play and they decided to make 8 more similar houses and a sand castle with a garden made of dead flowers and grass and rocks.  They also thought it was tons of fun to throw wet sand at the retaining wall to see if it would stick. Oy. Add all the leaves and tree seeds and spiderwebs from the last year and you've got your work cut out for you.

Thursday I had my writer's group and Friday Steve had game night.  Thursday I also discovered our sprinkler line had a leak, so we had to fix that Saturday morning, so we could water our grass and our garden again.  After we found the leak, we took the girls up Hobble Creek Canyon to play for a while, then we came home and cleaned the house and made dinner since we had some friends over to share it with us. A pretty good week.

Here is a picture and a video from Friday night.  Costco had matching PJs for all my girls and Cecily was being her cute self.

For the video, click here.

My house

I have finally taken pictures of my house and gotten them off my camera!

To start, I got Ben (since he's a certified Realtor now) to find me the picture of our house from when it was listed before we bought it. (All my Utah friends, if you need to buy or sell, let me know and I'll give you his info.)

Here is the before picture:

And here is the after:

You can see most of the rock terraces we put in here.

A closer look.

My front door.

A look at my garden.

To the right of the front door (when you are facing the house).

Another view of the front of the house.

The side of the house.

I love how it turned out! I feel like it's mine now and that I've beautified it to the best of my ability. It's a good feeling.

Happy 4th!

We had a busy and good 4th of July. I was sad that I didn't get to go home to ND for the holiday like my mom and dad and Megan's family did. But I did feel a little bit better when I found out they'd canceled the parade, which is my favorite part besides the fireworks. Me and Mira and Emilia went to a pancake breakfast put on by our ward at 7:30am and then grabbed our stuff and headed for the Provo Freedom Festival parade which started at 9am.

It only took me about 40 minutes to be bored of the parade. They didn't allow anybody to hand things out! I'm surprised the kids lasted as long as they did.  Here they are covering their ears as the emergency vehicles went by with their sirens on.  They are not fans of loud noises of any kind. (Getting them to use public restrooms that flush automatically is an interesting endeavor.)

There is a highschool and a free-to-the-public bagpipe group in the area.  They marched in the parade together.

The girls thought this knight in full armor was pretty cool.  Also (not pictured) the costume company that had people wearing Elsa and Anna costumes were a big hit.

After the parade, we made a pasta salad and then headed up to Nick and Wilda's.  Steve's sisters Nicole and Cindy and their families got there a couple of hours later and we had quite the feast (including what everyone told me was a super spectacular pasta salad). :D Grandpa had games planned for while we were waiting to start fireworks.  He also gave the girls chalk to decorate the driveway in patriotic pictures.  They had tons of fun.  Of course, the evening ended with lots of fireworks, and at least one of my girls running in terror from the noise.

Yesterday, we let the girls play with their cousins until dinner time when we went over to Ben and Haylee's house.  Alison came down and a couple of our friends joined us, too. We barbequed and played games outside after it cooled down a little bit. The girls were exhausted after going to bed after 11pm on the 4th and Mira not napping, so we took them home and put them to bed rather earlier than we would have liked.

Sometime earlier this week, I needed to go shopping and didn't want to take all the girls with me.  In fact I was mostly done with mothering for the day by the time Steve got home from work. But he was mostly done with putting energy into anything, too.  So we compromised.  I left Mira and Cecily with him, and took Emilia with me.  It ended up being fun.  Emilia is getting to the age now that we can talk while we shop and I don't have to worry about her wandering off.

She was so good on our trip that I decided to take her for ice cream before we headed home.  She was a happy camper.

Cecily has started climbing things. Here she is climbing up in the bathroom and stealing her sisters' toothbrushes.  She climbed up onto a plastic chair this week, too, and fell off onto a bench.  She has a lovely mustache-like bruise on her face to show for it.

Not only does she have a ugly bruise on her face, but last night she broke out in this nasty rash. We have no idea what caused it. And it hasn't gone away yet.  I hope it's not contagious (like it's from an allergy or something) or else I infected a whole lot of small children with viral rash this weekend. The poor girl has this all over her tummy, back, feet, hands, neck, scalp, and face. It's so sad!