Sisters

Rebecca went to spend a week with my parents.  I was surprised how emotional and Emily & Alyssa were when she left.  They exchanged multiple hugs and then broke down into tears for a while when she drove away.   They eagerly await her phone calls each night & Emily hates sleeping all alone so she has joined the boys in their room each night.  They are so fortunate to have each other & to have to share a room.  I think that is one of the benefits of having a big family.  It makes me think of the good times growing up sharing a room with my sister Melinda.

Road Trip Day 2 (by Becca)

This is day 2 of our road trip.

And it isn't Heidi writing this, it's Becca.

Ready?

So we left Nancy's house

and headed out.
We were originally going to stop at a children's museum, but we changed our plans. So we drove six hours straight to my Dad's Uncle Lee's house.

When you're in the car for 6 hours, there's lots of time for messing around with cameras.

Stopping at gas stations

Looking at scenery

Oregon actually looks a lot like Idaho, just more rocks and not as many tumbleweeds.

We were always SUPER excited to get out and stretch our legs. Hence, Emily's smile.

Once we got into Washington there was a lot more water, and a lot more green.

All these pictures were taken from the car, that's why you'll see seatbelts and dark lines along the edges of a lot of them.

There were lots of bridges too, so that you could cross over all that water.


There was this one river that just continued for eternity. It went on fore-e-e-ver. It just kept following us all over.

We finally got to Uncle Lee's and ate hot dogs and chips. One of the coolest things was that he had a pool.

That had a diving board. Jacob got lots of cool photos of jumping off (all the ones of Daniel were of him standing on the board and plugging his nose. And my mom didn't take any pictures of me)

Like I said, Jacob had lots of cool flips.

My swim shirt got lost in the car somewhere (typical) so I had to wear my Dad's huge gray one. It was okay, you couldn't tell too much in the water.

While we swam in the pool, the adults played bocce. (I personally think it's boring, but most people really like it)

If you've never played bocce, you must not know my parents very well. I think we play it at every family gathering, and at lots of the adults-from-the-neighborhood-get-together-and-eat-chips-and-play-mafia-game-night.

Alyssa is sort of attatched to my Dad, and when she broke her leg that increased. The world pretty much ends if he goes to work without getting her cereal. Or if anyone else takes her to the bathroom. Or if he sets her down.

But it's sort of cute.

They also had a really bouncy trampoline. Josh had fun on it too.

But that may be partially due to the fact that there was a half eaten capri-sun that he got to stab/squeeze to death.

It was pretty fun. Stay tuned for more!

Vacation to Washington Day 1 (by Becca)

 THIS IS A POST BY BECCA. BECCA IS HIGHLY AWESOME SO THIS POST MAY BE A LITTLE MORE AMAZING THAN USUAL. PLEASE DO NOT FREAK OUT, JUST GO VISIT BECCA'S BLOG FOR MORE AWESOMENESS.

Hi guys! In case you couldn't tell, this is a post by me. I have posted in the past, but today's post won't be like that.

It'll be really serious.

Hardcore.
 
Sort of like this cookie.

Except for that cookie is filled with sprinkles, which belongs up there with all that froofy stuff like unicorns.

Anyways, let's get to the vacation.

We went to Washington. I brought my camera and was an amazing photographer. Sort of. We'll start with Day 1

We started out by going to Steadmonds farm. It's this awesome little place. There's a guy who has lots of land and slip'n'slides and let's anyone use it as long as they call ahead.

The Slip n' slide was fun.

It was sort of cold, so we wore our jackets when we went down.

Sort of weird, but we didn't get too wet, so it worked.

Actually, me and Emily got wet. Our tube flipped over and we went sliding down clinging to each other with me shrieking "Don't let my jacket get wet! Don't let it get wet! My jacket!"

To warm up we spent some time playing in the sandbox.




Steadmans also had a playhouse.

Lyssa wanted to go in it. I got confused about what she was talking about, and told her that was the bathroom. So for the rest of the morning she really wanted to go to the bathroom.

They also had a zipline.

My dad went first and then he tricked conviced me into going too.

He had to help me up

So he wasn't there to catch me at the bottom.

All in all Steadman's was pretty fun.

By the way, I took all these pictures. Except for the zipline ones.

Next, we went to Shoshone Falls. It was cool.

Isn't that rainbow pretty?

It was really big too.

Really fun to look at, and the sound was really loud.

Alyssa was a little camera shy.

Next we went to my dad's old secretary's house. Her name is Nancy. She lives past Happy Valley Road (lots of chuckles when we passed it). She smiles alot.

And I caught it on camera!

Stay tuned for part 2!

June Birthdays

Jacob was proud to wear his wrestling singlet to celebrate his 11th birthday.

I made him a BYU dry erase board which came in handy on our road trip.

Luckily I found this basketball set for $1 at a garage sale just a few days before his birthday & he has loved slam dunking it in the kitchen.

 Since Alyssa's birthday was on the same day as the neighborhood barbecue & we were already stuffed with treats, we waited a few days to eat her cake, so I improvised and split the sheet cake in half for both of them to share rather then having 2 cakes hanging around the house to tempt me.  Alyssa loved her princess plates with the "strawberry shortcake" & the BYU tablecloth was perfect for Jacob.

After cake and ice cream I took all of the kids and Jacob's friend to the local tumbling/tramp jumphouse.  Jacob has always preferred smaller groups of friends.  Ever since I planned the surprise party for him with a lot of boys in the neighborhood, he's opted not to have a "friend party" but just to do something special with one friend or with the family.  I love that about him, because I don't enjoy throwing parties much!

Now that Alyssa's 3 she thinks she deserves all of the privileges that "BIG" people get.  Today she said, "Mom now that I'm big can I use the knife (to cut some carrots)?  Big Girls can use sharp knives!" I quickly dashed her dream on that one. She has been eagerly anticipating turning 3.

 Several months ago she wouldn't wear some clothes I wanted her to put on.  I convinced her by showing her the tag that said 2.  Since she was 2, she conceded and then began to be a frequent "tag checker."  This tactic backfired on me because she found a lot of her clothes that said 3 and didn't want to wear them.  So I showed her the "A" in "wAsh in warm water..." and she was satisfied that the A was for Alyssa so it was okay for her to wear them.  Fortunately pretty much all of the clothes she has say "wAsh...." somewhere on the tag:)   She loves finding "A's" in the books I read to her too.

Not enough fingers for 11... hard to believe my boy will be a deacon next year!