Growing up

Alisha went on a dive trip to Southern California for a few days with Matt and I was surprised to see this note that she left for Austin on the message board in the kitchen.

She must be growing up if she is doing something this thoughtful!

Summer Sleeps Over

Our niece Summer (Josh and Debbie's 4-year old) stayed the night with us while her parents went to Snowbird. She's always so much fun to have over. She always brings her "Pet Shop" toys to play with and loves to throw pretzels and pieces of banana for Missy to catch.

Look how long her hair is! Alisha did a good job of getting her bathed and doing her hair for the day. (Although she got tired of trying to dry it so I had to help out).
Summer even wore an orange shirt to show support at Alisha's Volleyball game Saturday morning. (Alisha is the middle girl in the photo with black shorts & the number 14 on her shirt.)

Utah State Fair

We went to the State Fair earlier this month. We took our nephew Jace with us also.

(He's in the center carrot)

The size of some of the cows was really impressive!
We thought the little coats and hoods on the sheep were funny. Especially the white coats and hoods on the black sheep...it looked like a screwed up animal version of the KKK!

The boys had never felt how thick and soft the wool on sheep is. They got to check it out on a few un-dressed sheep. Alisha was really into the "Fair Food" Here she is eating a carmel apple next to a pig's butt.

She also had a funnel cake and cotton candy!
The little pigs were my favorite part. I guess they reminded me of the story of Wilbur in "Charlotte's Webb"

Time Out for Missy!

We have a plastic tray in the kitchen where we put muddy and wet shoes.

Matt told Missy to sit on it the other day and made her stay there for a couple of minutes so we've decided to call it her "Time Out Spot". If we tell her to go to Time Out, she'll go and sit on the tray. It's so funny!

(Of course she's rarely in trouble so don't think she's really being punished...)

Too bad the kids don't mind this well when they are told to go to their rooms!

Football Season Begins

Austin is playing tackle football this fall for the first time. He's played two years of flag football but decided that it's time to be a MAN and play for real!

He's playing on Orem's Lightweight team (which is actually combined with boys from Oak Canyon and Pleasant Grove).

He weighed in at a whoppin' 93 pounds! (Luckily the boys have to weigh 105 or less to be in the Lightweight division so no one is too much bigger than him!)

At each practice, one boy is given the gold jersey (their usual jerseys are light blue).

Today Austin was given the coveted gold jersey because he worked the hardest at practice.

He was so excited!

Silly dog!

Missy is such a funny dog. She loves to lay by the side of our bed and just be near me.

Recently she was in her usual place and Matt threw a T-shirt on her head but instead of getting up and shaking it off, she just laid there...for about 15 minutes!

She's such a calm, sweet dog...I love her!

I love the way she comes in to wake me up in the morning, sitting calmly for a minute or two before nudging me with her cold, wet nose if I don't pay attention to the fact that she's there.

I love how she gets excited for her breakfast and runs into the kitchen if I give the indication that I'm getting up. Then how she comes back to check on me if I don't get up.

I love how she sits patiently at the sliding glass window when the cats are finished eating so she can go out and finish any food that they've left.

I love how she sometimes snores and sometimes has "bad puppy dreams" and twitches restlessly in the depths of her dreaming.

I love how she can sense whenever someone opens a banana and comes running in hoping they will share with her.

She's a funny, sweet dog!

9th Grade - Here she comes!

I'm not sure why Alisha had this scared/nervous look on her face, after all, Junior High is nothing new for her! I think she was just trying to show her comical personality (she gets it from her dad of course)
Here she is trying to giver her best "nerd" smile since she's convinced that everyone thinks she is one...

I personally love her new glasses on her and think that she is a beautiful, intelligent, funny, sometimes sweet and helpful young woman!

I'm proud of her and her accomplishments. I love being around her!

Austin starts 7th Grade!

Austin tried to avoid the traditional "First Day of School" photo but his sister was happy to help persuade him that he had to do it!
I can't believe we don't have anyone in Elementary School this year...it's a strange sensation!

I also realized that we no longer have to take the photos in front of the faded blue siding and ugly front door. Its nice to start the new school year off with a picture in front of the new door!

Austin's really been going through a growth spurt lately.

It will be interesting to compare next year's picture to this one and compare where his head is in relation to the glass in the door!

Lagoon

We haven't taken a "family" vacation together this summer so we opted instead to spend a day at Lagoon.

Each of the kids got to bring a friend. Alisha brought Brianne Baugh and Austin brought his cousin, Jace Torrens.

Rocket Blast Off! Just to the left of the pole is Austin with Jace in the middle on the left.Matt and Alisha are seating to the right of the pole.

Everyone but me and Austin LOVED the Wicked rollercoaster.

You can see Matt, Alisha, Brianne & Jace standing in line between the two trees. Austin cooling off in the fountain at the main entrance. It was a really hot day (about 98 degrees) so this was a good idea!

MY FAVORITE RIDE! The Tilt-a-Whirl! I rode six times (four in a row).

I just love to make it go as fast as I can. I found that riding with just Austin and I in the car was the perfect amount of weight to really get it spinning!

It was a great day and we had a lot of fun. We got there just after 11 am and by the time we left at 8:15 we were all wiped out!

EFY Continues.

Pizza Night. Front to back: Baylie, Brook, Erin, Lindsey,

Allie, Sydnee, Angie, Kristine and Alisha

Alisha really enjoyed her counsler Allie and

had lots of fun and learned a lot from her.

During Alisha and Kristine's Free Time they wrote a poem for their counsler and the guy she likes who is also a counsler at EFY. Just in case you cant read it, it says:

If only Allie was able to ask Gabel if he was availible and if he was date-able because he's so irreplaceable. They would eat at a table and watch some cable near a stable and would talk about how they're so relatable. They would attach themselves with a staple so that they would be unescapeable but that might just make them inflateable. After, they would go to lable a cradle but thats just a fable, haha! But that could be debateable, because when they are together they are just so unhateable. Allie and Gable's pants are good.

Alisha and her group doing their 'Allie' faces.

Especially For Youth

Alisha went to EFY July 7-12 at BYU with our neighbor Kristine Webb (2nd one over from the right and Alisha 4th from the right)

Alisha's Company 'In The Midst'
Alisha and Kristine in their dorm room.
Alisha decided it would be fun to climb the wall because she was the only one in her group with long enough legs to even try.

On the last day the girls counsler decided it would be fun to put all the mattresses in the appartment in the hall and have some fun jumping and rolling around down the hall. They put a mattress up aginst one of the doors and ran down the hall and into the mattress, one of the girls ended up breaking the door knob but there wasn't any major damage, and they had lots of fun doing it.

4th of July

On the afternoon of the 4th we went up to Matt's sister's (Ann Marie) pool to cool off.

She lives about two blocks from Lavell Edward's stadium where they have the Stadium of Fire every year. This year the main performer was Miley Cyrus and we could hear her doing a practice run for the evening performance.

Debbie and Ann with Josh and Summer
Alisha, Austin and their cousins
Matt and his mother Jennie Garner Kallunki hanging out in the shade.

It was a really hot day but I guess the 4th of July is supposed to be hot!

The feast continues....

My good friend Tara came and brought her boys Kelton & Cooper.

Tara and Andrea are two of my best friends!

Logan is really enjoying the watermelon!
Part of the Crawdad Feast tradition is a jello toss where Matt tries to get jello into the mouth of anyone who wants to try and catch it. This photo is Austin trying to get the jello with Alisha and Kelton watching in the background.
Austin loves to smear the jello in his hair and hopes the red color stays for a day or so! I made ten boxes of jello for tossing purposes this time. That's a lot of jello!

Annual Crawdad Feast

Matt and Austin and Matt's dive buddy Luke spent the morning at Strawberry Reservoir gathering crawdads for one of our fun summer traditions - A Crawdad Feast & Jello Toss!

As usual, they brought back about two coolers full.

After washing the crawdads thoroughly several times, it's time to get them ready for the pot.Alisha and her friends Brianne and Shaila Hill help Matt and Austin (ok...they just watch!)

The food is ready and it's time to dig in. Our friends Andrea and Trent Smith came with their baby, Logan. They've eaten at our Crawdad Feast before and know how good it is!

In the pot with the crawdads we also have onions, garlic, spicy sausage, polish sausage, corn on the cob, red pototes and lots of special "crab boil" seasoning.
Austin displays some of the bodies of the crawdads on his fingers!

New Appliances

We've needed to replace our appliances for quite a while. We got the dishwasher for Christmas because it really wasn't functioning at all. We've been waiting for the rest of them to go on sale and finally they are here! We are switching to gas for the stove and it isn't hooked up yet but it's still much nicer to look at than the old $ 100 used stove we've been using for about 12 years!

The fridge is awesome - I'm really enjoying the freezer on the bottom and the double doors for the fridge portion. We moved the old fridge downstairs so now we have ample storage to keep our soda cold!

Time to Landscape

Now that the construction debris is behind us we can get the yard back in shape. Matt and the kids unloaded two trucks full of bark and filled in the flower beds.
What a difference it makes! Even though we haven't planted flowers (and probably won't this year) the dark bark looks really good against the green lawn and makes everything look really finished! Our tomatoes are doing great! We got four plants from Costco which are huge and have blossoms on them. The rest are doing well but are just smaller. The rest of the garden isn't so great. The zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers are struggling. The herbs and the peppers are holding their own....

Go Away!

When I saw this sign, I knew it would be perfect for the front entry of the house. I got it for Matt for Father's Day. Whenever he's in town, we definitely have to have the "Go Away" side showing!

Enjoying the deck

Alisha and Missy sitting on the edge, enjoying the sunny afternoon.
I was afraid Missy would try to jump off the edge of the deck since the railing isn't up yet but it hasn't been a problem. She's content to just lay on the corner in the sun.