Family Reunion

Dave's family is so awesome and has a family reunion every year. This year is was Paul's turn to host. They decided to have a camp out at their house. It's so fun out there! Paul lives on a farm about an hour outside of Rexburg. It's pretty isolated and peaceful. Not to mention that it is a kid heaven! All of the kids were thrilled to be there. With all of the horses and pigs and wide open spaces, no one got bored.

This is the sunset out in Monteview. It was so pretty out there!

But the most entertaining part was all of the water. My kids (minus Logan) would live in the water every day of the summer if we let them. Logan doesn't love it, but I'm sure he'll eventually be the same. In the backyard there was a pool and lots and lots of water balloons. We had a great game of water balloon volleyball. Even Grandma got in on the action. It was a fun weekend!

Max spent almost all of his time running and jumping in the swimming pool. A lot of the other kids were a little bit apprehensive, but not Max. He was the first in the pool and the very last out. We pretty much had to drag him out of it. We set up the action setting on our camera so you could see how funny he was:

4th of July

Most of you already know that we spend our 4th selling fireworks. It starts 9 days before the 4th and in some ways continues until several days after while we finish the inventory and paperwork. We always joke that we celebrate the 4th of July more than most people!

This year was a little different because TNT gave us an extra location. Plus, Michelle and Thomas weren't able to help us like they have in years past. There was a little while that we were pretty nervous about how we were going to run all three locations! Luckily, Dave's sister Andrea and her family stepped up and helped us pull it off. It was a tough year with the dryness and all of the fires. Fireworks sales were down all over the country. We feel blessed that we got the third location so we didn't end up losing money. The third location was just a one year experiment for TNT and we probably won't have it again next year.

With all of the business of selling fireworks, we try to make sure our kids still have time to celebrate. I always take them to the parade that Rexburg has. Afterward, Grandmas was so generous and took them to play with cousins for the rest of the day.

Logan is a huge fan of pop-it's. Every time I took him to visit his dad at the fireworks tent, all he could think about was pop-it's. I think he probably went through a good 20 boxes.

 

Toothless

At the end of June, Max had a pretty eventful day. Well, eventful in six year old terms, anyway. He came to me in the morning and showed me that his two front teeth were loose. We were planning to help some people clean their house before moving, so I got him ready and didn't worry very much about his teeth. In the middle of the cleaning, we had to run back to our house and grab more paper towels. Just as we pulled in the driveway, tooth #1 came out. He was so excited! We put it in the kitchen window and went back to clean. After a while, he came to me and excitedly showed me that his other tooth was so loose that it was bleeding. He worked and worked on that tooth for several hours and finally got it to fall out! He was over the moon by this point! Never has anyone in our family (or in the world according to Max) lost both of their front teeth in the same day!

The tooth fairy must have agreed that it was indeed a pretty special occasion. This is what she left Max:

Now, and only for a while, I lovingly call Max "Toothless". He thinks How to Train Your Dragon is about the coolest thing in the world, so he doesn't seem to mind.

 

 

Father's Day

This year Father's Day kind of snuck up on me. Earlier this year, Dave got a new meat smoker. He already had one, but this new one is like a Cadillac of meat smokers. It's really high tech. It's more like an outdoor oven than a meat smoker. We haven't tried it yet, but it can even cold smoke cheese. Yum! Since it was such a big purchase, we decided that it would be both Dave's birthday and Father's Day present this year.

As Father's Day was approaching, I felt like we couldn't just let the day go without acknowledging it. Plus the kids really wanted to do something for their dad. So, with a little help from Pinterest, we decided to make him a DAD photo collage.

It was really bright and sunny outside when we were taking the pictures. But the kids were troopers and all the pictured turned out really good once we turned then black and white.

 

Logan had 2 different poses. I had a hard time choosing which one to use!

The kids were pretty proud and excited to present it to their dad. Max turned our chair into a Green Bay Packers shrine for his dad to sit in before opening his present. Max is turning into this thoughtful party planner. It's pretty fun to watch!