The Decoy "Family Party"

Hi, everyone. Tomorrow is Ky's 12th birthday and we are throwing her a little surprise slumber party tomorrow with some of her close friends. In an effort not to ruin the surprise, we planned a little decoy family party for tonight and had some cake and gift opening, telling her that mom and dad had other things going on for tomorrow, so we needed to celebrate a day early.

Jason's family has a tradition of getting a cedar chest for the grandchildren when they turn 12. This is a very generous gift from Grandma and Grandpa Allen and Kiley has been anxiously awaiting her 12th birthday. She got to pick it out, but she was not able to open it until tonight. She loves it and it looks great in her new room.

Jason and I gave her the gift from us tonight also, which was the giraffe bedding you see in the pictures. She seemed very happy to get rid of the pink bed spread that did not really go with her Africa theme.

Her room really looks great now. I've been hesitant to send pictures of her room till we got some better bedding in there.

Summer is flying by...

Well, we had a great time in Idaho for a visit and for James's baptism in July. We spent some time in Island Park for the Wallace Family Reunion. The excitement really picked up when a grizzly bear and her two cubs visited our camp at night and tried to get into everything. We were staying in our tent and that was SCARY!

This is a funny picture of Russ, riding my mom's pink and very girly bike.

We visited Mesa Falls while we were there. Very beautiful. The cousins had a fun time playing together and spending time with eachother. We loved holding Sandy's new baby, too. She is so sweet. We also floated the river and nearly froze to death.

I love this picture of Kristie getting a drink at the falls. She is hilarious. For those of you who don't know Kristie. She married my brother. We really like her. She's a keeper.

Then we went back to Rupert and got to spend some time with Jas's family. Everyone came down from Utah for the weekend (and the baptism). Quite a group!

It was really fun to see everyone, and of course we wish we could visit more often, but it was really neat to have everyone there for the baptism.

Then we went to Twin Falls for the Temple open house and that was awesome. Very Pretty! We had a picnic lunch at Shoshone Falls afterward, and then headed to Boise for a few days. While there, we had a Settlers of Catan playoff game at Tracy's house. AND I WON!!!!

Then we headed back to Blackfoot for a couple days of down time with my parents. We went to Bear World with them too and that was really cool.

Now it is back to reality here in Wisconsin and it is hard to step back into my calling and my normal responsibilities. We did have a great time at the Company Picnic last weekend. Tomorrow we are going to take the kids to Six Flags. We got Ky's room all done and she is moved in (kind of). Jason surprised me for my birthday and had the computer all set up in the basement and the den is now done! Here is a picture of Ky's bedroom before she moved in.

She wants a giraffe room (her favorite animal) That is why we did yellow and brown. It looks way cuter in real life. This is a bad picture.

Smell that New Carpet!

Well, the new carpet is fabulous! We are loving the basemnent. Jason impressed us all with a cartwheel when he came home on Monday and saw the carpeted basement. He and I have stayed up till 2:00 am for the last two nights, finishing up the tile and stuff. Jason insists that we not move anything downstairs until all the little finishing touches are DONE. He is afraid we will never finish the little things if we start moving in down there. So this is killing me and I am pushing him to get it done. Here are some pictures of the Family Room:

Ky's room is behind the door on the opposite side of this room. The uncarpeted, messy room here is going to be Jason's Wood Working room and a storage room. Right now it is piled high with boxes and stuff. Here are some pictures of the tiled area.

The doorway on the left is a just a large storage closet. Jason is going to put shelves in there for me. The other doorway is the bathroom and on the right is where our little kitchenette will go. Here is a better picture of the kitchen area and the bathroom. Kate is modeling where the toilet will be...

And last, but not least, the den which I am most excited about because that means I can get this computer and desk out of my bedroom...

And there you have it. This weekend we hope to finish the doors and outlets and then start moving some stuff down there. It has been a very exciting week. This is a project that started about two years ago. Yay for Jason for doing this for me! Well, okay for us. He is pretty stoked to put up his projector and speakers too.

TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR

Okay, these are the pictures we took the other night when we went to the park for our volleyball game and found out that our VB net was burried in about 6 feet of water. We took some other pictures too, but they are on my phone and I am not going to transfer them over anytime soon. This picture above is a picture of the pavilion at the JMBA (a private park owned by Jason's company.) This pavilion is actually built on stilts to prevent this kind of flooding. Bummer. Here are a few more photos of the JMBA.

The water went down quickly, though. These photo's were taken on June 9th, and yesterday, (the 23rd) the water was gone and they had a fresh load of sand brought in for our sand volleyball game. We won too! Our first win! We have a team made up of members of our ward who all work for SCJ. We call ourselves "Jerry's kids" named after our old bishop (Who is also on our team.) We are having a lot of fun with that and the kids love to come and play at the park during our games.

AND here is a photo of Will, who recently noticed that he did not have ANY pictures on our blog.

And below is a picture of Will outside with Pip and the bucket behind him is full of crayfish that he and the neighbor kids caught in our neighborhood pond. This is an everyday thing for Will. He loves catching bugs and frogs and tadpoles and crayfish, minnows, turtles, etc.

We are off this weekend to Jellystone Park for our Annual Neighborhood Campout. I will surely be posting some pictures of that next week.

Summer cuts

We are loving summer! The girls went to the salon with me yesterday for "a trim" and ended up getting a cute little summer cut. Kate went first and got her hair chopped and Kiley liked Kate's hair so much that she wanted the same thing done on her hair. They look so cute and Kate's haircut makes her look so grown up! She was very worried that dad and Will would not like her haircut. She was relieved when they loved it.

Tonight Kiley is off to her "Camp Rock party" at a friends house. She loves those Jonas Brothers! The rest of us are headed to Milwaukee for the "members night" at the zoo. They will let us feed and pet the stingrays and sharks. The boys are all over that! Then Saturday we have our last chance to get our tile and woodwork done in our basement. The carpet installation guys will be there next week to put in our carpet and then I can have my house back!!!





In other news, Jason had to participate in this 50 year anniversary for Pledge. He had a Elvis costume made entirely out of Pledge duster cloths (including the wig) and he had a co-worker dress up in the pledge costume that looks like a huge can of pledge. I am going to try to download a video of his practice run - where he was singing happy birthday to just a can of pledge - Elvis style. Pretty funny. Bad quality camera, though.

We can see the end in sight. Only 4 more days of school. The kids are loving this week with all the field trips, awards assemblies, and cleaning out locker type stuff. Baseball is getting pretty crazy but we enjoy spending the evenings at the baseball diamonds. Primary stuff seems to never end. I have a teacher inservice on Sunday that I am in charge of. Also, Jason is taking the boys to the Stake Father/Son outing this weekend. I think Lara is coming over to hang out with me and the girls while our hubbies are camping with the boys. Pride and Predjudice night perhaps? Lara just had a baby girl (Lucy) We had a big baby shower here at my house for her.

Hmm. I just realized that Lara actually isn't really in any of those pictures. Let me see if I can find a picture of Lara...

Here we are mini golfing with Mike and Lara Meier. These are our good friends here. We do a lot with them. I hate these pictures, though!

Other news. Well, Kiley got a part in her Jr. High play, OZ. She got the part of one of the main munchkins, LOQ. She did so good. Here are a few photo's.

Here She is as LOQ:

And as a Poppy:

And she is totally going to kill me for this, but Jason even took a couple of the guy she likes. He was a flying monkey. Kam, remember when we were flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz?
Okay. It is way past my bedtime. I will write more next week.