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Me, Screaming from the rooftops...

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for,that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

From “Ten Secrets for a Successful Family” by Adrian Rogers, 1996

Found it on a friends blog and have to re-iterate it!

Second 1/2 of Summer

Summer is officially over, so I'm posting the second half,
we had a wonderful time!!

Ethan found the squirt bottle.

And loved it

I had to get some sleeping pictures. That pink thing is my old robe which is now his blankie

Ahhh...summer days, D's at work and we play and play and play

Ethan trying to hold more bouncie balls than his little hands can carry

D's Birthday dinner. Kneading pizza dough can work up a sweat!
So can a hot oven in the background.

This is Samuel bored, right before I suggested this...

Ethan was launched

But Samuel went down that thing so fast he caught air off the end and
got grass-burn on his chest.
Poor guy...
but so hilarious! :)

Pizza dough had risen and was getting rolled out.
What concentration! :)

D loved his cake, happy 26th honey!

Ethan got a couple dozen of these little cars for his last birthday and he loves them.

He has begun to park them side by side.

And pretends to give them a drink from his water bottle

D often puts Ethan to bed, but if I haven't heard any noises or story-reading for a while
this is what I find.
Ethan is getting so big!

Samuel was in charge of activity for FHE, and he had just competed in a bridge building contest using toothpicks and glue and wanted us to try it as a family. We got all of the supplies and went for it.
This is D's bridge.

This is Samuel's bridge that ended up winning the contest. We had a hard time balancing buckets of food storage and gallons of water on it, but in the end Samuel's held out longest. We didn't think to take pictures till after mine was already demolished.

I found Ethan like this one morning when I came to check on him,
he was reading it out loud
in baby-speak.

This is my trip to Idaho!!
I met up with Heidi first (girl on the right), then we finally saw Tiffany (driving)
and her new husband Skylar.

These girls are awesome, we were roommates my senior year at BYU-Idaho.

We stayed at a hotel in Mountain home and got up early the day of the wedding to help with getting ready.

Heidi and I waiting outside of the Boise temple.

Here they are!

Tiffany and her dad.

She was gorgeous!

Heidi and I in line with everyone for the big picture.
It was so much fun to have Heidi to play with. :)

Hours of photos

Tiffany's little sisters

Happiness

One of the greatest couples I've ever met.
Still in love after five kids! :)

It was a hot day!

At the luncheon

They had some great cheesecake, but I can't handle too much rich stuff like cheesecake or frosting, I always end up taking a bite then giving the rest to D.
This time I gave my extra cheesecake to Heidi.


Heidi after eating my cheescake

Me at the reception

Heidi having fun with my camera

After I got back from Idaho my Dad came down from Washington.
This is us at the park with Ethan.

Samuel got into a summer engineering program and had a huge graduation in August.
My Dad (Papa) and Ethan were buds the whole time.

Here's the gym at UTSA, Samuel is waaay down there on the gym floor.

We are so proud of him.

Here is Daniel getting a famous haircut. Growing up, my dad always cut our hair,
even us girls.
It's also a tradition that babies born in the family get their hair cut for the first time by my dad on their first birthday.
So while my dad was here we had to take part in the tradition.

We also took my Dad downtown to the Alamo and the riverwalk.
I got in a bit of trouble for taking this picture,
I forgot that you weren't supposed to take pictures inside any of the buildings, even the ones around the Alamo,
but he was just too cute when he went up to the signs and read them out loud.

We also went to the Guiness Museum downtown
and this is how small the smallest person in the world is.

And the tallest.

And here's the biggest person on record, making funny faces for the camera

Ethan saw some basketballs and would stop at nothing to get them,

even if that meant crawling into a cage.

Or licking the glass cases they were held in.

At the end of the day we ended up in an arcade
and I caught my dad kicking butt with a shot gun.
He's such a stud!
He sent me a few pictures today of what he looked like in college
and I just have to put them up:

At graduation...around 18-20 years old I think.

When he joined the Marines!

Getting an award.


Looks like a year book pictures. What a handsome guy.
Love you Dad!

First 1/2 Summer

I was thinking about separating these pictures by event, but it's just not happenin'.

Too many!

Let's start at the beginning of the summer ...

Samuel had his end-of-the-year band concert.
He will miss Mr. D, but is excited to be in Wind Ensemble this fall.

He tested and got first chair in clarinets.
You can see him in the middle sitting down with the black glasses.

Early this summer we went to the annual SRC picnic! We got to meet Daniel's new co-workers and got to see old friends. And as always the food was awesome!
Ethan of course went for the first ball he could find.

And started kicking it

We went for a walk around the park
and got drenched in the rain.

We made it back in time for Samuel to finish up the pinata!
Blew it to bits.

For the picnic they gave us free tickets to the attractions in the park.
A fun one was the train!

Ethan was a water fiend that day.

Samuel's funny faces.

We were at the caboose

We got tickets for miniature golf too...Samuel's a great shot.

The clubs were a little short for D.

Ethan wouldn't let go of the colored golf balls we gave him.
After D shot, Ethan ran after his ball and tried to find it in the castle.

Determined

"Where-go?"

Grandma and Papa Johnson came into town for a week and this is the only picture I got of their visit. Sorry Grandma, it's only one, but it's a good one. :)

Ethan loves Momma's lasagna!

"I like it A-LOT!"

Father's Day = an afternoon of cooking.

D got a personalized cheese cake from scratch.

Then the boys wrestled for a while.
As you can see, Ethan's winning streak is still intact.

Ready for lift off!

Up, up and away!

"I love Daddy's sound effects!"

Daddy's tuckered out

But Samuel's ready to go!
C'mon horsie!

I love footie pajamas from Children's Place.
I got these on sale and I LOVE them.

Momma busted out the bubbles

Ethan loves bubbles!

I don't usually let him rome without clothes, but we went out to water the grass and his diaper started to swell, and eventually I just took it off.
There's no point.
So he got to run around naked for a little bit.

I came home from the gym one day and was craving shrimp!

So we pulled out the new BBQ-er, and our old table into the back yard
and made shrimp and chicken kabobs with fresh pineapple and veggies!
Soo good.

This is Ethan's first Kabob.
He really liked the pinapple, just like his daddy.

Samuel's ready to eat!

And here is the remnants of our feast!

For the 4th of July we went to the Circus, just like last year.

The pre-show was Awesome!

They didn't have this guy last year.

Daniel had to lift E up above his head to reach.
I think it rocked his world to see a guy that tall.

Over-all, this year's circus was nothing compared to last year's Bello-bration circus by Barnum & Bailey. I guess they rotate different circus themes each year and I just didn't like this year's as much as last year's.

But we got clown noses!!

This picture reminds me of last year's...

Ethan was only 6 months old!

Speaking of Ethan's age....

Can you say: NURSERY!

Yup, my son's in nursery.

This was taken July 5th, 2009, after his first day in nursery.

Which he loved!

And this is his first ever colored picture that he brought home for me.

It's still hanging on the fridge.

Ethan was quite the socialite this summer.
He got invited to a handful of birthday parties and had a great time!
Here he's at Ryah's 2nd birthday.

They had punch balls!

And yummy food.

This is us with Ryah's little brother Jace.

This Summer! First of many posts

I came into the living room one day and this is what I saw...

Hilarious!

I had put up the blue string to keep the books on the shelf.

But it did more than keep in books!
Poor guy couldn't get down without help.

Cibolo Nature Center

One Saturday we hopped in the car and headed north to Boerne. Our car window was broken and wouldn't go back up and just our luck, it started to rain. More like it started to pour.

But Alaskans are NOT scared of rain!

So we kept going and got to the Cibolo Nature Center for craft day. They had moved most of the activities under gazebos to protect them from the down pour

Even though it was raining it was still nice and warm. Here's Ethan just when we arrived.

Ethan got to make his own bracelet!

He did really well putting on the pony beads!

Samuel made one too!

Lots of sidewalk chalk

Ethan did his first painting!

All by himself.
Check out his look of concentration.

I painted his name and wa-la!
What masterpieces!

Samuel has a very steady hand.

Lovin the sidewalk chalk...again.

Trying to share

The rain kept coming so they put away all of the crafts.
But that didn't stop us!
So we hit the trail!

We were the only ones out there because of the rain and we loved it.
Living in such a big city, it's been a long time since
we've felt that kind of peace.

Ethan took off and was King of the Trail, and Samuel found a great walking stick.

Ethan likes to hold hands now.

Pictures on the bridge. Poor Samuel is getting his hair pulled.

Ethan had a messy diaper and we had to change his outfit when we got back to the car.

We felt a breeze and busted out the kites.

We found a deserted field and got some pretty good runs,
besides the kite getting caught in a tree.

So Daniel shimmied up there to get it.

He got a little beat up in the process.

Samuel was a pro!

Heading back to the car...

Ethan konked out on the ride home with my jacket to keep him protected from the rain.
What an adventure!

A few months ago...

Ethan is getting bigger. He knows what is "HoT" now. He likes to turn on the oven light and peek in when I'm baking.


He grabbed the empty pop can out of the garbage. He looks so cute palming it with one hand like that.

Samuel got honored at an academic awards ceremony and got a medal and everything. He's in line along the wall waiting to be recognized.

And here I am, in the back behind the rows of seats, with Ethan literally running circles around me.

Helping Momma with laundry.

Then crashing in my arms. Love it.

Lesson learned

A few weeks ago Samuel was bored on a Sunday. We believe in keeping the sabbath day holy, so we try to focus our activaties on things that will help us to grow spiritually. So I asked Samuel what he could do that would help him to grow spiritually. He decided he wanted to build something. I said that he could as long as he could connect it to a spiritual principle.

So he decided to build a catapult.

Daniel and Ethan even joined him out in the driveway, lashing branches together.
It stood about 3 feet tall!


I told him (jokingly) that he had to draw me a diagram and make a presentation. He got really into it and drew me a number of ways to figuratively use a catapult in a spiritual sense. This is one of the many uses. "HF" being Heavenly Father, "s" being satan, and our more powerful weapon against the small stone of money troubles, being tithing.

Love it!

Solo Competition

Samuel took part in a solo competition at his school.
He got all dressed up one Saturday morning and we piled into the family vehicle
(only with a bike rack on the trunk).

He had been practicing the piece for months, with an accompanist and everything! but he was still a little nervous.

This was his first time in front of a judge by himself!

We knew he would do well. He got in line and tapped his leg nervously as he waited for the flutist to finish. I was so proud of the way he sucked it up as he entered the room, looked the judge in the eye, introduced himself, and counted off with the accompanist. It wasn't flawless, he's only in 7th grade, but it was awesome!
He got a ONE!
(That's good in band-speak) and he was so proud!

He did so well we went to celebrate, at his favorite restaurant - HuHot.

Ethan loved it too! He sat the whole time in his seat, never crying to get down.

He even wiped up his mess!

After that I took him outside to burn off the extra energy.

Here he is, doing what he loves to do - run. Up and down the corridor. Back and forth. There and back. Endlessly. Much like the adorable Lilly, he's an "Energizer Bunny".

Da Park!

Ethan-ator loves the park! He could swing 24-7!

Here he is in his new basketball outfit.

"Are ya comin' Mom?"