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!