A word of warning!

A word of warning for all you bloggers out there. Never blog about how much you love your calling, apparently that's a guarantee that you will get released. Yup, I was released from Young Women's. I'm so sad about it. I'd only been in for 10 months. I was called to be the Sacrament Meeting music coordinator, blah! I know I shouldn't say that because either I'll be stuck there for the next decade of my life or I'll get called to something even worse. I've decided that since we're always taught never to turn down a calling we should also have the choice to refuse a release. Who's with me on this?

We're going to France!

Okay, it won't be for more than two years but I've already told Matt we're going to pick Josh up from his mission. I'm so excited for him. It's exactly where he wanted to go. When does that happen? Congratulations Josh, we love you!

Addi's a big girl!

For awhile now, Addi has said, "I can't wait to be big so I can get my ears pierced." So I decided that it was time. Since all the other kids are in school now we took a trip to the mall, just mom and Addi. She picked some pretty pink (of course) flower earrings.

She was only sad for a couple of minutes then they gave her a sucker and a mirror to see her earrings. She loves them!

After we got her ears pierced we went to the food court for lunch. She picked McDonalds. Then we went shoe shopping! She loves shoes as much as I do. We had a lot of fun.

Addi starts preschool

Well, my baby started school. Okay, it's only preschool but still, that means in a couple of years it'll be the real thing. She was so excited though! She wasn't nervous at all. When I took her in and said good-bye I thought she might want me to stay for awhile, no such luck. She just said good-bye with a smile on her face, not worried about being away from mom at all. :( It's good though, she's already so independent. I love this little girl! She is so much fun and loves life! She goes to preschool on Tuesday and Thursday for 2 1/2 hours. I have to admit having 5 hours a week with no kids to worry about is not such a bad thing.

Let the fun begin!

On Friday, after food storage week was wrapped up we headed out to the Colorado cabin. Our husbands and kids, Stacy, Taylor, Deco and Kera all met us out there. There were 15 adults, 11 kids, and 8 dogs. We crammed as much fun as we possibly could into the three days that we were there. We four-wheelered (as Addi would say), we fished (no success however), we bear watched (actually we tree watched, the bears forgot to come), we rode horses, we read, we played in the mud, and anything else you can think of doing at Colorado we did. (For those of you who haven't been to our Colorado cabin, Colorado to us is our cabin not the state. In fact growing up when I would say we were going to Colorado people would ask "where in Colorado" and I always said "the cabin", DUH!). We also ate, A LOT! We all took turns doing meals so as soon as we would get one cleaned up it would be time to start the next one. We could have stayed for another week with all the food we had. But what's a vacation without lots of good food!

Is there anywhere more beautiful on earth?

Everyone loves four-wheelering.

Dad and Matt baiting bears.

A rousing game of SCUM!

PUPPIES! Livvy and Addi (with Avery in the middle) couldn't get enough of them.

Oakley with one of his best friends, Oreo.

Swimming at the lake.

Riding Grandma's new pets, Cody and Panda.

Food Storage Week

On Tuesday, Aug. 26, Heather, Livvy, Noelle, Maxon, Addi and I all loaded into Heather's car and headed down to Blanding for food storage week. Heather had suggested awhile before this that we try to find a week when all the women in the family could get together and work on our food storage. After we realized finding a full week when we could all do it was going to be impossible we scaled back and decided to do a food storage Saturday once a month. Then mom suggested that since we were all coming down to go out to the Colorado cabin over Labor Day weekend maybe the women could go down early and spend a couple of days canning and dry canning. Stacy and Kera couldn't make it but we decided we'd still do it.

We started out Wednesday morning canning Grandma Black's awesome chili, and taco sauce. We canned and canned and canned. By the time we were done we had a few bottles done and we wondered how in the world Grandma does it. She's 92 and we're all a lot younger than that (not going to admit how much younger however!) and we were all dead tired! Grandma ROCKS!


Thursday morning we started canning again, adding beans today. In the afternoon we went to Grandma Black's house so she could teach us how to make her wonderful spud-nuts (just think Krispy Kreme donuts) and cake donuts (MY FAVORITE!). We spent the afternoon, mixing, rolling, cutting, frying, glazing, and frosting donuts. Again, by the time we were done we were exhasted but they were delish! I know I ate way too many but I can not resist Grandma's donuts. Luckily we made so many that even with all the ones we ate we didn't put in a dent in them so we had tons to take out to Colorado on Friday to share with all the men and kids. They were all grateful. After we got done with the donuts we headed to the dry packing shed by the Stake Center. It took about 2 1/2 hours but we got cans and cans of wheat, oats, rice, and sugar done. It was a lot of work but well worth the effort.
92 years old and she kicked our butts mixing those donuts. That woman has some triceps!

The finished products, YUM!

All our hard work ready to go home to the basement.

Dance

Addi started dance. She loves it! She is so cute!

School Starts!

The kids are back in school. I actually have mixed feelings this year. This summer flew by! We didn't get around to doing a lot of the things I hoped we would. Also, Oakley started school. He's in all day kindergarten. That means that Addi is home with me all day without any other entertainment, YIKES! It's actually a lot of fun for me but she's starting to get bored with me. She's starting to ask me over and over, "what can I do?" She never likes my suggestions.

Everyone except Kolton was really excited to start school and so far they are all loving it. Kolton is in 10th grade, Alexi is in 7th, and Jensen is in 5th. I was actually gone for Oakley's first day because he didn't start for a week after the other kids and I was in Blanding. Matt got to take him to his first day. He said he was surprised how emotional it was. Oakley wasn't scared or nervous at all. He's such a stud! He even told Matt that he knew where his class was and could go by himself but Matt talked him into letting him go with him.

Look at my big boy! I can't believe he's old enough to go to school. In just two more years my baby will start kindergarten and I'll be home alone. SAD!