Odds and Ends

Time to catch up...What we've been up to lately...lots of swimming. We spent most of today at my parents' house in the pool...Allison and Lillian joined us in the afternoon...the highlight was finally convincing Kate to wear arm floaties--let the summer begin! Now I only have to tote 1 baby around in the pool...once Kate discovered the freedom of arm floats, she had a BLAST...she and Lauren were jumping off the diving board and totally independent...can I have 3 cheers? I've taken all 3 kids swimming many times, but it's a chore when 2 of them hang on you all the time...now Kate can swim by herself. This plethora of photos comes in no specific order...the first ones I loaded are at the end, and vice versa...good old blogger...

Our very good friends, the Hills, stopped in for a visit...Amy runs her own photography business in AZ and we did a little photo shoot with the kids in the backyard...I picked her brain and learned A TON in a short time...I asked her all my lingering questions about aperture, white balance (my new favorite friend), ISO and every other question I could come up with...thanks girl...maybe one day I'll get there...

This picture is missing her little boy Jack...we met the Hills many moons ago when we all lived in Rancho Cucamonga when we were all first married...there were no kids! Hard to believe we used to hang out and actually be able to hear each other...

This little girl was born in Amy's hands on the way to the hospital...crazy, huh?


Two of my favorite of each kid...

Charlie's first real bed-head...I couldn't get it to settle down...he must be crawling---hence the matching bruises on both sides of his forehead...
Pulling up for the first time...I happened to see him from the kitchen looking at me with this big smile on his face from the family room...he's crawling and moving all over the place now...I'm guessing that he'll be my earliest walker...Lauren walked at 10 3/4 months, so we'll see if he beats that.

4th of July weekend started with a family swim on both Fri and Sat morning...so fun to have Andy with us to lend 2 extra hands. On the 4th in the afternoon we BBQ'd with the Bunkers..no fireworks for us though...how fast can we throw 3 tired kids in bed?...thanks for the fun day Chris and Val!

What is it with my kids and pulling faces?

This past weekend I had a reunion of many of the girls that lived together in Helaman Halls at BYU 95-96...we've all kept in touch and thanks to the organization of Dina and Val, we spent a fun weekend eating, chatting, spa-ing at Amadeus, swimming and of course, playing Wii...seriously fun...let's do it again ladies...a big shout out to our fabulous husbands for being "Mr. Moms" for the day...Val and I poked fun at Chris and Andy because they brought all the kids to our house Sat night, got 2 sitters, and went on a man-date...cute, huh? Long day for 2 Mr. Moms = a night out at the pool hall without the wives.

Al made me promise not to post a pic of her feeding the baby, but that's all she was doing in all my pics...when she wasn't feeding Tessa, she was failing out the Rock Band team on drums...we all took a turn failing on the drums...freaking Wii makes finding the "beat" really hard....
A shout-out to my bro-in-law James...I actually used this, can you believe it? We spent an afternoon swimming with my good friend Amy Huff and I actually used this lame (sorry James) free Angles cooler from the game we all went to before the wedding...the perfect size for packing lunch for mom and kids...I try not to take dumb pics like this and post them on my blog, but I had to laugh at myself as I was packing it...I thought... "James would be so proud of me."

Not sure exactly how this came to pass, but James is an Angles F.A.N.---he was destined to marry a Cali girl... Check out the post from July 15th on...www.jamesandlaurawaite.blogspot.com...we went to a game (my first ever Angles game) 3 days before the wedding...all of James' family is sitting around/behind him.


I think my brother really wanted to be represented...my dad is on the other side of him...
Our neighborhood splash park...this was our first trip of the summer...even Charlie seemed to have fun...

He becomes a little obsessed with the drawstring on his shorts...I literally have to pry his little fingers off the string to get his attention...

Two little girls + two $3 pedicures = a cheap morning and 20 painted toes...they LOVED it.


What's a brother to do except look on?!?
Ah yes, let the fresh orange juice flow...one of my favorite things about our house.

Lauren made a puppet at preschool...we've had many puppet shows lately...I'm glad I caught this one on camera...Andy doing a puppet show for all 3 kids behind a stray pack of toilet paper...awesome...

A long, boring afternoon quickly turns fun with a cheap trip to the new local dollar store...we got the BEST water colors...usually the cheap ones have very little color...these ones did not disappoint...

Guess that's it...we really are enjoying ourselves this summer...Lauren is in swimming lessons, and did I mention that Kate loves her arm floats finally?...Andy and I are gearing up for our Alaskan cruise in a few weeks...dang I will miss these kids, but dang, I won't miss these kids...I've jumped back into home improvement lately...a year has gone by and it's time to finish some things...it feels good to be making forward movement on the house...