My kids

Samuel went to the eye doctor last week and we found out that he only has to patch his eye for two hours on Sundays!! The doctor has really been impressed with how quickly Samuel's eye started focusing, and how well it is staying at 20/20 (with glasses). He will always have glasses, but he should be all the way done patching his eye by the beginning of September. Way to go Samuel! He's been very faithful and cooperative at getting his eye patched, which is awesome for a 6-year-old!

Jacque has really gotten a love for writing. She doesn't know how to spell words, but she knows how to write all of her letters and loves to write her name. I can't wait for her to go to Kindergarten. I think she will just love it! Although I will miss her greatly during the hours she is gone because she is such a great helper!

Calista had a bladder infection this last weekend, and she is doing much better since we started the right antibiotic. And she does a great job reminding me about taking her medicine. Calista is starting to learn how to ride a bike with training wheels, and has improved greatly this last week. I will post videos when I go to mom's next.

Ellen is growing so much. She's talking more and loves to give hugs. This is a picture from when we went to visit my friends in Haines. We were cooking dinner and Ellen was wanting to play in the puddles, so I finally said ok and took off her shoes and socks and rolled up her pants. Next thing we know, she is laying face down in a puddle (I think she was trying to swim)! By the time I ran in and grabbed my camera, Ellen had stood up. But you can still see how dirty she was! Fun memories!!

Softball

For the last three months I was on a women's community softball team. It was so much fun. Some of you might remember our perfect record last year (no wins!!), but I must say we were a little better this year. We lost our final game tonight but we placed 4th out of 7 teams! Yeah!! I got to play shortstop, rover, and third base. Most of our team were moms, with a couple newly married, and most of us were LDS. It was fun to get a break from being a mom for a few hours of the week, and a great way to get some exercise. I even got to hit 3 homeruns this year! Enough bragging. I think the kids enjoyed coming to the games too, especially when we won. I think they were a little disappointed when we would lose. Last year I remember Samuel asking me if we won a game. I had to tell him no. He quickly said, "Mom, you should go play on the other team so you can win one!" Why hadn't I thought of that?

Ellen Dancing!

Ellen loves to dance.  We had just finished watching the movie "The legend of Johnny Lingo" and she is dancing to the music that plays along with the credits at the end.  Every now and then you can hear her try to sing along.  It is so fun to see how much they love music as babies because no one has taught them to dance or sing, it just comes naturally.

Samuel shooting his rifle!!

Here's a video of Samuel shooting his rifle.  You can see how quickly he reloads.  Sorry if I make you sick.  He was quicker than I thought.

Family Home Evening

We went shooting as a family for Family Home Evening last monday. It was a lot of fun. We bought a youth .22 rifle a few weeks ago, and it's small enought that Samuel can operate it all by himself. It's still a little heavy for the girls, but they had fun trying. Samuel is working to earn enough money to buy the gun from us. The kids earn "kid bucks" from doing chores around the house, and then they can cash them in at 5%. Samuel has started asking for more chores to do so he can earn more money. He's paid $300 so far, but he has another $1700 to go (the gun was just over $100 at Wal-Mart).

Samuel shooting his gun. Hey Todd and Tory, Look! He's using his left hand/eye!!

Aaron is helping Jacque because the gun is still a little too heavy.

I didn't get a picture of Calista with the little rifle. This is Aaron's .22 rifle that he refinished.

Ellen was mostly interested in the many treasures lying around just waiting to be discovered!

There was also a hill that the girls enjoyed climbing up and sliding down. They spent most of their time on the hill and every now and then went running over to shoot a couple shots. I think it worked out perfectly because the boys really enjoyed shooting. Samuel was patient and shared, but he was always eager to get it back.

We are growing a garden this year!

Here's a picture of our little garden. I love planting corn because it makes your garden look really pretty. We are growing corn, peas, 1 bean (Samuel got to start it at school and then brought it home to grow), peppers, onions, radishes, watermelon, and pumpkins. Hopefully it all grows well. We haven't grown a garden the last two years because we didn't think we'd be here long. Since we are renting we have to have the lawn back in grass before we leave. We still aren't planning on being here very long, but we had a stake conference on being self-reliant, and we had a good sized patch of lawn that was mostly weeds, so we thought we'd plant a garden and then re-seed in the fall.

Fathers Day Ideas

I love looking up ideas for holidays because there are a lot of good ideas out there. Here are a few sites that I liked:

http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/holiday_themes/fathers_day_games.htm
this one has a bunch of good ideas for preschool, family home evening, or maybe even church.

http://lds.about.com/cs/primary/a/st_fathersday.htm - this sounds like a fun idea. You play the "newly wed game" where you ask a child a question about the dad and the dad a question about the child and see if they answer the questions the same.

http://www.rexanne.com/fday-kids.html - this one has links to games, activities, crafts and more.