How about some MUD football?

In August our Stake had their annual mud football event that is held at the U of A farms. Most of the kids just roll around in the mud instead of actually playing football. After they play for awhile, everyone rinses off and we have a BBQ. Tons of fun! It was held on a day that was a heat advisory though, so as someone who was just watching from the sidelines, it was boiling HOT and I regret not wearing something that I could get dirty so that I could get in the mud and cool off!

They were covered in mud from head to toe.

I'm thinking that doesn't look very fun, but they sure do love it! :)

Summer Fun...So far

Already this summer has been a busy one, but we've been having lots of fun! I've been really busy in the mornings teaching swim lessons, so we've only had the afternoons to have some real fun. We've gone to movies, gone swimming, had friends over, and had an end of season baseball swim party here at our house. Here are some other things that we've been up too.

Here is what I've been doing every day until noon, swim lessons. It's been fun, but after 3 hours of being in the sun, it tires me out! The kids are so cute though. :)

A friend of Nick's gave him some tickets to a DBacks game, so he took Cole. This was actually before school was out, but it was during the final week of school so I guess that qualifies as summertime. They were handing out these Tony Pena masks to everyone, so Nick took Cole's picture with it, haha.

Someone brought these giant cookies to the Twins end of season baseball party. Aren't they cool? The party was a swim party here at our house and these cookies had all of the kids names on them. The boys loved them. Sadly, these are the only pictures I got of the party. I kept forgetting to snap photos of all the kids. People were being pushed in the pool too so I was kind of scared to take the camera outside. I didn't want it to be thrown in the pool by mistake. Someone got thrown in and his cell phone was in his pocket, OOPS! ;) It was a lot of fun!













Here is a picture of the boys climbing a tree at their grandparents house one Sunday afternoon. Loads of fun!

We made a trip to Amazing Jake's the other night and sadly I left my camera in the car. It's a really cool place with tons of stuff to do there. They have an all you can eat buffet that is massive and then they have all kinds of fun things to do there like Laser Tag, Go Karts, Bumper Cars, Bowling, Mini Golf, a Mini Rollercoaster, and lots of video games. We won a gift card to there and had some coupons, so we went for family night and had a great time.

More summer fun photos to come soon! We leave for California on the 18th of July, so I will have lots of fun pictures to post. We plan on going to Legoland and of course the beach! I will update our trip while we're there! :)

Young Love....

Jacob came home the other day full of excitement. He said he received a love letter from his "girlfriend", and that I needed to read it. This is our conversation:

Jacob: "I got a love letter today, read it, it's the best thing ever".

Me: "Oh really? How do you know it's a love letter"?

Jacob: "Because she signed it Love"!

Me: "Okay, well you can't get love letters already, you're only 8"!

Jacob: ~rolls eyes~, "Yes I can mom, I love her and she loves me. We have a lot in common too".

Me: Hahahaha! I then read the letter and tell him that I thought it was really sweet.

Jacob: "I know it is, I told you it was".

He's in 2nd grade! Isn't that a little early? This made me laugh the rest of the night. This love story doesn't have a happy ending though. This little girl is moving to Peoria soon and he is really sad! Poor Jacob! I'm sure he will be just fine, because he has also told me that there are some other girls at school who like him, LOL. Man, he is going to be a little heartbreaker one day I'm afraid. This is only the beginning too, it's only going to get worse as he gets older, haha. ;)

Here is a picture of the letter. He will probably get mad if he knows I put it on here, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him, haha. Besides as a mother, I get to show off things like this. ;)

Awwww, so sweet! She means that he is good at skipping rocks. :)

I heart Golden Spoon!

For those of you who have never been to Golden Spoon, you need to go! It's yummy NON-FAT Yogurt that tastes so GOOD! My parents have one near their home in California, so we spent several days there last summer when we were visiting. Other than that, I have only heard of them being located in Gilbert and Mesa. So, imagine my excitement when I found a location not far from our home. It's on Queen Creek and Alma School. Now that I know that, we will be going there whenever we get a chance I'm sure. The boys love it. They have no idea that it's non-fat. They think it's ice cream. Cole and I went shopping Friday night and went there after and then when Jacob heard that we went there without him, he had to make sure that he could go the next day. So him and I headed there on Saturday. You don't have to twist my arm to go twice. :) These pictures were taken with my phone so they aren't a great quality.

Doesn't he make it look so good?

YUM!

We LOVE Golden Spoon! :)

Swimming with no water?

Last week we had to drain our pool. Apparently, with salt water pools, you have to drain them every two years. The sun makes more salt and so eventually the self chlorinator will stop working because of too much salt, which means that we have to manually add the other chemicals. Well our pool is basically maintenance free and this is not something that Nick wanted to do, especially since I teach lessons and the pool gets used a lot. This is not something they warn you about when you buy a salt water pool either. So while the boys were at school, Nick rented a pump and drained it all into the sewer clean out. When they got home from school it was done so they were able to go into the pool while it was being filled back up. They had loads of fun in there climbing around. Now the pool is filled up again and soon it will be warm and ready for the summer! Yay, can't wait for swim season just around the corner. :)

The pool does go to 6.5 feet, so they had quite a climb up to that step. They weren't even standing in the deepest part either. :)

Batting Stances

Nick and Cole love to play a game where Cole imitates baseball players batting stances. He does pretty good impersonations and we finally captured it on video so everyone can see. Here is Cole doing his impressions of some pro ball players. It's pretty funny! ;)

This kid LOVES baseball!

Naked Spiderman!

Jacob loves to climb on EVERYTHING! Every time we go somewhere, he finds something, anything to climb on. The other night as he was getting in the shower, he decided to scale the wall in the hallway. He was nekked, cause he was supposed to be getting in the shower. I wasn't going to post this picture, but I have to admit, I think it's kind of funny when I embarrass the kids, hehe. I blurred out his private parts and then I got his permission to post it. Jacob is NOT a shy kid.

His head is touching the ceiling! Yep, this kid sure does make us proud! ;)

Get your groove on!

The other day the boys were rocking out with their iPods. Cole hates being videotaped when he's dancing around cause he gets embarrassed, but I grabbed my camera any way and filmed them both. Don't mind the blanket in the way every once in awhile with Cole's. I kept hiding the camera every time he would turn to look at me. It was all a secret taping. :) Jacob doesn't care if he's taped at all. He hams it up for the camera even. They were so funny!

This one is Cole. Like I said, ignore the blanket in front of the lens every so often. :)

Now here's our ham, Jacob! He even pulled out the guitar to help him rock out! Ha! :)

Just how tough are you?

So I have a funny story about Jacob that I want to share. The other day Jacob was saying how tough he is. I told him he isn't as tough as me and he said he was. I said, "really, you think so"? and he said, "yes". I just laughed so I asked him if he was as tough as his daddy. He said, "no, daddy's tougher", so I said, "well one day I'm sure you will be tougher than daddy". This struck him as really funny, so he started laughing and said that when daddy's an old grandpa and he's a dad, he will for sure be tougher than daddy. So then I asked him if he thinks daddy is tougher than Boppy (grandpa, my dad), and he said, "no way! No one is tougher than Boppy. He's a cowboy"! I thought that was so funny, that I seriously laughed about that for the rest of the day and now that I'm writing this I'm laughing again. Are cowboys tough? So Boppy, if you're reading this, you're the toughest person Jacob knows. HAHA! We love you Bopster! I'm pretty sure that just made your day too. :)

Just so you all know how tough my dad really is, I found this old picture of him with Jacob. It's my favorite picture of grandpa with Jacob. I think Jacob was about 15 months old and he found a comfy place to lay while our tough Boppy was taking a nap. Real tough cowboy eh? HAHA! That kid cracks me up! :)

This is what happens when....

I make cupcakes and my little chocolate lovers come in to devour the extra cake batter. I made chocolate cupcakes for the wards trunk or treat on Halloween for the cake walk and they just couldn't resist licking the bowl! Think they're going to be annoyed at me for posting this on the internet? Yep, probably! Do I care? Nope! HAHA! Who can resist posting such adorable pictures though? I sure can't! ;)

Look at those faces! They can't get enough and their faces were covered in chocolate! So funny! :)

Happy Halloween!

This has been a busy week! I have a lot to do for our wards Trunk or Treat tonight, so this post will be short. Yesterday after school I took the kids to a local pumpkin patch. Now that they are older the thrill of looking at pumpkins has kind of worn off. We have a small one here in Maricopa and I wanted pictures so off we went right after school. They don't have any fun activities there, but I did get some cute shots of them with the pumpkins at least for Halloween. Tomorrow I will post pictures of them in their costumes. I didn't get costumes for Nick and I like I wanted, but I did get one for Sparky so I am excited to see them all dressed up and I will try and post those tomorrow. The costumes for Nick and I were just too darn expensive and I couldn't justify spending that much for a one time wear. Here are my "little pumpkins" who clearly aren't that little anymore. Dang, they grow up fast!

They had to take turns sitting on the higher up hay bale.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Sunday with Cousins!

Sunday my nephew who just turned 12, was ordained a deacon. We were able to go to his ordination, which was really nice and then we all got together for a potluck afterwards. We don't see our cousins that often, so it was nice to get together and have some time to chat.

Here is my 5 year old niece pulling Jacob in a wagon. He is a big kid and two years older than her. She was struggling with that! The 2nd picture is of the 2 of them playing with my older niece's dog, Maggie. Sadie loves Maggie and carries her everywhere when she sees her. Poor dog, I don't think she likes it very much and Sadie never lets her down either! Maggie is even in the wagon with Jacob. :)

Here is Cole and Savannah. They are the exact same age, but Savannah is a little taller than Cole. He was pulling her around in this small stroller thing and her legs were all over the place. It was so funny, cause they kept hitting the floor. She didn't know what to do with them. Cole was trying to push her over the door jam to the outside, but he was struggling with that a bit. Her legs kept getting in the way! :)

Founders Day

Every year our City of Maricopa, celebrates it's "birth" by having a founders day celebration. Our little city started out as a small town many years ago. Five years ago, due to all of the growth, it became a city and these celebrations have gotten bigger over the years. Saturday was this years and there were 9000 people there! It was amazing and despite the wind and the chill in the air, we had a lot of fun! I didn't take too many pictures cause I was busy looking at everything there. Here are a few from the day. Savannah was with us for Saturday also. We were going to come back later that evening to see the band Lifehouse and see the fireworks display, but it really got too cold so we decided not to do that. I heard they were really great though!

They had a balloon lightsaber made and were having lightsaber fights. Look at all the people in the background.

Jacob's lightsaber broke and boy was he mad!

In this picture he's yelling at Cole for making his lightsaber break and Cole is taunting him. Um, it's a balloon Jacob! :) Savannah thinks they're nuts!

Here's our little cowboy again. This was after the lightsaber incident, so it put him in a happy mood again. He was sad this saddle wasn't attached to a real horse. :)

Rawhide!

It really cooled off this weekend, so we decided on Friday night to do something fun outdoors with the kids. We took them to Rawhide to see doom town that they have there during October. I must say, it was pretty creepy. My niece, Savannah, who is Cole's exact age, was hanging out with us and all 3 of the kids were pretty scared. We saw the headless horseman, the coffin maker a scary clown man and some other unknown creatures. I was freaked out cause some scary man kept following behind me a little close. I had to run just to lose him. My niece thinks he had a crush on me, haha! I don't think that's true. He was doing the same thing to all the women there.

We decided to venture through the haunted house and that was even more creepy! Mike Myers came at us with a chainsaw at the end of the haunted house. I've never seen the kids run that fast before. I was laughing so hard that I had tears when I came out of there. I had Savannah and Jacob hanging on my arms and hiding behind my back. Cole wouldn't let go of Nick for one minute either. Jacob loves Rawhide cause he loves to see the cowboys that walk around. He got dressed in his cowboy gear complete with his Mickey Mouse cowboy hat and his boots! :)

Jacob ---- Cole

Here they are acting like real cowboys behind this cowboy cut out. Sometimes night pictures turn out blurry on my camera. Not sure why. Savannah is in the middle.

Here's me and the kids in this old, rickety horse carriage. I was a little nervous that we would make it come crashing to the ground cause it is so old.

This is the creepy guy that kept following us around. Savannah had to keep her eye in him. I was nervous too. I didn't dare get too close and I'm posing in my running position for a quick getaway. HAHA! :)

The coffin maker was measuring Jacob for a coffin. He kept following people with his big stick.

Here's our little cowboy. He really wanted to ride a real horse but all of the real horses had scary people riding them like the headless horseman. He kept his distance from them. A skeleton from the haunted house squirted water on us so that's what is on his shirt in case some of you are wondering if that's sweat or something else.

We managed to get the little rascals in jail, but they soon found their way out and before you knew it they had repented of their ways and were being sworn in as honorary sherriff's! :)

Here's a picture of them with their new boss, the Sherriff!

Jacob was intrigued with the real cowboys there that could twirl their guns around. He tried doing it like them, but he needs quite a bit of practice still.

Here's Mike Myers as he comes chasing people with his chain saw at the end of the haunted house. He was being shy so I didn't get a very clear picture of his face.

We had such a good time there! I haven't been to Rawhide before at Halloween time, so it was neat to see all the fun things there. It's free to get in, but then they do charge you for things to do once you're in there. We didn't eat there, but I did have a craving for steak once we left. I have no Sunday recipe this week cause we barbecued steaks for Sunday dinner, in honor of Rawhide! HAHA. I also think that the Charlie Daniels song I have on my playlist goes perfect with this post! :) Happy Halloween everyone!

Family night at the park!

Monday night we went to a park in Chandler and met my sisters and their kids there. It's been a long time since we've all seen each other. I guess that's what happens since I live way out in the country, so I'm told. :) We had a good time. Desert Breeze park is always a fun place to go. The boys are out of school this week due to fall break, so we made it a day yesterday. We went to Target so they could spend their hard earned money and we went to a halloween store to get their costumes. Jacob was a little scared in there, the silly goose. He kept insisting that if we didn't get out of there soon, he was going to have nightmares! Such a drama king sometimes. :)

Jacob and my 5 year old niece, Sadie, were going pretty fast on this swing and this was just BEFORE Jacob flew off. Yes, flew off and landed in the dirt with a big thud! It happened so fast that I didn't have my camera ready.

My little monkey. Seriously, I can't believe this crazy kid hasn't gotten a broken bone yet!

There was a splash pad there and they didn't get in, but they sat on these toys that squirt water and I was seriously ready to crack up if the water would have come on!

He's all boy! He likes climbing on just about anything. This was a nice rock he decided to relax on.

Like I said, no broken bones, and for that I'm grateful. He scares me sometimes! He's not such a great example to Sadie.

All of them decided to take part in hanging off of a high fence with nothing below them except the hard ground! Crazy kids!