Summertime fun

Happy fifth, Chloe! We had so much fun celebrating you this week! Chloe is so fun. She's smart as a whip, loves unicorns and cats and rainbows and legos and putting vast quantities of bows in her hair. She loves to wear dresses and wears them nearly every day. We recently realized her hair is QUITE curly. She's not actually thrilled about it, but Bill and I are in love. Chloe is always willing to give something to one of her siblings to make them happy. She likes to make others happy. She's also quite spicy. She has the best stink eye and shares it quite liberally with her siblings and parents, hahaha! She is pretty quiet in public but if you listen to her soft voice, she has a lot to say. She's a petite little thing so she's often mistaken for being younger, but it doesn't take much time with her to realize she is not a tiny girl anymore. She was all about the chocolate cake. She's also my kids that adores all the fruits and veggies. And pasta with olive oil and salt and pepper. She's got quite the refined palate. 

 We went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point for Chloe's birthday activity. It was so fun. We all really enjoyed it. 

Pedicures! We got Natasha a pedicure for her birthday and me and her and our sister-in-law Jessica went together. It was heavenly. 

We got a new workout bench on Amazon Prime Day, among a few other things. The kids are all really enjoying using it. It has multiple uses, haha! Chloe was happy to watch a show using it to sit on the other day. 

Chloe's curls! She absolutely hated them when I used some mousse and diffused them, but man oh man, they are adorable. She'll have to get used to her curly hair. 

I did this with Genevieve's hair for church. She has the most amazing hair. 

And this was an effort to diffuse hers. Turns out she has more beach waves and maybe about half a can too much mousse in it, hahaha. She came downstairs and told me she'd put five handfuls of mousse in it and could I diffuse it. We'll try again another time, but it looks promising! 

I've been wanting to make something with rhubarb for a while. We have some in the backyard garden. I made this tart and some rhubarb muffins yesterday and they are both fantastic. 

And last but not least, tonight we went and supported some of our friends in a fundraiser for their trip to Kenya in the fall. Ate some hot dogs, snow cones, cotton candy, rode ponies, or actually horses for three of my kids, spun themselves dizzy on a swing, and generally had a lovely time supporting our friends. We're hoping the best for their trip to Kenya and all the service they are planning. 

Birthday, Camping, This is the Place, Father's Day.

 Spencer's FNAF art is coming right along. He found a roll of paper and has decided to draw a FNAF mural. These are the first three. If you don't know what FNAF is (Five Nights at Freddie's), be happy. Hahah! But it's currently Spencer's favorite video game. 

We went to a Stake Campout outside of Kamas, UT Friday night and it was just delightful. We decided to bring dinner instead of hauling stuff up there to cook, so we grabbed some Panda Express and ate it on the way. We had a lovely time. Roasted some marshmallows, swung on their swings, met some new people, camped without the rain fly so we could see the stars. It was lovely. Granted, it did start raining just a bit at 5:15AM so Bill and I had to get up and put the rainfly on, but still worth it. I really love camping and since the stake made us breakfast, it was the easiest camping trip ever. 

We took advantage of already being up Parley's Canyon and stopped by This is the Place Monument Saturday morning after the campout. It's one of the places we have tickets to with our Salt Lake Connect Pass. It was way more fun than I expected. I don't know what I did expect, but I was so pleasantly surprised how much fun the kids had. They liked everything there. Nobody complained about anything. It was delightful. Highlights were riding the train, pony rides, panning for gold, and of course ice cream and donuts at the end. 

Chloe glammed herself up with a bunch of hair stuff. 

One of the delightful things about living in Utah is we have tons of my family here. We did a June family birthday party last Monday and it was so fun. My sister, my niece, and Chloe all have birthdays a week apart and we celebrated them all. 

Genevieve is a reading maniac this summer. It makes me so happy. And she reads in the funniest positions. I caught this one on camera. 

And last but not least, we had a lovely Father's Day. It was a pretty laid back day. Good food, lots of chatting, plenty of laughing. Just about perfect. I got Bill this lava lamp to replace the one that he's had for years that broke somewhere between South Carolina and Washington and Utah. I can't remember when it bit the dust but it's been a while, and this purple one is his favorite color, so it was perfect. It's really cool looking. The wax inside has metallic silver mixed in with the purple. 

Moving right along

 We were able to actually walk through our house for the first time on Saturday evening. The workers were gone, so we could explore how it's coming along. It's so exciting! Framing is done. Plumbing is in. Windows are mostly in. It's going so fast now that we've finally past that huge wait we had for framing. The set of townhomes that are behind us have the hole dug to pour the foundation, and I noticed it's a good big lower than ours. So we won't be totally lined up with our windows, which will also be very nice. The front of our house across the street are a different model of townhomes and they're lined up perpendicular to ours instead of parallel, so there's no windows facing each other on that side either and the driveways face a different direction. I feel like as townhomes go, we got a super ideal location and we didn't even have any say in the matter, it is just what was next available when we signed back six and a half months ago. We're SO excited to see the progress finally. It's been a lot of waiting this last year. 

Speaking of a year, it was nearly to the day a year ago that Bill got laid off from what we thought was his dream job in Seattle and our whole lives got turned inside out. Amazing what a difference a year makes. We are in such a better place now as far as our goals and life progress. It would have been several more years until we could buy in Seattle and we really didn't enjoy a lot of things about our living situation there. It's really wonderful to have hit our home buying goal earlier than expected and to be able to settle in without plans to move again anytime in the near future. 

Genevieve drew this yesterday. Hers and Spencer's art talent is so delightful to watch develop. 

Chloe's hair is so curly! It brushes right out, but I just love her curls when it's wet and if it ever decides to come in longer and thicker, we'll have fun times with her curls. 

We had a fantastic time at an F3/FiA bbq at one of the member's cabins up Parley's Canyon on Saturday. We have such great friends from those workout groups. I don't have the full group picture yet, but this is the guys saving the day when this car got totally stuck in the parking. They got them out lickety split. 

And this is at the top of a little hike/climb we did while we were there. 100 feet straight up, then a pretty good slide down a steep trail. Good adventure! Spencer loved it so much and Chloe had no problems doing it even though she's just a petite little thing. She's so capable. 

And lastly, our new sideboard that will go in our kitchen. The granite top ought to match our counters nicely. I'm SO excited about this new piece of furniture. 

Summer!

The house is framed! This was mid week last week before they'd finished the roof, but it's done now. So nice to see progress.

Bill got to go out to Ohio to celebrate his brother's 40th birthday with some of his siblings and parents. They had a fabulous time. Ohio is so beautiful. 

Cutie picture of Chloe and Bill. Bill shaved off his beard and cut his hair. He's like a different person. He also tried to get LASIK this Friday but he's one of a very rare breed of people that the lens of his right eye is connected underneath, so when they cut his lens to flip it back to get to his eye, it wouldn't move. Quite the surprise! They aborted the surgery and now he's letting his eyes heal for a month and then will do PRK in July, which will give the same results but with a much more significant recovery, unfortunately. But he's going to get rid of those glasses for once and for all anyway! Thankfully his eyes are already feeling back to normal today, so that's good. 

Chloe had her last soccer game. I'm not sure soccer is going to be her sport. She spent most of the season randomly following the crowd around the field with seemingly no intention of ever kicking the ball, but she had a great time and maybe we'll try again next year and see how she likes it. 

And last but not least, our last day of school picture, taken the day after because I never got around to it. And as you can tell, they were so thrilled to take it. Hahahahaha!