July and August

My 30th Birthday happened! My mom was so great and made me such a yummy meal and this chocolate cheesecake!! She is the best! 

Justin and I spent the night in SLC and went shopping, which was also really, REALLY fun!! And we went to the breakfast buffet at Little America where they have the most amazing bacon in my whole life. Happy ME!!

Sad ending: I left my purse in Park City and didn't realize it until we were already in Provo, so we had to turn all the way around and go back and get it and then come back. It was almost 4 hours of driving. That WAS NOT fun. But finding out my purse wasn't stolen was really great. And not having kids in the car while making that drive was REALLY great. 

My sweet favorite neighbor, Ashleigh, had all the kids decorate my garage with streamers and balloons. You can only see the outside in the picture--there was a lot more inside! It made me feel good, and made the kids feel good too. :)

The 24th of July was so much fun! We did a shrimp boil with the Haights and just played all night long. Uncle Gord provided some spectacular fireworks, per his usual. It was such a fun, FUN night!!

  

Back to school night for Rodrik, his favorite toy at Ms. Merlenes.

 Jaxton's first day of 1st Grade. He is in Portuguese immersion and is doing great! The way it works is: the 1st half of the day is English (Mrs. Barnes) and they work on reading and literacy; then the 2nd half of the day they go to a different teacher (Professora Loftus) and she is only allowed to speak Portuguese. NEVER English. And they attempt to learn Math. :) 

I think Jax, like all the others, doesn't understand super well--if at all. But he has a GREAT personality for this kind of thing and doesn't get frustrated that he doesn't understand, (I guess a lot of the kids do at first?? I would be frustrated!) It's actually kind of funny, because he seriously couldn't care less. He really has nothing to say about it usually; except attempting some words sometimes that I don't think are super correct. They say the kids catch on. Jax is pretty darn bright, I think he will. In the mean-time I'm glad he is such a chill dude; he just loves being with everyone at school no matter if he can understand or not. He actually really LOVES "Professora", he tells me that fairly often! And lets be honest, as long as there is a recess, nothing else really matters. :)

 

Rodrik is going to 3 day a week preschool this year with Ms. Merlene. I can already tell this child might be my academic one. He has a very good memory and worked on some homework for an hour without any breaks. And he actually liked it!! When Jax reads books that I have read to the kids, Rod will prompt him on words--not because Rod can read, but because Rod just remembers the entire book. Almost verbatim. He also really kind of likes following instructions, he kind of likes rules too. And he is a TALKER. He loves to talk to whoever will listen. He is also very competitive. Such a good kid.

  

This is how many kids need to be able to fit in Costco carts...But they definitely don't.

  

Me and my cute grandpa at the Sorenson family reunion....I think that is what it was called...?? And Jax loves picking huge zucchini!!

  

 Cals first time with a popsicle. The boys wanted in on the picture too! Cal loved it but the cold was a little intense and confusing, he only ate a little bit.

 

Also, Cal is seriously the most darling goofy child ever. He makes me crazy annoyed--he can be the biggest little terd, but he is just SOOO DARN CUTE!! Like I can't even say how cute I think he is. He is SO hard. But SOOOOO cute.

Some other cute kids doing the "silly face".

 

The fire department came to Lakeview and did a presentation and sprayed all the kids. If you look in that picture with all the kids, Jax and his friend Kai are in the VERY front in blue and grey--haha! They got totally soaked and LOVED it!!

 

Jax went to a birthday party where they did all these homemade things, he absolutely loved it. Like almost more than the party where he went to Nickel City and did laser tag! He couldn't stop raving about how cool the party was, and look, he looked super cool too!! :)

 

We went to the air balloons in West Jordan with our darling friends Emily and Josh and their cute kids. The kids got to get in the fire trucks! Also, Jax was SO terrified of the fire and sounds of the air balloons. It was really, tragically funny.

  

And Eli was in town quite a bit right before Porter was born. So we got a lot of FUN Eli/family time!!

  

  

  We sent this picture to Jake Rogers while he was in the hospital to let him know we were thinking of him.

 We went on the funnest little hike with Natasha and her family and my Mom and Dad and Chanel. The kids just climbed all over the rock in Rock Canyon.

 

I adore this picture.

   

  Calvins parents love him--just in case we haven't established that. ;)

 

 River trail fun! Rod and Eli are always very content going VERY slowly on the tire swing. Jax on the other hand loves to go super high on the huge swing and jump!!

 

 We all ran the Temple to Temple run with my mom! It was pretty crazy because the kids were on scooters and we went to early and we were going SO fast because it's mostly downhill and those scooters pick up speed fast!! So I was SOOO nervous they were going to run into someone, it ended up being quite the brisk and speedy 5k because I was running off of a constant stream of adrenaline keeping up with Jax and Rod, trying to prevent any crashes. Too bad I didn't time it...

  Cal started doing stairs in July-ish. It is darling watching him, he thinks he is so cool! I love it.

 

And these two are just much!

  

Justin wanted to go more, but so far has only been able to go on 1 razor ride with the kids. They went in August with Preston and Debbie and had SUCH a good time!! They went fairly close, (Spanish Fork Canyon area) and loved knocking over a bunch of dead trees. Apparently there were a lot of dead trees full of bugs that they would help grandpa/dad knock over! A boys dream...

I stayed home with Chanel and Calvin and we shopped and made/ate food. I had SUCH a good time too!! I love Chanel. So much.

 

Cousin pictures!! Baby Porter!! And Mairee with Calvin!! We love all our cousins so much!!

I love when Cal does this! This is his Yoga trick! :)

 
This is all for now. I'm lucky to even get this done!
I'm finding I just want to insert emoticons for all the statements throughout this blog...Even as I type this...They need to invent those for the keyboard!! :)