I am a Child of God

I am a Child of God, and He has sent me here.

Has given me an earthly home with parents kind and dear.

Lead me, guide me walk beside me.  Help me find the way.

Teach me all that I must do, to live with Him someday.

I have heard this song thousands of times, but as I sat in Primary today and it seemed like every kid was belting it out, the Spirit testified again how true these words are.  I know I am a Child of God, I know I have 3 precious daughters and 1 precious son of God living in my home with me.  I hope we can help our kids feel the truth of these things.  They are such precious little people.

11 months

This cute baby will be 11 months this week!  She is growing up so much and starting to learn so many new things.  Here are a few of the newest:

*Molly took her first step last weekend.  She is well on her way to running around with the other girls.  She gets so excited watching them run and loves to wrestle with Alissa.

*She says "ta, ta, ta"  for "cha, cha, cha"  whenever the girls sing Happy Birthday to you.  They always add "cha, cha, cha" to the end of Happy Birthday song.  Ella learned it from school.

*She got a new air flow binki that has almost totally taken away the rash from around her mouth.  Thank goodness.  We were wondering if it was an allergic reaction.

*She says "oh ya!"

*She loves soft classical or instrumental music and will sleep so good if I play it in the room.

*She has a favorite 2 blankies.  The white with polka dots and pink on the other side and brown one - they are both made of the same material.

*She eats almost everything.  She doesn't like fry sauce, ketchup or oatmeal.  Those are the only things I have found she will turn her head to.

*She is learning to fight back to Alissa who has started to be a lot more rough with her out of jealousy.  Occasionally she will hit her right back or pull her hair.

*She is learning to climb.  She climbs on Alissa's bed and I found her the other day on my mom's little kid picnic table.  She was sitting on the table part bouncing around. 

*She LOVES to eat dirt.  I'm not sure what it is, but she will grab for it and just shove it in her mouth.  Any time we are outside she has a brown ring around her mouth from eating dirt.  Gross I know..

However, she tops Alissa's gross story of licking the toilet plunger.  She crawled into the bathroom where Ella had gone potty and forgot to flush.  She pulled her used toilet paper out of the toilet and was eating it.  There you have it.. 11 month Molly.

Tball, Swimming Lessons and more!

We are so thankful the weather is getting so warm.  We have had a super busy week.  Some of the highlights include: going to the movies, lunch at Discovery Elementary, lots of haircuts, garage sales, tball, planting our garden and bushes/flowers, Tball, swimming lessons, and many bags of popcicles. 

This year Ella had the choice between an all girls team that is 6-7 years old or a boys/girls team that are 4-5 years old.  I guess it wouldn't be hard to believe she picked the boys/girls team.  Didn't care if they are mostly younger than she is just likes the fact that boys play on her team.  She is a bit bored by it this year.  I think mostly because she doesn't have a person on her team that she really plays with or knows well.  She is getting pretty good at hitting the ball on her first shot now and loves running the bases. :)

Ella & Addi Taylor (our neighbor)

Ella on first base.

We have been doing swimming lessons as well over at Ammon Pool again.  She LOVES, LOVES swimming lessons and has been so brave this summer compared to the other summers.  I love watching her just jump right into the water and not worrying so much about going under.  Alissa has been super crazy sitting in the car watching Ella.  I try to keep us in the car or I end up running after her the whole half hour.  Next year she will be old enough to do swimming lessons too.

And seriously, we have gone through at least 2 bags of popcicles in the last 2 weeks.  These girls eat like 3 a day!  Even Molly loves them now.  We have had a very sticky floor and very happy kids.

Family Night at the Snake River

There has been so much water this year and we had heard the Snake River was high but hadn't made it down to see so for Family Night last night we took a little trip.

I don't remember ever seeing it quite like this before.  The water was clear up on the grass where the ducks are.

It's always fun to walk around the greenbelt with the temple in sight.

Dustin was preparing his back for his upcoming backpacking trip by carrying our 23.5lb baby on his back.  :)

I love my family and feel so blessed to have them in my life. 

Too much camping?

You know you've been camping a lot lately when you look out the back window to see your daughter squatting beside a tree at grandma's house.

Island Park

Friday the 10th, we headed to Island Park with my entire immediate family to stay at a cabin my parents rented for the week.  We got to the cabin, unpacked our vehicles and headed for West Yellowstone.  We ate dinner together at a little restaurant and then headed to the Playmill where we saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  It was a super fun show! 

The next day we packed a picnic and jumped on the four wheelers to go for a ride. 

We drove to Warm Springs and got to see some HUGE fish eating bread & cheese.  It started to rain so we jumped on the four wheelers and took off.

The trail we took back was a wee bit muddy. 

So we just let loose and got dirty.

It was by far the funnest four wheeler ride I've been on.

We stopped at almost every puddle and took pictures or video of the riders.  We were hootin' and hollerin'!!

Seriously.. so fun!

The whole clan!

My girls didn't get very muddy because they were asleep with grandma & grandpa on the razor.

That night we cleaned up and sat by the fire on the upper deck and roasted marshmallows.  Then we tried to watch Nacho Libre - one of our favorites, but we were too sleepy from a fun day and most of us fell asleep.

The next day we packed another picnic and drove to Yellowstone Park.  It was the first time I remember going there so I thought it was super exciting! 

Sitting by Firehole Falls

Standing by Old Faithful

There were tons of Buffalo.  We even got to see quite a few baby buffalo.

Grandpa, Alissa & Grandma (love this picture!)  standing by a hot spot

Sunday night everybody left but Dustin and I and our little family and mom and dad.  We went for another ride on Monday and found this field of flowers.  It was fun to let the girls pick away.

Molly

Ella

Alissa

We drove about 25 miles to .... where we got to see this beautiful spring out of the mountain.  Dustin and I are all dressed in our rain gear (thanks to dad) because we were on the four wheeler.

Dustin with his baby girls.  On the way home it POURED down rain and there was crazy thunder and even some lightening that hit near where we were.  It really freaked us all out because we were riding a trail through the trees and through massive puddles again.  We had about 5 miles left to go when it started pouring so we drove as quickly as we could to get to shelter.  It was actually really fun though, especially since we had rain gear on this time. :)

So we drove home with Dustin on Monday since he had to go back to work and did a few loads of laundry, picked up a few things we forgot and headed back on Tuesday.  Mom and Dad saw a truck come unload a bunch of fish into the river that morning so we stopped to fish.  I think my dad counted somewhere around 75 fish caught between him and my mom that day.  It was a perfect day for the kids to be fishing.

The seagulls and pelicans were going crazy over all the fish!

My sister in law Lisa came back that day too with her kids.  We took some cute cousin pictures on the dock.  They really are great friends.

Last by not least.. the girls got to hot tub almsot every day!  They got all excited anytime somebody opened the back door.   

SUCH A GREAT TIME!  We are so grateful to my parents for providing an opportunity like this for us to spend the week together.  It was so awesome to have everybody there and to just be crazy together.  I love my family and have so much fun with them.  We are so very blessed!