Fun in the Sun!

With temperatures in the 90s the kids refuse to play outside unless it involves water.  I did convince them to set up an obstacle course in the garage the other day, but that's the best I could do to get them outside.  So we were watching a friend's little girl on Tuesday and decided to invite 4 more little girls over that live within the block and let them all play in the water. 

They enjoyed Fudgecicles as you can see!

They played in the mini pool, in the sprinkler, our water table and on the slip n' slide.  I think they all had a good time.  I always let them bring the box of ponies outside to play with in the water table.  That table has been such a great toy!  We have used it so much and the kids just love it.

We had Ella, Alissa, Molly, Sage, Baeya, Olivia, Brennady and Samantha out there playing. 

I love to watch Alissa pretending with the toys. She does it all the time. I especially love it when she plays with ponies because she makes her "neigh" sound.

Molly chowing the watermelon.  She just hangs where the food is.  :) Love that girl!

Yesterday grandma Debbie invited us over for a little swimming party.  My cousin Chellsea came with her 2 kids: McKenna & Rome.  They are living in Canada and are up to visit because Judd just had a baby.  Cody's girlfriend Kylie also came with her cute girl, Lilly.

We had popcicles and pizza and a super great time!

Thanks Grandma!

Just for fun - here is a picture of the kids outside the other night riding their bikes.

 

David Braithwaite Family Reunion

We just got home from our annual David Braithwaite Family Reunion.  It was at the Salmon River lot again this year.  We had such a great time.  I didn't think I took very many pictures but when I loaded them there were about 110 so I did pretty good for 3 days.  I just didn't get pictures of as many people as I would have liked.

Molly & Anita - Anita is 9 months older than Molly and she likes to play "mommy" to her.  Molly doesn't mind.  She follows her around and does what she says.

Ella of course shows up camping in her pink shirt and skirt and heads straight for the dirt hill to play in the "fort" with the other kids.  She is with Jacob & Noah.  Jacob is 4 months older than her and she is a year older than Noah.

April & Alanah were up playing in the fort that gets more and more developed every year by the kids.

A view of the lot.  We had 7 trailers and about 5 tents up there by the time everybody got there.  Glad we have enough space to fit everybody in there.

Friday night some creepy aliens were spotted up on the hill dancing.  Aunt Cindy handed out glow sticks to keep us safe from these crazy creatures. :) 

Saturday was Molly's 2nd birthday so we had a mini birthday party with a few of her little cousins: Amy & Jordan.  They had balloons and party hats and sat in laws chairs eating cheetos at about 10am.  They thought it was fun.

We headed up Yankee Fork by the Dredge and went fishing in the newly stocked ponds.  There were plenty of fish to go around.

Alanah even caught a water snake.  Brave girl.

Dustin's nephew Aaron just graduated from U of I in Mechanical Engineering and is moving back to Idaho Falls so he got to come hang out at the reunion on his way back.

Julie & Dallin

After we had enough fishing we went to Redfish Lake.  The kids had a blast!  Thankfully there were 3 canopys between all of us so we got to sit on the beach and watch the kids in the shade.  I love how dirty Molly's face is.  She looks like a dalmation.

A few of Dustin's brothers rented a boat for an hour and they took all the kids for rides.  Molly got to ride with Aunt Johnna while I held her new grandbaby, Rudy.

Stephanie & Kirk

Devin & Johnna celebrated 30 years of marriage this week

Aaron & Dustin jumping in - well Aaron just pushed Dustin

Dallin (3) & Marshall (4) - Julie's boys

I am so glad the kids will pose for me.  I love it!

Jason (8), Ella (7), Jacob (7), Christopher (6), Ian (6), Rebecca (8), Molly (2), Anita (2)

We were so tired from the heat and fun at Redfish.  Thankfully we had a family potluck that night so there wasn't too much preperation.  Just your contribution to the potluck and mine was cheese and cake.  Easy, peasy!  Uncle Devin and his new grandson, Rudy.

Molly got to celebrate her birthday with Grandpa David who had a birthday on Friday, Kara on Wednesday and Christian this upcoming Monday.

They were nice and let her blow out the candles.

She had a couple helpings of cake, ice cream and a couple sneaky fingerfuls of frosting.

Aunt Sindy with Julie's baby Kailey and her baby Isabella.

Dustin thought he would be funny and kept squirting everybody while I was dishing up cake so after I finished I got a good scoop on my finger and suprised him.

He was a good sport.

Pam and Alan were in charge of the reunion this year and brought all sorts of fun activities for the kids.  She had ordered camping backpacks for all the kids so they got to color them with fabric markers and got a pencil to put in them.  Sunday morning they all got a coloring book and notebook to color to add to their backpacks.

As always it's hard to say goodbye to the cousins we haven't seen in a while and don't get to see too often.  It's so fun to get together and have good times.  We will be getting together again in a few weekends here in Idaho Falls for another special occasion so, until then....

Spider Bite

When we lived in our apartment the first year we were married we woke up a lot of mornings to find these creepy buggers crawling in our kitchen sink.  Dustin is freaked out by spiders so he would turn the sink on and hope they would never come back but I had to squish them first to be sure of it.

Apparently it is hobo spider mating season right now which means they are a bit more aggressive than normal.  Monday night I woke up scratching my leg.

Tuesday morning I woke up to this.  A really red, hard, hot and sore spot that looked like a spider bite.

By evening the hard, red, hot spot had spread to be this big.

By the next day it looked more like this.  I went visiting teaching that morning and got advice from good friends to go to the doctor.  The doctor put me on an antibiotic 4 times daily and drew this pretty line around the red part to make sure it didn't spread further after being on antibiotics.  When I started the antibiotic I also started Melaleuca Oil and the two together worked miracles.

It had gone down this much by the next day.

And almost all the red around it was gone by the following day.  However the sore started to look pretty bad.  So I started using Melaleua's Mela Gel and put a bandaid on it.  It looks much better now and I think it will heal up just fine.  It's been quite an experience though.  I don't know where I got bit.  I was in my in laws raspberry patch on Sunday night so possibly got bit while I was in there??