Cody & Kylie get married

My little brother Cody and his girlfriend Kylie have been playing house for the past year ish.. with plans to get married.  Sadly Kylie got a cyst on her ovary and needed insurance to get it taken care of so they happily got married at the courthouse on August 19th so they could more quickly add her to Cody's insurance.  As the Lord would have it Kylie's cyst started to drain and within the month had disappeared. :)  I love Kylie & her little girl Lily and am super excited to have them a part of our family.  She suits Cody well and adds so much to our family dynamic. 

 

We celebrated their marriage on Saturday at my parents house with an open house party.  Once again super fun to see cousins all dressed up in a fun setting.

 

Molly with her 50th cup of lemonade.   

 

We took a few unprofessional family photos at the end of the night. 

 

 

The girls. 

My siblings. 

 

My siblings & in law siblings.  The more complete picture. :)  However, am I squishing Kenny?

 

Awkward family photo.. not sure why they always insist we do this. ha! 

 

Love this family!  Sure are happy for my little brother Cody.  What a good guy and again so happy to add Kylie and Lily (#7 granddaughter) to our family. 

Pancakes & Strawberries

At the beginning of the summer we started a little journal.  We didn't do too great at keeping up on it, but one of the most valuable things Ella wrote down was the recipe for pancakes.  She got really good at making them and did this batch with absolutely no supervision.

 

She was pretty proud of herself for a good reason.

 

Molly & Alissa have to have a crazy face shot. 

 

Since it's cooled off our garden has gone wild!  We have been picking cups of strawberries about every 3 days (no complaints about that).  We all LOVE it! 

 

However, the zucchini got a little out of hand when we found 2-3 huge ones like this every 2 days.  I finally had to pull the plant.  The kids used a few of them as babies after they drew faces on them.  I guess when you have that much zucchini you might as well use it for something purposeful.  Thankfully we were able to give lots away. :)

Achievement Days

Within the last 3 months I was called to be in the Achievement Days with the 8 year old girls.  I was thrilled to have this calling and have a lot of fun doing it with Ella. 

 

A few weeks ago we had all the girls wear their baptism dresses and took their pictures at the church building.  We printed the pictures at our next upcoming activity the girls get to make a mini scrapbook of these pictures with their friends.  They had a great time doing it.

 

I have to laugh the girl I am partners with has 5 boys so when I brought Princess music to play on my Ipad so the girls could dance around while they waited for their turn to have a picture she realized she and I live in pretty different worlds with a bunch of girls vs. boys. :)

 

I love these girls & the opportunity I have to serve in this capacity. 

Judd's Wedding

This past weekend we were able to attend my cousin Judd's wedding here in Idaho Falls.  It's fun to get dressed up and see cousins.

 

Especially since we got all except 1 of grandma & grandpas GREAT grandkids together for a photo.  This was the best shot out of about 20.

 

Would you believe my 8 year old caught the bouquet.  She was pretty surprised and excited to have a little bouquet of flowers. :)  I guess it was better than the 2 year olds standing back there.

 

Little Miss Ella with Sagelee - Judds little girl. 

The biggest news of the summer

So the biggest news of the summer comes in a super small, raisin size packaging. :)

 

We are officially expecting baby Braithwaite #4.  Holy cow I have spent most of the past week laying on the couch trying my hardest to try not to think about food or smell anything foul.  Thankfully after mu appointment yesterday they gave me some nausea medicine which I did not know they had and it is amazing!  So thankful for that and the fact that I finally did some dishes today.

 

Baby is due middle end of April.  I calculated I was 8 week tomorrow but ultra sound showed 7 weeks tomorrow so we are going with that and will recalculate at 20 weeks they said.  The kids are all super exited and I am too just wishing I didn't feel so sick.  I am glad that we got all the summer fun in before I started getting sick though.  HUGE blessing and now I can be big and hot during the winter and have the baby just in time for next summer's fun! :) 

 

Feeling super blessed that's for sure.

1st Day of School

My goodness - I have a 3rd grader!  Ella started 3rd grade on Tuesday at Summit Hills Elementary.  It is a new school that just got built in our neighborhood and because it's so close there are no buses.  She gets to ride her bike, walk or ride with somebody to school every day.  I think it makes things a little more exciting for her in the morning which is always good.

 

Her teacher is Ms. Havens who came from Discovery Elementary 2nd grade so Ella knew her and was comforted by that.  Sure do love this girl.

 

Despite her best persuading efforts I am making her continue piano.  She has such a talent in it and a great ability to memorize and learn quickly.  I know one day she will stop hating me for it.

 

Alissa got to start a little gymnastics class with her friend Hadley and couldn't be more excited.  When I went to get her she wanted to stay for the 2nd class. :)  Glad she is going to love it.   She starts Joy School next week with 2 other girls in the neighborhood.  She is such a sweetheart! 

 

Molly gets another year of tagging along with mom :)  I'm good with that though and I'm pretty sure she is too. 

Wheeler Camping Trip

We packed up for Labor Day weekend and took mom & dad's other trailer to Island Park to camp with Jeremy, Heidi and their families and mom and dad.  We had a relaxing time.  The kids loved every second of playing with their cousins..

 

and in grandma's trailer...  (I LOVE this picture!)

f

and with Kenny. 

 

Ella learned how to ride the four wheeler so her and Kailey took turns riding.  They had a small scare and tipped the four wheeler on the trail.  Thankfully nobody was hurt.

 

So fun to be together.. and messy. 

 

 

We did a little riding and a lot of sitting around relaxing.  Jeremy and mom brought parachute cord so everybody was making bracelets and belts and anything else they might want to make.  I did a lot of sleeping. :)  It was nice.

Camping with the Hansens

All summer we have been planning a little vacation with the Hansens and finally last weekend we got to go.  We loaded up and picked Dustin up in Arco Thursday night (after he waited for us for an hour!) and headed to the Salmon River.  When we got there we unloaded and got swim suits on and headed up Slate Creek to the hot spring.  We put on our head lamps and carefully walked the trail to the tub.  Besides the floaty algae it was perfect. :)

 

We got on ATVs to head to Bayhorse on Friday and got about 4 miles away when some fire men stopped us on the trail and turned us around.  They were dipping in Bayhorse to put out a 20 acre fire.  So we parked and watched their helicopters for a while.

 

We drove back to camp, had our picnic and then loaded back up to go shoot some guns.  I was a real professional clay pigeon thrower (ha!).  Mostly Farrah and I watched these boys having a ball shooting their guns.

 

Dustin was doing a John Wayne shooting here and destroyed the clay pigeon.

 

The next day we rode the ATVs up Railroad Ridge about 11 miles.  It's a fun ride and at the top you overlook Dustin's favorite lake - Crater Lake.  We stopped by a stream for a photo shoot.

 

 

 

When we got to the top we layed around on the rocks and looked down at the lake.   It was nice to relax and not worry about kids falling and spend time with our special friend.

 

We went to Jimmy Smith Lake after Railroad Ridge and within a few minutes saw a Rattlesnake and that was the end of it for me.  I ran up the hill and sat on the 4 wheeler waiting for Dustin to finish fishing.  That stupid rattle sound was aweful!!

 

It started to rain so we loaded up and went back to the trailer for a nap.  (I think we must be getting old).  We slept about an hour and then got back together to watch a movie in the trailer until the rain cleared up.  The sky was beautiful after the rain!

 

We took them up Yankee Fork to show them the Dredge and the kids fishing pond.  It was still jumping with fish and sadly we didn't bring any fishing gear except Mike remembered he had some hooks in the back seat so we scrounged some fishing line off the bushes, tied it to a stick and a hook and wrapped some dried apricots on it.  Boy howdy those fish went crazy!  Every time we dipped in the water we had fish fighting to grab that apricot smothered hook.

 

I told the boys I was glad to know we could survive in the outdoors with a kiddy pond close by. ;)  We had a lot of good laughs.

 

Such a fun little outing!  We missed our kids terribly, but had a good couple days away.  Dustin says he likes spending time with his wife instead of the kids mom which I understand.  Glad we could do a getaway before life changes.