If You Could.....

What would you do all summer long? I know what Jacob would do. Read his new 'favorite' series, Fablehaven. He is almost done with the third book. I get to read the books when he is not and I finished first. It is very nice to be able to sit and visit with him about the book when he get to the exciting parts. I think there are two more books. We will have to take another trip to Billings and go to his favorite store - Barnes and Nobel.

Let's think of how Jacob's day goes. Get up, take care of dogs, watch a McGuyver, play the piano and then read the rest of the day, taking a few breaks to jump on the trampoline and take a few laps around the block on his bike. I think he will be glad when school starts. He is hoping to sleep outside in the tent. He was thinking of sleeping on the tramp with his cousin but there are just too many darn mosquitoes out there.

Announcement and Reception Thoughts.

Here is the announcement for Lucas and Shanae. I think I am almost ready for all the festivities to start. This is an exciting time but much easier this time around. I was wondering why and realized that in part it is because I am not working every day. I have time to think. This is not going to be a huge all out Open House. I hope everyone will be relaxed and able to just have some fun and visit with the friends and guests that come. My dress is ready to go. I just ordered the cake today from Aletha Durtsche. She is such a nice person and friend. It is nice to have talent all around us when we are perhaps lacking a bit. I borrowed the arch and fencing from Joyce. I have the table decorations planned with a little help from my friend Robyn. Thanks. Pam is going to help in the kitchen and some cute little girls who will help with presents. I have lots of blue ribbon and will probably need to get more. Hmmm. Just some napkins, plates, the rest of the refreshments....I need to call Costco for the sheet cakes. Pick up the nuts and some sort of other goody. If anyone has any cute ideas that are easy, let me know.

Wood Floors Ugh!

Mark worked really hard sanding the floor. The dining room floor really needed to be re-done because of all the abuse that it took. There are some stains that won't quite come out. Mostly the Iodine that got spilled on the floor and the gashes that were made when chairs got moved around when big bodies were still in them. Hopefully we will get enough coats of polyurethane on the floor that it will stay looking good for a long time.

We thought this looked great after we sanded it.

Apparently not! We didn't get all the old varnish off. Rats. We had to wait for it to dry all the way and then sand the whole thing again.

This time we did it right. Here goes the first coat.

This is after the third coat. We will do a light sanding on Monday and then go over it again with one more coat and hopefully it will be all done. Only four more rooms and the hallways to go!

Sleeping Outside!

Rachael and Eli came home for a quick visit Thursday evening and left Friday morning. We had lots of fun with them and tried to entertain them. Jacob came up with the great idea of sleeping outside on the trampoline. All of us?!? Yep!
What good sports Rachael and Eli are! We were a little afraid that with Eli, Rachael, Mark, Me, Jacob and Duchess all on the trampoline at once it might break. I am glad we were wrong. Whew! Molly had to spend the night in the house because she wouldn't stay on the tramp.

After we were all snuggled in we watched Monty Python on a laptop. I think eveyone was asleep before it was over. The French knights were taunting King Arthur when I zonked out.

In the morning after breakfast Mark, Eli and Jacob played a rousing game of Bocci ball. Jacob has officially grown up and no longer gets a handicap! It looks like they were having lots of fun.

Thunderstorm!

Jacob took a swim in the gutter across the street. The water had completely covered 2nd street and was quite deep so he decided to get his swimming suit and have some fun!

Molly didn't like the water very much. When the storm started she really needed to go to the bathroom but she wouldn't go out in the rain and hail so she waited until it was all done. Jacob tried to get her to go in the water but evidently beagles are not water dogs.

This red truck had a good time running this puddle. Nice!

One more time in the water!

Girls Camp!

Girls camp started out cold, cold, cold. We started up the Big Horn mountains driving the Lumina with five people in the car. I am not sure we had brake lights, probably not since Spike has not gotten around to doing that. In Lovell it was about 70 degrees and just a very nice day but the Mountain had a huge cloud just hovering over the top half. Debbie Allred and I were in the front seat and the car did a wonderful job going up. We hit dense fog about half way up, in a way it was nice because then Debbie didn't freak out looking out the window and seeing the ground very far down. We couldn't see anything except about 20 yards in front of us. We cruised on at about 20 MPH. By the time we hit Bear Lodge the cloud lifted and decided to snow on us instead. The dirt road to camp was very slick and I was just trying to stay out of the ruts and far enough behind the truck in front of us so that I wouldn't have to actually stop. I wasn't sure if I would get stuck or not. It looks nice and warm in this picture but not so. All of the girls got wet feet and there quite a bit of snow in different places. I think the temperature hovered around 40 degrees and it rained, hailed, snowed and groppel ( little balls of hard snow) fell out of the sky. Every once in a while we had sunshine.

This is the camp all set up. A big thank you to Bill and Kelvin Yowell, Doug Savage and Lloyd Mayes for helping us get it all set up.

I procrastinated on the whole flag thing. Camp Started on Tuesday and I needed a flag so of course I started it on Saturday. There were o directions as to how large the flag needed to be so the first one I made was about 18 inches by 30 inches. Then I got a phone call from another camp director and she told me they needed to be three feet by five feet! Yikes! I didn't have time to go buy a red sheet which was our camp color. I was panicking and looked up the stairs to the hallway window and there it was. My Flag! I took down one panel and it was the perfect size and color. I put some jewels on it and wrote all the things we wanted on it. It worked out really well. Inspiration is a wonderful thing!

This is a pile of snow that was still there by the afternoon of the second day. Brrrr.

Our girls helping with the stake service project for the missionaries. I think they all had a good time especially because it was inside the lodge where it was warm.

The ever popular game of Moose, Moose! It is pretty much like the elephant game except that the Moose is the goal and you have to have sounds that go with you motion. The personalities of the girls really came through!

Oops. Meryk made a mistake and it was a funny one!

Metya was the Moose! Goal Achieved!

Camp overall was great except we didn't get to spend much time with them. The Stake directors had lots of activities with the girls and I would have like to have some ward time. We had some things planned but didn't the chance to do them. Tuesday and Wednesday were rather cold and the canoeing in Syble lake was cancelled but Thursday and Friday got a lot better and by Friday morning we didn't have to wear coats anymore. Two layers of shirts was enough. We got up and moving and were out of camp by 8:30. The Lumina performed very well on the way down. As you know we have quite the drive down the mountain. When I geared down into second we stayed at about 50 MPH then when we needed to I geared down to first and we crawled along at a healthy 30 MPH. Our priesthood leaders who were taking the trailer down that had all of the girls' stuff in it didn't fare so well. Brother Yowell burned out his clutch on the top so Bob Acton showed up at our house with the trailer and Bro. Yowell got his vehicle down later in the day. I wish they would have a flashing light at the top of the Mountain that told the 'new drivers of the mountain" how many people have died coming down because they didn't know what they were doing. Then they would read the signs that tell them what to do.

July 4th

The Fourth of July was celebrated at Grandma Flash's house again this year. Cowley has some pretty exciting fireworks going on so we all went up there. Those of us who got there early played an exciting game of pictionary using a list of Gospel related words. The group of Mark, Erin and Susie smoked everyone else all night.

It looks a little dangerous for everyone to be out there so close to the action. Again it looks like the closest ones to the fireworks are Mark and the girls (Susie, Amanda, and Kim). Erin had just left. I held Aiden, Betsy's little boy, all evening. I enjoyed that quite a bit.

Gary, Caleb, and Glen holding Alexis are watching the fireworks at a safe distance. Betsy's babies didn't appreciate the loud whistling ones.

As you can tell, neither did Jacob. I think he had his ears plugged all evening.

Susie and Mark teamed up to do some bottle rockets.

Scooby Doo!

Scooby and Shaggy are running away from the Black Knight. Yoiks!

The Black Knight!
I told Jacob he might get scared in the night but he assured me that he would be all right. We decided to paint the other walls in Jacob's room. Two of the walls have 'Wild Things" on them and I wanted to do some more on the other walls but Jacob is too old for that. He chose to do castle walls and Scooby Doo on them instead. We have one wall finished and we will get the other one done soon. I think he will just want a bulletin board on that one and no pictures. That works.