Firsts

Gracie had her first swim in Grandma & Grandpa Milne's pool. She did great, and was styling a ginormous swim diaper (one leftover from Carson) and cute teeny weeny swimsuit.

Gotta love the white thighs.
And another first: canning jam. We picked 3 buckets of apricots from Nate's parents yard and spent Saturday morning making and canning jam and syrup. I'm trying to forget the amount of sugar we used (an entire 25 lb. bag!) and just enjoy the delicious outcome.

A crazy, wonderful, week

Last weekend began a CRAZY week, and I mean crazy.... in a fun way of course. First my parents, my 3 nephews, my sister, her husband, and their 6 kids all came to stay at our house for the weekend. Yes, our 2200 sq. foot house held a total of 6 adults and 9 kids.

Sunday we blessed Gracie. The blessing itself was wonderful, Nate did a great job. He had to talk loud though because Gracie screamed through the entire blessing. And I later found out she was almost dropped during it, thanks to Blake for keeping her from slipping!

She had a super-cute bonnet on during the actual blessing, but I think that's what was making her so mad, hence the bonnet-free pictures.

Right after the blessing lunch we went to Bear Lake with my parents, Ramie's family, Tiff & Blake, Rob & Pam, and Nate's parents & younger siblings. We had so much fun, I LOVE Bear Lake!

Kids love the sand, I love the hours of entertainment the sand provides.

My wonderful parents, I miss them already.

The kids got SO dirty playing in the sand all day long. The first day I showered them and then they just got right back into the sand, so they went the rest of the week without showering. You should have seen the bath water when we finally bathed them at home.

My parents had ALL 12 of their grandkids there..... but only 2 out of 5 of their kids. It was a little crazy at times, we were definitely outnumbered.

We got home from Bear Lake and the next day left for the Heber Valley girl's camp property for the Porter family Reunion. The first night we had a blast canoeing and paddle-boating on the lake. Chelsie and I just had to take the photo-op with the sweet life-jackets.

The next morning we did the challenge course. Sadie was so brave and did the zip line all by herself. You have to climb up a pole, walk across a log, and then go down the zip line. I decided if Sadie can do it, I can too. Oh, Nate did it too, but that's nothing for him :)

Tampons in testimony meeting

Today in sacrament meeting I got brave and decided to bear my testimony. So, I get up there and am all emotional and about mid-way through I look over to where Nate & the kids are sitting (in the very front row of one of one of the side sections) and a bunch of people are laughing, including Nate. I completely lost my train of thought so I quickly ended my testimony and sat down. When I asked Nate what happened he was laughing so hard he could not tell me. The nice lady behind us leaned toward me and told me Carson had gotten a tampon out of my bag, taken the wrapper off, and was swinging it by the string in circles while facing the entire congregation. Needless to say, I was completely humiliated. Leave it to Carson to entertain himself, and many others, with a tampon.