July Phone Dump

My overweight parrot died today.

I was upset, but it's a huge weight off my shoulder.

(This dad joke brought to you by Tyler, of course.)

Usually Tyler's dad jokes make me groan, but some make me chuckle, and that one stayed in my mind and it reminded me of how I feel about being finished with blogging 2017. I have a reward for myself if I ever get caught up on blogging. (It could happen.) I am now only two months behind. Today will finish off July and it is still September. That is pretty stellar. Now, I just need everyone to not do anything interesting for a couple weeks. Is that too much to ask. June is going to have a birthday and ruin it all, but I will allow it...this time.

Let's take a peek back at July. Summer is always busier than I think it will be. After all, with school out, we should just be chilling, but that is never quite how it goes.

We had 9 square set up on our lawn for a week or so. It was really fun. Random families would walk by and join in. This set is pretty tall so we let the littles catch it and toss it back up. It is a fun game. (Can't beat Spikeball though.)

Ivory cleaned out her room and got rid of some of her blankets. This is a big deal since she has been hoarding them since she was little. We took pictures and then she let them go. She still has her favorite blankets, and honestly, no one would want those. They are loved to shreds.

The Macbean's stopped by the day before the 4th. It was great to catch up with them. I wish they lived closer.

I was released from Activity Days. Swimming was the last activity I went to. Daisy was not happy that I left right when she was joining the older girls. I brought June and Ivory because it is more fun to play with older girls than leaders.

I'll warn you in advance that there are a lot of pictures of Pip this month, and I didn't include them all. Here are a few. She likes to sleep on people, she does NOT like to ride on people, and she enjoys basking in the sun.

We had a game night with the SYCLs from camp. Almost all the girls came and several leaders. It was a great night. I was released from my Girls Camp calling shortly after this, so this photo tugs at my heart. Such amazing girls.

It was very hard for me to lose my Girls Camp calling. There were many tears and I took several long walks so the kids didn't have to listen to me sniffle (and sob). In my neighbors yard there were some beautiful sunflowers. It is amazing what a little beauty can do to lift the heart.

We aren't very good about keeping the bird feeder filled, but it is fun to see the colorful birds that visit.

The littles filled some water balloons and then they filled their swimsuits. I would think that it would be cold, but maybe that is just the ticket in the summer.

Three guys on a scooter. (Two of them are girls.) This reminds me of a Studio C sketch. (Don't tell Tyler I called his motorcycle a scooter.)

Robyn did the window one day. I didn't even know she was going to paint it and she did it so quickly. I really liked it. Although we decided the unicorn reminded us of Littlefoot from the Land Before Time.

I curled Robyn's hair one day. She has a LOT of hair. It looked so pretty figured I should take a picture.

One of my favorite things is finding random pictures on my phone that Robyn has edited. They usually make me laugh. This one is no exception.

We love snails. Probably because I can't grow a garden. I'm assuming gardeners loves snails much less.

Tyler had us listen to an inspirational talk one Sunday. Put Pearl out like a light. If I had only known this would work before...

How many things can you fit in your toes? See if you can beat Robyn.

Nate and Camie did a roll playing campaign for us. It was really fun. We chose from characters they  brought. Most of us were orcs, but Ivory was a band of goblins. (So her character was really a group of creatures.) She colored her character page and I thought it looked really cool. We met a witch, got a potion, climbed a wall, disguised ourselves, frightened some kids, watched Kevin win a drinking contest, spoke with a priest, plotted with religious fanatics, tricked guards, killed guards, found a bald prince, captured him, blew up a bridge, burned boats, killed a wizard magician and made it back safely. All in a nights work.

Finally, one more of the pampered princess. She really likes to have her tummy rubbed.

Looking Through to 2018

Let's give a cheer to the end of 2017!

Yes, I know it was over 9 months ago. But today is when it officially ended for me. This is my last post from 2017. Ivory is giving me a hard time. She doesn't have a blog to keep up on. She doesn't know how hard it is to document all the little things and then edit pictures and get them on here. Maybe she should make me cookies to show her appreciation. Oh...she said she would make brownies. That will be acceptable. (There are good things about having someone read over your shoulder while you are typing.)

Now that she is in the kitchen, making my celebration brownies, I'll get my last post on here. Robyn had big plans for the window at the turn of the year. That is why her Christmas window was never quite finished. She knew it had to go to make way for 2018.

Although Robyn does most of the windows by herself, sometimes she will have her sisters help. It is very nice when she gets them all involved. In this case, she sketched out her drawing and her sisters filled in the numbers.

Then came the splattering and speckling. They chose different colors and went to town.

I was skeptical about this idea. (Meaning I didn't want paint all over everything.) Robyn tried to plan in advance. But paper taped over the brick doesn't protect the window edges. But in the end, there wasn't too much paint all around. Nine months later, there is still paint on the ground and quite a bit on the ceiling of the porch, but how can you say no to these kids and their creativity.

They had a good time. They got nice and messy and were proud of their end result. This was an excellent project for Christmas Break.

All the Tid Bits of December 2017

Could it be? Is it she? (These lines from Beauty and the Beast pop into my head rather often actually.) In this case, the question is...Could it be? Did I finally get to the end of 2017? And the answer is almost. I have my phone dump to get through today and then ONE more post about the window the girls painted for the New Year. But I am still very excited to be at this point. So let's jump right into tid bits from last year.

The very first day of December, we had a gorgeous sunset. I think that was a good omen.

We got our trees up in both rooms. (Yes, Tyler laughs at me for having more than one tree, but it makes me happy. And you can see our shoe tree in the back.)

Although it didn't officially snow until Christmas Eve, there was a light dusting here and there in the mornings.

These flowers are proof that sometimes it takes me longer than usual to kill something. But don't worry, I always get my plant in the end.

Grandma Dargan got rid of a lot of her nativities. Do you remember how many she had? It was cool because she sent pictures and the girls got to pick one they liked. Then she mailed them to us. It was like an early Christmas present. We didn't get pictures of all the girls, but here is Daisy and Pearl with their sets.

One of the biggest highlights of the Christmas season is the Scoresby's Christmas party. So fun! We wore our ugly sweaters and had a blast.

It is nice to paint your toes in the winter, because they often get neglected when they are in boots and socks all the time.

Pip sleeps wherever she feels like it, but this position can't be comfortable, can it? She looks like something is broken.

A few more weirdies. Tyler doesn't normally take them, so it is funny to see stubble on the girls.

At work, there is a shredder. The girls would often visit me in the copy room, and one day Robyn decided to write out instructions for the machine. It made me laugh quite a bit. I especially like, "Don't kick any children."

The Ward Christmas party was nice. I didn't give it a whole post. They grabbed some youth from our ward and put together a string ensemble. They sounded very nice and there is Miss June up front.

That same day after the Ward party, most of the family took off for Idaho, but I stayed home with sick Pearl. It is no fun to be sick around Christmas. I believe the family had a good time up North, but this was the only picture I saw. Hey KJ, looking good. At least it is proof that they made it up there.

And then it was quite blustery on the way back. Idaho was sending the snow we needed for Christmas.

After Christmas, Pearl was well enough to go on a date with me. We went to see Ferdinand. Not exactly like the book, but still cute.

While Dad and June were out of town at Front Sight, I took the girls to use their free meals from Brick Oven. I actually hate using those things. You are supposed to have a parent meal for each free kids meal. It never works out right and I don't enjoy the food much. I remembered why I usually throw them away. But it was still fun to hang out with my girls.

And finally, this last picture is the reason I blog. Here is Pearl reading a blog book. The girls get them out fairly frequently. I hope they have many lasting memories from their childhood.