Butterfly Menagerie - JULY

One of the kids favorite summer activities is climbing the fence to reach the butterfly bush in our neighbor's yard. They only have to sit still a moment before one comes within reach. They created a butterfly habitat in their bedroom complete with fresh flowers and sugar water for food. Unfortunately, the kids weren't gentle enough to turn the creatures free unscathed.

Addie created a bracelet from one of the butterfly bush flowers.

Blackberry Picking - JULY

Our dear friends, the Abbotts, joined us for an afternoon of blackberry picking at a farm near our home. This was our 4th year partaking of this delectable crop.

After eating the biggest and best of the crop, we make blackberry frezer jam with the rest. What a mess! but it's worth it.

The Shurtliffs Visit

Liesl and her kids paid a visit the first week in July. This time she decided to brave the drive from Chicago by herself with 3 kids.

Catching critters.

Keeping in tradition from last year the kids took a few swim lessons from Miss. Jessica.

Topher just soaked in some rays.

Alex had no fear of putting his face in the water but was terrified of floating on his back.

Ty was just the opposite. He was a pro at trusting Jessica and floating on his back, but hated putting his face in the water.

Maycie improved quite a lot this year. She even started to do the freestyle stroke.
Addie and Whitney were already pros and were doing too much swimming for us to catch them on camera.

The kids loved the pizza buffet and Cici's pizza.

Fourth of July

I wish I could say we had this extravagant celebration for the fourth, but we kept it pretty mellow. With the fourth being on a Sunday this year we did some celebration on Saturday by participating in the neighborhood bike parade (where my camera wasn't charged) then swam in the pool. Rob took a trip to the pet ER with tiger who sounded like he was dying. Turned out he just had an upper respiratory infection. On Sunday we had dinner with our good friends, the Summerhays, then played with fire of course. The dad tired to come up with interesting firecracker concoctions to make it more interesting. It turned out that most of the concoctions just made a mini bon fire.

The Bike

This one deserves it's own post.

After searching Craigslist.com for months for a good road bike, Rob got fed up with my obsession and surprised me with a new one. Full carbon frame. Shimano 105 components. What does all the bike talk mean? A really NICE bike and just in time for my next triathlon. What a sweet husband I have.

Maycie's 5th Birthday

Maycie got twice the birthday this year. This is the party Marmie did when we were visiting Cedar City this summer.

More Birthday wishes at home.

Maycie can be so hard to figure out. She's easy going and has no great expectations.

One thing she really likes to is draw and paint. We visited my Aunt Liz who is a professional artist in Utah. Maycie was impressed with Aunt Liz's paintings so or her birthday, she got an art easel with paint and brushes to create her own masterpieces.

Here's her artistic rendition of Humpty Dumpty.

Summer Blog Update

It's been a long summer and barely a mention of it on the blog. Here's the update.