Six Months going on Seven....

Where has all the time gone??....

Water Day and First Day of Kindergarten

Our cute neighbor and awesome friend Randa decided to do a Water Day with the kids here at "the Villa". It was tons of fun for my kids because we also had their cousins here with us. Hannah and Alison absolutely love spending time together. They always have a good laugh and I'm so glad that not only are they cousins, they are best friends!

Henry loves the water and I was nervous that putting him in this pool of water might kill his love for being in it....only because it was so stinkin' cold. As you can see in the picture, he just loved it!
Our lil Bubba got so tan this summer. In fact, I have a picture that my sister- in- law took of him up at Bear Lake last week that shows JUST HOW TAN he got! I'd post it here but my blog's Public, so if you're interested in seeing a cute lil picture of Tan Bubba, drop me your email addy and I'll send it along...it'll make you laugh..I know it made me laugh!!

In closing, Wednesday was Hannah's first day of "real school"...hehehe..whatever that means. She started Kindergarten this year and I told myself, "No biggie, I won't cry over it!", well you guessed right, I cried....and then cried a bit more. It was pathetic.

Hannah picked the places she wanted her pictures taken at, AND she also informed me that it needed to be "posed" pictures so that Tutu Lady would like the pictures...I'm not sure if she knows this or not, but my Mom would love it even if she were crying in the pictures!!

There's one thing I learned about my daughter in sending her off to school:

She's just like me and yet she's nothing like me.

She'll win ya over with that special charm of hers, but she's also super shy just like her Daddy! We walked into the school building and the first thing she does is grab my hand with a death grip that told me that she was pretty nervous. If you ask my mom about my first day of Kindergarten, she'll tell you that she walked me in and stayed for a while wondering (and maybe secretly hoping) if I'd even let her go back home. She says that after about 10 minutes she said "I have to go home to clean up the house now and I said to her, "Okay, BuhByyyyye", which sent her home crying, "My oldest girl is growing up too fast!! She doesn't need me anymore!" (Maybe not in those exact words, but you get what I mean; it was a bit traumatic for my mom.) I could tell by Hannah's grip that if I told her that I were going home to clean the house she'd first laugh at me and say, "Well thats a FIRST!" (hehehe, humor me people, of course Hannah is still working on her "wit" skillz), but really she'd say, "Wait, I'm coming with you!" And you know what, for as much as I thought I wanted my daughter to jump into things whole heartedly without constantly turning back for my approval (you know, be just exactly like me!!), learning about the person that she is has made me realize, that if she'll always be the shy Hannah that she sometimes can be, then that's just fine by me.

I love you Hannah Girl...just the way you are!

Oh and Happy First Day of Kindergarten (Saddy Last Day of Summer..if there's a Happy, there's gotta be a Saddy okay!)

Haircuts and Henry

So I'd write something to go with the pics in this Blog, but really, all of the pics are pretty self explanatory. ~Haircuts and Henry~ pretty much says it all!!

The things we do for love....

Have you ever been "boy sandwiched"...this is what my daughter says when she gets stuck between two boys ~ whether it's sitting between boys in Primary Sharing Time or sitting down at a table in a restaurant. I'm not sure where she got the term, but I'm quite sure I now know what it feels like.

One morning after nursing my son and deciding to lay him next to me, I hear the "stomp patter" of Bubba's feet (Hannah's feet sound more like pitter patter so that's how I knew it wasn't her) wandering the hall outside my room. He comes in telling me he's afraid of something or other and I'm waaaaaay too tired to bring him back to bed so I invite him to sleep alongside me as long as he can be quiet and go right back to sleep. Well about 30 minutes into it, I realize that this is not a very good sleeping arrangement because the only position for me would be to lay on my side, like a slice of Bologna, between my two darling boys. That's when I realized ~ "I'm being sandwiched by my two 'white with a lil bit o' wheat' bread boyz" ~. Needless to say, I climbed over Bubba to get my picture and proceeded to go back to sleep on the floor of my bedroom.

Aaaaah the things we do for love (and for just an extra hour of sleep!)

Summertime

Summer is almost over and Aaron will be home in a week!! WooooooHooooooo! This was probably one of the quickest longest summers in my entire life..okay not my entire life, but just about. It's been fun though and we've been able to do some fun things! For example, Henry got to be Huck Finn (if only for a few minutes):

We also had a dessert contest and had some yummy Pavlova (1st place winner), Lemon Bars, Baklava, Pigs Feet, Peanut Butter Brownies, Cow Tongue, Texas Cake, and some other stuff that I don't remember....


And best of all, we got a new clothesline (this ones for you D. W.). It's super long, and it's actually quite a long walk you have to take just to hang your laundry but it's well worth the walk outside to see that there is still room for your laundry too..that wasn't always the case last summer. Summer also came complete with a teenage boy that one of our WSV kids fondly called "our Giant Friend". For as much as we may have "wondered" about him, he was a big help to some of us moms who needed a "Big Kid" to pull the wagon or to hold a crying baby while we pushed another child on a swing (okay, I'll admit, he helped ME most of the time okay..ya happy? hehehehe). He and his family have since moved to Iowa and my children miss him and still talk about him quite a bit. That's him posing at the clothesline, what a funny kid!

There will be some new haircuts tomorrow too, that will close out the summer and start out the Fall Season, so I'll be sure to post pics of that when I get a chance. 'Til then TooDaLoo (how IS that word spelled anyway? Anyone..anyone...)

sidenote: For those of you who may have read a Blog I previously posted, please note that it has gone the way of Blog Heaven. Do NOT attempt to comment on it via this blog post..it too will go the way of Blog Heaven..I'm just sending out that Warning.

The Picture Game

I was on Naomi Masina's blog and saw this game. It looked like tons o' fun so I decided to give it a go too! I also have seen soooo many of "yous" playing the "What's a Memory you have of Me Game", that I had to "Stop the Madness" right here, right now..bwhahahaha! Anyhoo, this is how the game works...For each question, look up the answer in a Google Image search. Then choose your favorite image from the FIRST page of results only. You get some fun and often CRYPTIC answers (and I mean Cryptic...so cryptic I'll leave commentary on some of them, if only to attempt to get a laugh out of my small following). If you need clarification on any of them leave a comment, also let me know if you do it so we can all see yours!!

Here's mine:


MY AGE

A PLACE I'D LIKE TO TRAVEL TO
MY FAVORITE OBJECT (it's not this one exactly, but you get what I mean right?)
MY FAVORITE ANIMAL (try Googling Favorite Animal N/A...yes, that's right..N.../...A...I don't particularly have a favorite animal, unless Husband and Children Monkeys count!)
MY FAVORITE COLOR
THE TOWN WHERE I LIVE
A PAST PET
A PAST LOVE ( imagine that, I used to LOVE running down busy city streets...'kay not really, but I did love running for about a year in my "earlier life"....circa Senior Year in High School, also known as the Anorexic Year...my family should get a laugh out of that...or Not.)
MY BEST FRIENDS NICKNAME (Google Big A)
MY SCREEN NAME (Susi if you're checking this, my screen name isn't Susi, BUT if you do Google my actual screen name, quite a few familiar faces show up...yours was one of my faves AND it goes with the blog that HAS my screen name in it; "Calling KANABOKE")
MY FIRST NAME (yes, my first name IS Sexy..)
MY MIDDLE NAME (and wouldn't you know it, so is my middle name!!)
MY LAST NAME (too bad my last name is Fatty!!)
ONE OF MY BAD HABITS(no it ain't doodling kids that pick their noses..and it ain't using the word "ain't" either!!)
MY FIRST JOB
MY GRANDMOTHERS NAME (just FYI, my grandma's name ISN'T Beverly so you might assume her name is Cleary...well it isn't that either..)
MY COLLEGE DEGREE(for those of you who know, lucky you, because I'll keep everybody else guessing what I Googled to get this Lovely Google Image!!)
WHAT I'M DOING RIGHT NOW (seriously you guys, this image fit perfectly with what I am doing right now in my life...I just barely dropped that flower pot though.)

Hope you all enjoyed this Blog...I know I quite enjoyed doing it!!

The Burt-Miller Family Legacy

I thought about having the title for this be 4th of July Weekend, but really the 4th has come and gone and I have mixed feelings about the Holiday anyway, so instead I've entitled it The Burt-Miller Family Legacy.

Every 4th of July my husband's mom's Mom's family (are ya confused?) has a family reunion at the Family Ranch up somewhere in the "beauteous" Uinta Mountains. We've gone a few times before, but this year was special as it was the first time in 10 years that all of Aaron's siblings and Mom were there (unfortanately I didn't get a picture of all of us together). We had a great time!! The kids had fun walking through a little stream that runs through a portion of the land, and they enjoyed camping with the cousins. On Saturday, they had a little program that was themed around the family Legacy of missionaries and Missionary Work...they even mentioned that there were 4 other missionaries in the family of the Protestant faith. I thought that was pretty cool. The family is of Scottish descent so they also had a friend of the family come in and play "the Pipes" while they carried the American flag in. It was awesome and very touching. They had flags from different States and Countries flying. Each flag represented an area in which someone in the family had served. The reason we only have a picture of the plaque posted at the Japan flag is because 4 out of the 5 who served there are from Aaron's immediate family (yes, I'm included in that...so is my husband, his older brother, and his sister's husband....WooooHoooo!).

I am thankful that I can be a part of this family's great Legacy of faith and missionary work. I hope that my children will never forget who they are and the great people they come from.

In closing I just wanted to mention something that really has nothing, and yet something to do with with this post ~ My most favorite shot in the entire slideshow of pics is the one where Aaron is smiling and showing some teeth (as he is walking back after receiving his Missionary Certificate)!! If any of you know my hunny bunny, the man rarely smiles, let alone show his teeth. I'm so glad that we have this shot for future generations to enjoy....hehehehehehe~!! (The slideshow pics may be a little off because of the size I've chosen, so to see the pics individually just click on the actual slideshow. It'll take you to the actual Picasa Album.)