Sunday Best

I snapped a few photos of the girl in their coordinating sundresses before church the Sunday before last and thought I'd post a few on here just because.

Blythe gets a bit self conscious in front of the camera.

Notice our pretty Clematis by Blythe.  

This is the first summer it has bloomed 

and Justin and I pretty excited about it.

There's a more natural smile!

Puppy Caddie

Well we have a new puppy as of Friday evening.  It was a totally impulsive decision on my part, although Brynne has been agitating about getting another dog.  I dropped the girls off at the pool for their warm-up for their swim meet and decided to run an errand at the outlet mall before I had to be back at the pool for the start the meet in an hour.  I told Barrett that if he was well behaved I'd take him to see the dogs at Furburbia.  I made the mistake of asking to see one of the puppies they had there.  It was love at first sight!  She was sooo adorable.  I ended up missing two of Brynne's races and one of Blythe's because I was filling out all the paperwork, etc.  My Mom came over to see the puppy and took her home so I didn't have to take her to the indoor swim meet.  Brynne is in heaven.  The other kids like her too and I think Justin secretly really likes her as well.  However, now Barrett says he wants to choose his own dog!  He says he wants a really big one.  I'm afraid he's out of luck.

Brynne holding Caddie.

Caddie playing with Ruby's old squirrel.

Chewing on the squirrel.  This puppy loves to chew!

Family Reunions Galore

This is turning into a summer of family reunions for us.  We started off with the Peterson family reunion in Payson.   My Mom and her sister Sharon were in charge of hosting it this year.  We ended up scheduling it for June 27th, the same day as my 14th Wedding Anniversary.  It was fitting though, because my Grandma's parents were also married on June 27th.  

We made pork and bean chalupas in four different crock pots so we would have enough and we provided lots of toppings so everyone could make their own taco salads.  Everyone brings a side dish or dessert to share, so there was plenty of food.  The attendance was a bit sparse this year but we had fun anyway.  I was lame and didn't take any photos.  My Mom and Brittney painted a tree on a huge piece of cardboard with a branch for each one of the Peterson siblings.  We had my Dad and Peter take photos of each family that was there with this fun new Polaroid type camera that my Mom got just for the reunion.  I had printed off photos of each of the siblings we placed each photo on a branch and put their descendants on the leaves above them.  (If anyone reading this has a photo of the finished family tree and wants to email it to me I'd be very appreciative!)  It was fun for everyone to see which "branch" of the family everyone else belongs to.  We also had some activities for the kids including a pinata and face painting.  My aunt Sharon made a family bingo game which was a lot of fun too.  Britt and my cousin Kirsten decorated a cake for the occasion.  You can read all about it here.

Next up was a small Rich family reunion.  My Mom and I recently reconnected with her cousins who she hadn't seen in about 40 years.  We got together with her cousin Sue and her family right after Christmas.  Then her cousin Gerry and his wife stopped by for dinner on their way from Las Vegas to Wyoming.  I hosted the barbecue at my house.

Aunt Sharon, Janna, Grammy, Cousin Gerry and my Mom.

Sharon, BJ, Jill, Peter, Grammy, Walt, 

Janis, Justin, Janna & Gerry.

It was fun to meet Gerry and Janna and the best part was Gerry brought me two flashdrives full of family photos and information.  There were even some photos of my grandfather from his childhood that I had never seen before.

Our last reunion was a Chudleigh one held at Jessica's house last Thursday.  My cousin Julia and my Granddad drove out to Utah from Pennsylvania and are staying for a few weeks.  My brother Dan and his wife Mia were also in town from California, so we all got together for dinner.  My aunt Sheryl and my cousin Brian and his wife Michelle and their four kids also were able to attend.  I was in charge of making dessert and made a banana cake with caramel frosting and Blythe helped me make chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting that we baked in ice cream cones.  They were really cute and were a big hit with the kids and even some of the adults.  However, they ended up being a lot more work than I had anticipated, so I doubt I'll be making them again.  

One of my favorite things about summertime is how much easier it is to get together with family and friends and just hang out!

The Upside to 3 Weeks of Rain

We had a very wet spring.  I usually complain that we seem to go straight from winter into summer and skip spring all together.  Not this year!  We had about three weeks of rain in June with an occasional glimpse of the sun.  It made the first week the kids were out of school a bit rough because they couldn't go outside to play.  In between rain storms I got out and planted and weeded as much as I could.  It was great to be able to plant flowers and watch them flourish instead of shriveling up.  My berm on the side of the driveway has just exploded with flowers this year.  

Oriental Poppies I transplanted from my parent's yard 

last year.  It is 1o times the size this year!

Blue Flax and Daisies and Desert Four O'clock in the middle.

My other Oriental Poppy, which is more of a salmon color.

My favorite "whiskered" Pansies.

The down side of course is that the weeds are also growing like crazy.  My hay fever hadn't been  troubling me until this week.  There is so much grass pollen right now that I can't work in the yard without being miserable.  I swear I could weed 8 hours a day and still not keep up.  Almost half an acre is a lot to weed.  The yellow clover has come out in force and we have some thistles growing that are almost as tall as me.  I'm going to let Justin deal with those.  We have had fresh spinach and broccoli from Justin's raised beds.  Sadly, the potguts (ground squirrels) ate all but two of our head of broccoli.  Justin shot one of them with his pellet gun while it was munching his broccoli.  He felt entirely justified.  Ruby killed another one that got in our garage, in front of the kids.  They were a little shocked.  After seeing the dead body Barrett said, "Let's spray it with the hose and wake it up."  I tried to explain that that wouldn't work.  Ruby wasn't happy with me when I took it away from her and put it in the garbage can.  Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the last dead rodent I would have to deal with. Stay posted for further details.

Back to the 21st Century

Our microwave died a long time ago.  So long ago that I can't even remember when, except that it was sometime last year.  So we've been living in the dark ages and used a kettle all winter to make hot chocolate and had to reheat our leftovers in the oven.  We finally broke down and got a new one when the new Best Buy opened up near us and we were able to get a bit of a discount because we were invited to a pre-grand opening sale because the company Justin works for paved the parking lot. 

The new microwave was a little taller than our old one so Justin had to saw the top of the opening off a bit, so the door would open.  He did a really good job and is a handy guy to have around the house.  It has a dial instead of a number pad, which seemed a bit retro to me, but it's easy to use and we've been happy with it so far.  Blythe has been in heaven.  She loves being able to make cheese quesadillas and bean and cheese burritos in the microwave instead of on the slower cook top.  I'm happy to be able to defrost meat again, instead of having to plan 24-48 hours in advance if I want to cook something that's been in the freezer. 

Summer = Swimming

It's been awhile.  This is the first post I've managed to write since school got out on June 12th.  In fact it's been so long that I forgot I had to upload my photos in reverse order until I got about 6 uploaded.  Oops!  Anyway, we're having a fun summer and we've been spending a lot of time at the pool.  But not the relaxing and fun kind of time at the pool where you are outside getting a tan.  Barrett did two weeks of swim lessons M-Th.  I signed him up the morning classes started and when I got there he was the only one in the class.  I was feeling guilty about Barrett getting 8 private swim lessons for the group lesson price, so I called Brittney and had her sign James up too.  The boys had a blast. They each made a lot of progress, although Barrett is the better swimmer.  It was good for James to see Barrett having fun and not being at all fearful.  It helped James not to be afraid to put his face in the water or to jump off the side into the pool.  They were really cute together and had a lot of fun.  Barrett was sad when the session was over.  

Barrett getting ready to jump into the pool.

Barrett swimming to his teacher.

Almost to the island.

He made it!

James getting a little help.

Cute boys!

The girls are both on the swim team and have been practicing 2-3 times a week, plus having meets.  The first meet we went to was at an outdoor pool and it ended up getting cancelled because of thunder and lightning.  The next meet was at our indoor pool and the girls did really well.  They had another smaller meet later that week and also swam well at that meet. 

Blythe at the top of the photo on the starting

block for the breast stroke 50 meter race.

Blythe waiting to get her First place

ribbon with her time on it.

Blythe showing off her ribbons.  She took

first in breast stroke and second in both

freestyle and back stroke.

I'm not sure why I didn't get any photos of Brynne during the meet, but here she is with her ribbons.  She won first place in the 25 M breast stroke, second place in  25 M freestyle and third place in the 25 M butterfly.  I'm so proud of my girls.  I'm still a little bit in shock that they are such good swimmers.  I've never been a good swimmer and am lucky if I can doggy paddle one length of the pool.  My best friend Beth and I took our first swim lessons together and she was co-captain of the swim team her Senior year.  I'm not sure what happened to me, except that it probably had something to do with the fact that I started wearing glasses when I was 7 and didn't like to swim because I couldn't see. We are heading to Moab this Saturday and are going to spend 6 or 7 days there, which should give us plenty of time to sit by the pool and work on our summer tans.