Um, I've been using spare computer time hunting down pictures of goodies and working on my other blog. I'll be back soon with pictures of pioneer day fun, my pinata, kids with their feet in their mouths, and me with seven kids seven and under at the park... it's been a busy week.
I've got a new hair cut...
And a new table...
Doesn't it look nice?? I'm getting a couple benches to replace the folding chairs with so it won't look quite so tacky... Plus I'll be able to fit 3 kids to a bench- so we can have 4 adults and 6 kids sit at the table.
Yesterday I walked into the kitchen and saw this... (entire box of ziploc bags)
Followed by this...
See how cute her finger sucking is?? 
She's finally decided that walking is easier then crawling. She'll fall down and stand back up and keep walking rather then crawl from there. She's also venturing out into the house by herself. Which means I track her by following the empty tissue boxes, open cupboards and trail of destruction. Just what I need. At least she's cute right??
That's what commercial these trees by my house remind me of every time I drive past them...
So we set an attendance record! Wahoo!! We had 42 sisters at HPFE (enrichment)! Seriously it was awesome. Everyone I talked to was so excited and said that they'd never had this much fun at HPFE. I met several people that I didn't really know and got to know them (and will remember their names now) and had a great time. It really was minimal planning and minimal set up and clean up.
Since there were so many people it really wasn't possible to meet everyone- but people met just over half. I hadn't thought about people coming in late- but it's what made everything work. The late people offset it just enough so that by the time you got to the person you started with you skipped them and went to the next person- so it was perfect!
Also the girl that talked at the beginning said just what needed to be said about meeting people and putting yourself out there to make friends. It was perfect. I'm thrilled with the results. I was really worried that not too many people would come- I'm glad that we got as many out as we did. YAY!!
I'm busy okay! Well, at least that's what I tell Steve. I've offically recieved a calling in my new ward. I'm the Enrichment leader in Relief Society. For those of you who aren't LDS (Mormon) I'll translate... Enrichment (short for Home, Personal and Family Enrichment Meeting) is held quarterly and is a "meeting" mostly for socialization of the Relief Society (Women's organization in our church ages 18+) and for spiritual growth and learning new skills... So my job is to set up these quarterly Enrichment meetings and then also set up smaller 'interest groups' for the women in the ward (our church congregation). Confused yet?
So since our ward is new our first Enrichment meeting is going to be for getting to know eachother. There are lots of new people and it was so large before that it was had to get to know people. Anyway, I'm doing 'speed get to know you' set up like speed dating. Basically you spend 3 minutes with each woman and get to put names and faces together and get to know them a little bit. When you find out where they live in relation to you, and how many kids and what ages you can say, 'we should get our kids together' or 'we should have you over for dinner' and make some new friends! I'm excited- it should be fun.
Here is the problem though... (there's always a problem isn't there??) I have long tables set up with chairs and thought if everyone just rotated then eventually everyone would meet. But it doesn't work- if everyone is numbered then all the even numbers just meet odd numbers- and all the odd numbers just meet even numbers. So you only meet half the people in the room. With speed dating that is great- because if you're a woman you're only there to meet the men! But it doesn't work if you want to meet everyone. I've tried and tried to figure it out- but I've not been able to- any suggestions?
I love the 4th of July. I LOVE fireworks. Not the little dinky ones you buy at the stands on the side of the road- but the huge professional shows. The bigger the better. I love the BBQ's, the summer food and fun and the casualness of it. There aren't gifts to buy or to expect- no pretensions.
We went to a big fireworks show put on by our city on the 3rd. It was at a park not far from our house so we picked up dinner and headed down there. They were supposed to have a large 'mountain' of snow for kids to play in but apparently there was an ice shortage? Yeah, so no snow- to make up for it they had bouncers with a line a mile long. So we skipped that. Megan saw a popsicle stand and wanted to get a popsicle but we wanted to find the snow first. When we found a place to sit down Megan and I went back to get popsicles. The lady said they were out and I told Megan and she made the most pathetic sad face I've ever seen. Apparently the saddest that the lady had ever seen either since she 'found' the last three and gave them to us. Apparently they weren't even selling them- the city was giving them away. If we'd known that before we'd have gotten some sooner!
Here is Megan enjoying her popsicle:
Here is Cori clapping and dancing to the live band. She LOVED it.
Here is Annika enjoying her popsicle:
Megan being shy:
I didn't forget that I've got another kid- but she's spending the week in AZ with her cousin. My Mom went down to watch my sister's kids while she went to girl's camp with the ward (as a leader). So Ashley got to go with her. She's having a blast- but she called today and was feeling homesick. She's coming home tomorrow though.
On the 4th we spent it with my NBF's family and some other families BBQing and playing games. We had a blast and stayed until the wee hours of the morning. We've decided that we need to do an all night BBQ once a month it was so much fun.
