August 2016

We spent most of the first week of August at clogging camp. The girls loved it. The boys loved watching them and dancing along on the sidelines. I love how active clogging is - I just wish it wasn't so loud. After 8 hours of watching (and hearing) it, I was glad when the camps ended.

Tommy is starting to express interest and ability to potty train. Hallelujah! He's been sitting more frequently on the potty and letting us read books to him. When something comes out, we give him a few squares of chocolate - unless he finds the bar and eats the whole thing on his own!

All the summer playing caught up with JoJo. He fell asleep during lunch...on his Cheeto. That's a very tired little cutie!

Before we knew it, Daddy was leaving for Washington again to conquer Mt. Rainier. This time Mommy and the kids stayed home and Daddy was able to fly. Before leaving, the guys got together for some practicing and planning.

Here are Jeremy's feelings about the climb: Have you ever wanted to do something incredible? I’ve wanted to climb Mt Rainier for a long time. It seemed like a very difficult venture. I now know it’s not a difficult venture. It’s a VERY difficult venture.

I flew to Washington on Thursday, August 4th. Neal picked me up and we took some time to go to Costco and get some food. We only needed one real meal on the trip, that was dinner on Friday night. I chose to take a freeze-dried Mountain House Chili Mac dinner. The rest of the time was more like snacking on treats and other things. You eat little wrapped up granola bars, fruit snacks, trail mix and stuff like that. You don’t want to bring stuff to boil water and make a meal when you’re hiking the upper part of the mountain. Also, you usually have some amount of altitude sickness so sometimes any food doesn’t sound good. But you choke something down anyway because you absolutely need the energy to keep going.
That night we met at a local elementary school where there were some basketball standards attached to the walls of the school. We put on harnesses. We reminded ourselves of how to tie a bowline knot. Then we climbed a ladder and hung from the brackets on the basketball standard. There we learned about how to use a Prusik knot. It’s actually an ingenious knot that you can use to shimmy up and down a rope without having to rely on arm muscles alone.

Friday morning I woke up around 5am and started to finish packing my stuff. I had all the gear I needed. I actually fretted quite a bit about how much food to bring. I think I brought about twice as much as I should have.
We made it to the Wenger’s house just before 6am and picked up Rick Wenger, his son Tyson and Rick’s brother in law Jeff Hoyle.
About two hours later we were at Paradise. This is on the south side of the mountain and is a very beautiful area. There’s a reason it has that name. We unloaded our packs from the Hummer and started to put on our boots for the climb. I believe we all were enjoying ourselves and were pretty excited about this chance to climb Rainier. My pack weighed about 45 pounds. This seemed a bit heavy but I remembered from the Mount Adams climb that the second day you won’t have your sleeping bag, tent and some of your food so your pack is much lighter. I felt like the mood was good on the first part of this hike. We stopped a few times to take pictures. Some kind people took pictures of the 5 of us together. You can see we’re smiling and excited to be there.
Soon the paved trail ended and the dirt trail started. I had put on my long johns under my hiking pants and realized this was a mistake. I was way too warm. There were a few people on the trails so I had to watch for my opportunity to take off both layers and just put the hiking pants back on.
About halfway up to Muir the snowfield started. At this point we were moving on the snow. We took a break while Neal taught Jeff how to self arrest. If you start sliding in the snow you need to quickly get your axe in the ice/snow. But you want your axe close to your chest. Then you need to kick your feet into the snow with your crampons so you catch yourself and stop. Fortunately none of us needed to use this technique on the climb.
The clouds were very low that day. At some point our view of Muir was obscured for quite awhile. But we could see a trail in the snow so we kept on hiking up. At one point we were stopped near a paid group. I looked for the guy with the dirtiest backpack and asked him how much farther we had to go. He said “Two hours.” So I asked him how many miles. He said “Doesn’t matter, it will take you two hours.” He was right. About two hours later we were at Muir.

Camp Muir has a few structures there. Some are ‘owned’ by the park service and others by guiding companies. The biggest structure was built in 1921 and has a fortress feel about it. If you look at the structure and think about the building materials and the need to get out of the weather you can easily see how that design came about.
We used the bathrooms, some of the stinkiest around, and walked around a little bit to get a feel for the place. I saw a bunch of rocks that seemed to be just haphazardly thrown around in the snow near where some of the people were pitching tents. I asked my father in law why he thought those were there and he said something about them falling off the mountain there. It turned out those rocks were right where people needed them for their tents. In fact, we used them to hold tent stakes down and keep our ground cover in place.
We met a few people who were camping up there. Two guys were from texas and had tried to summit earlier that day. But they didn’t make it. One said that he got to about 1,000 feet to go and just ran out of gas. I felt bad for the guy but was confident we wouldn’t have that same problem.
These two guys had a couple of beers with them. Rainier beer. Then as I walked around a little more I saw more and more Rainier beers. I started to feel left out. I guess it’s a thing to drink Rainier beer at camp Muir.
On the north side of the little saddle that the structures are on there is space to set up a few tents. We set ours up on a few spots that looked like they had been previously used for tents. ie they were flattened out. When we first arrived there were probably 5 or 6 tents there but as the evening wore on another 10 probably showed up. It was interesting to see how people could make their own campsites by flattening a little bit of snow.
We ate dinner and melted snow to make water. This actually took a long time. You would think snow would melt pretty fast when you have it on a heat source, but it doesn’t at this altitude and in the cold. Also, it takes a lot of snow to make two liters of water. Before we retired that night we all had two liters of water for the next day. We also planned to bring the jetboil and water purifier so we could make water on the trail if needed.
I remember laying down for a little while to read. Then Neal got in the tent and was getting ready to sleep. His nearsighted vision is going (because he’s old) so the last thing he asked me to look at was the alarm on his phone. It said “Alarm set to go off in 3 hours and 37 minutes.” All I could think was “Crap, that’s not much sleep.” Well, it was worse than that. I didn’t get any sleep. I just laid there and couldn’t sleep at all. I’m not sure if I had some candy with caffeine in it or if it was just the elevation or even nerves about the climb. Whatever it was, it was a bad combination and added to my fatigue during the climb the next day.
Around 11:15 Neal sat up and started to get ready. The tent is pretty small so I let him do everything he needed to before I got up. As I came out of the tent I saw a few things that have stuck in my memory.
The first was the stars. Being up in the mountains you have a lot less city lights to worry about when looking at the night sky. Also, we were probably above one of the cloud layers. It was amazing to look at the stars. Those pictures you see of the Milky Way are amazing. And that’s exactly what I was seeing. Also, I saw a bunch of other people with lights on getting ready to go. It was cool to see them in bunches around their tents and just getting it together. Maybe my own anticipation of the day’s events heightened my memory. I also saw 3 meteors before we hit the trail.
Tyson Wenger was really the original instigator of this whole adventure. However, up at camp Muir he started to feel some altitude sickness. Tyson probably lives at 500 feet elevation, while camp Muir is around 10,100. That night after we all went to bed he took some Diamox to hopefully deal with his sickness. Well, I think the Diamox was worse than the altitude sickness. He threw up a couple of times. I later saw his chicken and rice Mountain House meal on the snow. Yuck.
We were supposed to leave around 12 or 12:30 but didn’t leave until 1:30. You could see groups of climbers on the cleaver. At least 1,000 feet higher than us. Group after group was leaving just before us so I thought the ones I could see were the ones who just left. I was wrong. Those groups I could see on the cleaver probably left 2 hours before us. Most likely they had started from Ingraham flats, which is a spot a little farther up the mountain and is probably about at 11,100 ft elevation.
We left later than expected mostly because we were unfamiliar with our gear and we had one particular teammate who was somewhat of a laggard. But we finally had our boots, crampons, harnesses and rope on and were ready to go.
After roping up and getting going we crossed Cowlitz glacier and started up a rocky ascent to get around to the Ingraham glacier. At night we walked right by a bunch of tents set up there. At first my headlamp saw a crazy reflection but quickly realized it was reflector tape or something on the tents.
We crossed the first ladder. This is where the crevasse is open wide enough that you can’t jump over it. So the park rangers put aluminum ladders across them and then put 2x6s on them so you can walk over them. They work pretty well. Except when someone in your group has a serious fear of heights. It was almost paralyzing for Rick. He finally got across and we were on our way to another rocky incline called Disappointment Cleaver. I’m not sure where the name comes from. But you go up and up and up this rocky scraggly incline for a long time. It was actually very neat to look up at the different groups going up the incline. You could see this line of headlamps moving up the rocks. It was something like when you go night skiing and see the each light on the poles of the chairlift. Except those lights are moving up the mountain and the lights are swinging in different directions at times. Or you could think of the train of people with headlamps as a glowworm. Now, you have to remember the guides and rangers set up things called wands and you have to follow them if you want to be safe. On the snow it is very easy to see the wands and the trail. The trail is well worn. However on a rocky slope it’s not always easy to see the path. So sometimes you stop and you look and look for the next wand.
We probably spent from 3am to 5am on Disappointment Cleaver. If you looked towards the Southeast you could see some lights off in the distance. They looked to be coming up from behind some mountains. I thought at the time it had to be Yakima. I later confirmed that. Also, there were some lights from the Northeast and that was Ellensburg.

Our ascent was pretty slow after Disappointment Cleaver. We were pretty spent. We got into a rhythm of going for 50 steps and then stopping to rest. We were passed by a few groups but most of the groups going up the mountain had left before us and were moving quicker than us. We asked a few people who were on their way down how much farther we had to go and one guy said we still had 2500 vertical feet to go. That was very disheartening. Camp Muir is at 10,188 ft and the summit is 14,400 so we had only gone a little over 2,000 feet up. We decided to stop and rest and have a little pow wow. Also, Jeff used his blue bag at that point. That’s one crevasse no one wanted to see!
We discussed our options. We came up with three. One was to keep going and try to summit. It was about 830 am. We could push on and hope we got there before 1pm and then hopefully we could get down the mountain to camp muir to pack up before dark and then head down to Paradise.
Two was to just turn around. We were pretty spent so that would ensure we made it back to camp with plenty of time to pack up and get down the mountain when we were expected to get there.
Three was to push on ahead and have a drop dead time of noon before just turning around.
I remember just sitting there and watching the other three discuss the options. I was really hoping the conversation would lead to a decision to head back down. I remember thinking to myself “Sometimes the mountain wins.” Then somebody asked me what I thought. I told them that I was certain we could summit. However, I was also certain it would take awhile. We were moving very slowly. I was pretty spent. Another worry of mine was that we would get up to the summit and be so spent that coming down we would get hurt on the rocks somewhere (maybe break and ankle or leg) and then have a person to haul down the mountain while we’re very tired.
Rick called his wife during our stop at this point. He had cell coverage and asked her to call the Rangers for the park to check on their son. It turned out they found him just hanging out in his tent. He was still feeling sick but otherwise was ok. Later on we bumped into those rangers and one of them took a minute to teach Rick to never leave a man behind. Tyson had told us to go on. And before we left at 1:30am Rick asked us if he was a bad father for leaving his son sick and in camp. I didn’t think so because his son was telling him to go ahead.
During our discussions there was group after group that had summited and were on their way down. This added to our discouragement.
We had finally decided to turn around. I had my father in law take a picture of me with the toastmaster magazine. I would be able to say that sometimes the mountain wins.
However, Jeff asked us if we would compromise and go just a little bit further. We were on the East side of the mountain and he said he wanted to see the view from the south side. So we agreed to go for ten more minutes. We started going and the view from the south was nice. You could see Paradise and a lot of scenery from up there.
A group was coming down off the mountain. Someone asked them if they had an altimeter. The guy said 13,200. What? That couldn’t be. That’s a lot higher than 12,000 feet that we thought we were at. His altimeter had to be wrong. We continued on and asked another group if they had an altimeter. 13,200. Whoa. That changed everything. We were within 1,200 feet of the summit.
We only needed a short discussion to come to the conclusion that we should go for it. In fact, as we talked to groups who were coming down off the mountain they were very positive about us making it. The guides told us to keep pushing because we were almost there. We felt a lot more positive vibes from these guys than we did from some down below.
We continued to push on. The oxygen is a little thinner so getting a full breath is somewhat difficult. We tried to push on and on. There was another ladder to cross. Neal crossed and we all stood back holding the rope somewhat tight in case he slipped into the crevasse. Then he would have 3 bodies holding him up. Then I crossed. When Rick crossed he stumbled at the end and fell down….but not into the crevasse. Just on the ice across the ladder. Jeff saw Rick disappear so he hit the deck. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Jump onto your ice axe so that your weight and the axe will help keep them from falling too far. Rick got up and dusted himself off and we told Jeff he could stand up because nothing was wrong.
It is amazing to look down into some of these crevasses. You seriously can’t see the bottom sometimes. You see the beautiful ice formations and think that there are a lot of people in this world who don’t get the chance to see things like this firsthand. And then you remember that you’re tied to 3 other guys and you hope that if you fall in they can first, keep you from falling to your death and second, get you out of there.
We continued on. The march was still slow but faster than before. We were spent and I seriously wondered if coming down would be a disaster.
The east crater of Mt Rainier is ¼ mile wide. When you summit from the south side you still have a little way to go to get to the very top. It’s very windy. And very cold. However, there are steam vents on the north side of the crater. You see these little holes in the ground with air coming out of them. There is no snow because the ground is warm. Also, the ground around them is usually wet. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I sat down on the dirt next to a rock to get out of the wind and put my elbow on the dirt. It took about 10 seconds for me to realize that was pretty warm and not a good place to rest my elbow.
Jeff and I went to the very top of the mountain. We took a few selfies and looked towards the north and because it was overcast down below we couldn’t see Seattle or any of the Puget sound. It was still pretty impressive to look around at the world from that height. And also to think I got up there by my own power.
We had made it to the summit by 11am. This was before our 12 o’clock drop dead time, but much slower than most groups. I think around 11:30 we went back to the south edge of the crater.
We started to rope back up and took a picture of us with arms in the air in victory and started our descent.
The hike back was so difficult. It seemed to be neverending. Seriously. I don’t usually like hiking downhill and we had already summited so the fun part was over.
But coming down the mountain from the summit wasn’t actually too bad. We moved much, much faster. In fact, you could say we were highly motivated to get down and out of the wind. We took a short break where we had our pow wow on the way up to eat a little and put on sunscreen. The sun was high now and the reflection off the snow can be brutal on your skin. In fact, the snow puts the sun’s
rays at angles on your body that you would probably never expect. So you have be careful to get sunscreen into your nose and way in your ears and under your ears.
At the top of disappointment cleaver we rested for about 45 minutes. My father in law wanted our legs to be rested so we didn’t stumble on the rocks and get hurt, or worse. I talked to Neal and asked him how long ago he had summited. He told me it was back in 2008. “So it takes 8 years to forget the pain?” I asked jokingly. He said “Something like that” with a smile.
After getting down off disappointment cleaver we sat down a minute to get our crampons back on and rope up again. While we were there a group of rangers came by (same ones as before) and saw some of our guys sitting on rocks on the snow. They said “Hey, do you know where those rocks came from?” They pointed up to the cliffs of disappointment cleaver. “If I were you, I would boogey out of here before any more of those rocks come down. A lady lost a finger here last week.” Our guys quickly put on their crampons, we roped up and started moving. Just a few minutes later someone had trouble with something in our group and had to stop. As we were stopped we heard some banging noises and looked back at the cliffs. A few rocks, the size of large watermelons crashed on the rocks below and bounced into the snow where we had just been standing. I think we all said a silent prayer of thanks at that moment.
We kept moving onto the Ingraham glacier area and made it back to the first ladder of the day. Neal crossed pretty quickly. I baby-stepped a little to get over it. Rick took a minute or two talk himself into getting over it. We encouraged him and knew he wouldn’t fall in. And of course, he didn’t.
We got back to Muir and I had to go potty really bad. That chili mac from the night before had been knocking on the door all day long. I probably should’ve used a blue bag because I was so uncomfortable holding that in all day long. The toilet was interesting. I hadn’t used this one yet. The bathroom didn’t smell as bad as the one next to it that I used the day before. The toilet looked like you were pooping on a conveyor belt. You put your paper into a trash bin to one side. Then next to the toilet was a foot pedal that you pushed down 5 times and each time you saw your poop move on the conveyor belt a few inches. Who thinks these things up?
At Muir we started to pack up. I packed my sleeping bag up and started to gather some other things. Neal started to melt snow for water. I was very thirsty. In fact, he had filtered almost a liter of water and between the two of us it was gone pretty fast. So then he was melting some more snow and his filter just wouldn’t work. It’s kind of old. So he decided to boil the water and hopefully it would be pretty clean. I was happy to have water to drink, even if it was warm. It also cooled down pretty quickly once we set the bottles on the snow for awhile.
Neal and I got a head start on the rest of the guys. Getting down from camp Muir seemed to take FOREVER. Seriously, it was such a long hike. It’s not as steep as the rest of the route so if you’re descending almost 4,800 ft in elevation you’re taking about 4.5 miles to do so. It was a long, long hike. I was getting very tired and a little grumpy about it. But I think I kept my feelings to myself. We made it into the Paradise parking lot right at dark. If we had taken any longer I think we would’ve had to get out our headlamps. At the parking lot Neal left his pack with me to go get the Hummer.
Rick Wenger’s wife was looking for us. I was sitting on a bench next to our packs but was so tired that when a van pulled up near the area I just sat there and stared at the ground. I should’ve said something
to them but was seriously wiped out. It turns out that they were very close to leaving when they drove by Neal’s hummer again and saw the lights go on. Then they came up with Neal and waited just a few more minutes before Rick, Tyson and Jeff all came down the trail. It was after dark and they had their headlamps on.
Rick’s wife made good muffins and gave us some peaches too. I was very grateful for the food.
I called Christine at that point. I think it was like 9:45 or so. She answered with a very tentative “Hello?” I told her we were back and things were fine and I think she let out a big sigh of relief. Our original plan was to summit at 8am or so and be back off the mountain by 5pm. Things hadn’t gone as planned and she was worried.
Once Rick’s family and friends were all packed up and Neal and I were packed up we drove back to the Wanner’s house. I was so tired at that moment. I hadn’t slept in 43 hours. I really wanted to just lean back and sleep while Neal drove the 2 hours back home. But I knew I shouldn’t do that because he would be just as tired. So we talked about everything we could think of. I dozed off a couple of times while he talked but I was doing my best to stay awake. I think we were home by 12:30am. I showered and fell into bed.

For the first few weeks after Daddy finished the climb, he said he didn't want to do it again. But I am writing this post in November and now he is starting to consider it again. I guess it just takes a few months to get over the pain.

Puna came to stay with us while Daddy and Papa played. We took her to play at the lake. Uncle Brady came too and brought a little raft.

We swam and played for a couple of hours.

Annie got Brady to go down the slide with her a few times. Lily loved making yucky mucky potions with the sand and water.

Annie was the only one brave enough to swim out to the slide. Brady and Mommy got tired following her out there. It's a long swim with a five year old holding on to you.

We also squeezed in another visit to Bear World. Ice cream, bear cubs, amusement rides, wildlife.....we love this little treasure right in our backyard.

The kids talked me into a ride. We were sick and dizzy by the end.

Puna and Joey were content to sit and watch us.

I think this is my favorite picture from the entire summer! Sunburned cheeks and the biggest smiles I've ever seen on any of their face.

Bear World installed a new roller coaster. The old one was fun, this one is insane. It is small and fast, and the cars spin as you move around a figure 8 track. We were spinning constantly. Annie screamed her fool head off the entire ride. I was laughing at her reaction, trying to keep in my lunch, and trying to make sure Lily, who was sitting alone behind us, didn't fall out. After one ride on the coaster, we were done. Annie is now officially afraid of all large amusement park ride. I guess that means we can postpone Disneyland for a few more years.

Tommy likes the chickens in the petting zoo. He is getting much braver around animals.

Lily is now in the "make goofy faces for pictures" phase. I think our family pictures for the next 10 years will always have at least one kid making a funny face.

Puna bought every child their own stuffed animal. Lily chose a wolf cub, Tommy wanted a brown bear, Annie went for a hot pink bear (which she named Pinkalicious), and Joey got a little moose. Thank you for another fun trip to Bear World Puna.

We took Puna to another one of our favorite summer spots...the Rexburg splash park. So much fun and totally free. We love it here. And it feels extra great on a hot day. We had a wonderful time - but for a couple of minutes we lost Joey and frantically searched the park. He had gone down a little slope toward the carousel while we did a sunscreen application on the girls. Talk about heart attack! I've never felt panic like that before. Thank goodness all was well.

Jeremy returned safely from his Washington trip. The group was able to summit and had an interesting experience.

He had only been home a few hours when I got a call from my neighbor Danielle. Her father, brother, and sister had all died that afternoon in a car crash. Her mother was in the hospital with injuries, and her brother in law was in a coma. After we hung up, I started sobbing. I had been anxious about Jeremy the whole time he was gone. I started thinking about what Danielle must be feeling. I started thinking about what I would do if something had happened to Jeremy. I was a wreck. I pulled it together as fast as I could and went across the street to Danielle's house. She was a mess. Her sister in law ans husband were trying to comfort her while their three little boys were running around and playing. It was past 9:00 p.m. and the boys needed to get to bed, but Danielle wanted to be able to tell them about the deaths. She just couldn't muster the strength so I convinced her to let me get the kids some dinner, a bath, and into bed. I stayed for 2 and a half hours. We cried a lot. We talked about what she would need for the coming days and weeks. It was a heart wrenching night. I told Danielle that I could take care of her boys so she could go see her mother in the hospital and get funeral arrangements made. With help from Jodie our friend and neighbor, we coordinated child care for the boys, meals for their family, and got a cleaning brigade assembled to deep clean the house from top to bottom. Danielle was still in her first trimester of pregnancy and we wanted her to be able to rest and focus on helping her mom recover. It was a tough couple of weeks for me. My house was overrun with children, I was heartbroken for my friend, everything in all of our lives seemed so topsy-turvy and fragile.

We tried to keep the boys busy with activities and lots of outside play time. I never knew a kid could get so dirty just playing in his own backyard! Luckily, the raspberries and tomatoes were coming on. The kids spent a lot of time picking treats from the garden and playing in the yard.

At night we had to take our kids to swimming lessons, so Jodie (our next door neighbor) would take over tending Danielle's children. Jodie and I were a team for a couple of weeks. Thank goodness for good friends.

All the kids loved their swimming lessons. Joey even got to try them this year. His favorite part was jumping into Daddy's arms in the pool.

Lily made amazing progress this year. She was swimming on her own in the deep pool by the end. and Tommy and Annie were much braver about getting their faces in the water.

I can't believe Joey is old enough to be walking around and taking swimming lessons. This first year of his life has flown by. I love his chubby little foot prints on the pool deck.

Lily lost another tooth. My goodness this girl is going to run out of teeth at the rate she's going!

Joey turned one on august 10th. The big kids were excited all day to celebrate Joey. We made an ice cream cake with brownie bottom, mint chocolate chip ice cream and frosted with chocolate whipped cream-plus lots of sprinkles.

Joey loved the cake, hearing the happy birthday song, and getting a lot of attention.

Not sure how much actually made it into his mouth, but he loved squishing it between his fingers. After a second bath, and a wardrobe change, he was ready for presents.

Thank you Grammy and Grampy for the dinosaur. Both of the boys love it.

Things got so crazy having Danielle's kids with us so much, I just needed a distraction. All the kids helped me make rainbow covered sugar cookies, and we delivered them to neighbors. It kept us busy for most of an afternoon and made everyone happy!

Joey is learning to love the bike trailer. He doesn't like to be in there alone, but he loves riding with Lily or Tommy.

Jodie took the boys a little longer one day so that I could have some time alone with my kids. Tommy and I made Incredible Hulks out of green playdough. My sculpting skills are far from good, but Tommy thought they were awesome.

I got to teach a Primary sharing time on modesty. I made this little machine with a diaper box and some freezer paper. It didn't take that much time and it was a huge hit in Primary. Now the girls use it as a washing machine for theri American Girl dolls.

The Zumba studio I go to hosted a family free night. Since it was almost time to start school, Jodi the instructor dressed up like a nerd. The kids and some of their friends came for a workout.

We had an amazing time. The girls did their best to keep up. I was so proud of them. They were very tired once class was over.

While the girls and I were working on fitness, Tommy was working on polishing off Joey's ice cream cake. His favorite part is the chocolate on top. Can you tell?

I love that Jeremy lets the kids ride the mower with him. Joey loves the mower. He will stand at the window and watch Daddy until it's his turn to ride.

Some friends invited us out on a group date. It felt so good to get away for a night. We had a great dinner and then tried frisbee golf for the first time. It is really fun. We were terrible at it, but we all had a good laugh watching everyone play.

Jeremy only landed his disc in the water once.

Our county has an annual fair. Lots of 4-H kids display their animals and projects, local vendors sell food and goods and there's an antique car show.

The girls think they want a rabbit after seeing all the cute ones.

We got them to settle for cupcakes and face painting instead.

Tommy won a little sticky hand. He couldn't get enough of it.

Lily decided to get a fire sword painted on her arm. When we asked her what it meant, she said "I don't know, it just sounded cool."

Bounce houses are always a favorite!

The strangest thing we saw was this stuffed buffalo. And we could climb onto it. The girls didn't want to try it without Daddy close by.

We're not really into cars and hot rods, but it was neat to wander the field and see what was there.

But it also felt good to get back into our air conditioned car and head home!

Joey has started climbing into drawers and cupboards. He's actually screaming in this picture. I let him suffer for a minute to see if he could make it back out on his own, but he managed to get wedged in there.

Groundbreaking for the playhouse officially began. The girls are so excited!

We had an amazing dinner of balsamic roasted chicken with green beans and tomatoes. All the veggies came from our garden. Super delicious. Even Jeremy admired the beauty of the dinner.

We got hit hard and fast with a tummy bug. Everyone got it, it lasted about 12 hours, and then it was done. Not sure if it was food or an illness. We think it must have been illness because even Joey got it and he doesn't eat what we eat.

To celebrate feeling well again, I took the kids to free movie day at the theater. The movie was Norm of the North. It was cute and had a lot of popular songs the kids recognized.

The girls had their open house at school on August 23. We got to tour their classrooms and meet their teachers. It was so fun to take two kids this year. Annie is so ready! She was bursting with joy to finally be at school. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Taulanga. Annie will be an amazing student. Her thirst for knowledge is so strong.

Lily will have team teachers again. Mrs. Jasper is her english teacher and Maestro Corona is her spanish teacher. She was very nervous about starting over again. She really developed a bond with her first grade teachers. I think she will thrive in second grade. She's totally ready.

This is how they looked on the first day of school. So excited to start the new year!

Good luck cuties!

We kind of went through withdrawals having both of the girls gone to school. The boys didn't know what to do with themselves. We played in the snow clothes bin and dressed up like Angry Birds for a little while.

Then we decided to make snickerdoodles as a treat for the girls.

Tommy holding up a "1" for the 1st day of school. He couldn't wait until the girls came home. It will take all of us a while to adjust to our new schedule after being together all summer.

Joey's favorite things right now are: making messes, "cleaning up" messes, and riding the mower with Daddy. He almost seems like a toddler already.

After almost a year of this Captain America costume hanging in his closet, Tommy was finally brave enough to wear it. This boy is so slow to try new things! He loves the big muscles sewn into the costume.

Tommy was feeling a little left out with the girls getting new school supplies and backpacks. Puna surprised us with a box. It had a little backpack and lunchbox plus some books and supplies for Tommy. He was almost shaking when he opened everything. Thank you for making his day Puna. Now he feels like a big kid too.

We love spending Sunday afternoons in the gardens on campus. We did a trip to scope out the best trees for apple picking in September.

Such a perfect little spot and wonderful way to spend our Sundays!

Puna and Papa made a quick (less than two hours) stop at our house on their way to their annual motorcycle trip. This year they were traveling near Bear Lake. We wanted to join them but it was too hard to pull the kids out of school and their activities, so we stayed home. I love how confused Joey looks in the picture above. He wasn't sure about Papa with all the riding gear on.

Daddy went to buy some lumber for the playhouse. At the lumberyard an employee told Daddy that they have a salvage pile of wood that anyone can pull from. Free wood! Daddy took as many as he could and we made the kids help drag it back to the playhouse.

It was hard for them, but it was good for them.

So exciting to see it coming along. So fun that we're finding so many supplies for free to help with the cost of building.

I love this picture of Annie. What it doesn't show is how much she whined and complained as she dragged each piece of wood to the backyard.

So excited to get their play house finished!

I am not a great gardener. There are parts of it I enjoy and parts of it I avoid. We struggle to keep up on weeding. We struggle to keep the kids from tramping on the plants. We forget to water sometimes. But we're trying and we learn more each year. The best part of gardening is seeing the kids learn about working in the yard. They don't always enjoy it, but they are so proud to show their friends our fruits and vegetables. Our garden isn't perfect but we're not growing a garden right now, we're raising our children. And that's just as it should be.