New Dresses

Chantelle's mom picked up the cutest dresses for the girls in Dubai.

Aren't they so cute!

Saturday we made these.

They were so good! You can find the recipe here on Cindy's blog. I did just use the imitation cream cheese frosting for Kami's, but I made the real stuff for the rest of us. They were serious so yummy!

Yellowstone and Other Happenings

Our first week of summer has gone like this.
Thursday: friends over, this hasn't happened much since we have been working on the basement. Iron Man 2 with Chad and Becca, it was good but I was not super impressed.
Friday: sleepover and birthday party with said friend, Ash's first real sleepover.
Saturday: hanging out and cleaning the house, dealing with Ash getting up at 6:30 am at friend's house, who knows how much sleep she really got.
Sunday: church and a much needed nap.
Monday: Harriet and George joined us for the day, I helped at Tom's and we had a great BBQ and visit later. The girls (all of them) ganged up on George and Sam with water balloons. Harriet had us laughing until late that night, that girl is funny!
Tuesday: running more errands with a trip to the gym and not getting home until 1030pm. Also, had dinner with Chantelle and talked tons of baby talk. She is getting close, it was a good much needed visit.
Wednesday: Yellowstone with Harriet, George, and my mom. Have I mentioned how funny Harriet is? Really she can make me LAUGH!
Thursday: Home FINALLY, caught up on some much needed paperwork and stuff for the barn, didn't get a chance to clean house. Set three doors in the basement and got to bed at a decent hour.
Friday: spent the day in town and hit 14 different stores, just me and the girls, included the dreaded two week shopping trip bagging your own groceries! The up-side my mirror and phone are fixed, and Ky's birthday and father's day are done! We also added a couple of new additions to the family.
Today: house cleaning and watching Toy Story with the girls, doesn't that sound nice.
And somewhere in there we have been sleeping in (when possible) and watching Avatar three times (no it was not that good, I just couldn't stay awake through the movie!) I also managed to break my driver's side mirror while backing in the garage, just the glass. I was to intent on not hitting the wagon and just nicked the mirror and when it bent back(safety feature) the glass hit the garage door frame and shattered, stupid mistake. For those of you who have experienced my phone randomly shutting off on you while I am talking, it is fixed and it was just a broken clip on my battery, very annoying though. Does that sound like a week plus in a nutshell. Next week we have a birthday, are hoping to get the garden planted, and the shelves up in the storage room, before our real fun begins with swimming lessons for the next four weeks! Here are the pics I have and yes there are a ton.

Yellowstone

The giant map at one of the visitors centers, it was the size of a room.

This was my favorite picture I took.

Kaite was oh so happy!

George spent most of the day like this since the stroller couldn't make it up and down stairs.

Harriet called this buffalo over and it came and walked right by the car. She freaked out!

The baby we saw, not far from the entrance.

We stopped at one of my favorite stores ever in West Yellowstone town and I got my candles. They are spiced mandarin and smell and look oh so good. Now I just need my table to put them on.

Ash learned how to make pancakes all on her own, always with supervision though. She's pretty proud of herself.

The new additions. These are Fur Real Friends. Ash was introduced to them at the sleepover and the girls decided to buy them with their birthday money. They are the best kind of pet, they don't need to go out, or shed, and they come with an off button!

Ash even made a collar for hers, Mistie is her name.

Kami got creative and is having Kaite push her around the house.

Now that that is done I need to go catch up around here, but we have been having lots of fun.

Dance Recital

It has been a completely crazy week and it's not even over yet! Monday was field day but due to weather the kids just watched a movie. I was looking forward to this since I was helping with the games, oh well next year.

Tuesday was Ash's dance recital. They only had one song and learned it in just ten weeks. Most of the kids have never taken dance before, I thought they did very good. I will say that the practices are definitely better, the kids get so nervous. Ash really practiced hard and knew her dance very well.
Way to go Ashley!

After the recital we all came back to the house and ate pizza and played on the tramp. Apparently, they don't have trampolines in England so this was Harriet's first time. They broke her in real slow with a game of crack the egg!

George and Harriet went ring shopping- FINALLY! JK George! It is so gorgeous! The clarity is awesome and pictures don't do it justice.

Today is the last day of school- I am so excited! Ash is not. At their assembly this week Ash got a couple of awards. One of the awards she got was the Teacher's award. The teacher picks one girl and one boy from each class to get the award. Ash got picked. I am so proud of her she is such a good student. I can't believe my baby is going to be a second grader!

Weekend Bash

Okay so I am way behind on my blogging. Here are all the pics from last weekends fun with Ky's family. Friday we went to his parent's house for a BBQ and a visit. We had a good visit where we got to meet Taylor (Gene's fiance) and her kids, and Anna had a "secret" for us. Yeah I stole this pic from Devin and Julie's blog-don't tell!

We hung out and played in the backyard, when the weather allowed.

Devin, Julie, and Anna came back and stayed over with us. The next morning we got up and headed to Jackson for swimming and fun. It turns out they were having one of their antler auctions. I have never seen one before and it was neat.

We took pics under the antler arch and spent some time in the candy store.

They have the best fudge in that store and any kind of candy you can imagine. The weather wasn't very cooperative and it was snowing like crazy over the pass. We did manage to see this guy on the side of the road.

I don't think we were as prepared as we could have been for how cold it got, thank goodness grandma had tons of blankets in the car! After we walked around we headed to the rec center. We ate lunch and celebrated some birthdays.

Kami and Briant having a very intense conversation!

Here is the group pic we took. Ash of course with her tongue out!

We swam for awhile and then headed home, the kids totally exhausted. Kami fell asleep with a straw in her mouth! The girls had so much fun swimming and Kami couldn't get enough of the slide. Ash and Kaite went down all by themselves.

We spent the evening with Devin, Julie, Taylor and Gene. We enjoyed getting to know Taylor better and hearing all the wedding details, the dresses are gorgeous! Sunday morning we went to church and then took pics after.

The girls playing in their dresses together.

All the granddaughters (for now). You think this would be fairly easy... yeah right!

We did get some salvageable ones.

We spent the afternoon visiting with Taylor, Gene and the boys. It was a fun weekend and I was totally exhausted by the end! This may be the last time we all get together (minus Chris and Chantelle they were in Canada) before Mahon and Cindy move back east. We had a good time, I just wish the weather would have cooperated more.

Moved...Finally!!

We finally got the girls moved into their new room on Thursday! It was a super exciting day for us. We (me and Ky) have been up until at least 1:30 in the morning and sometimes till 3am working (for the past couple of weeks) on getting them down there by our goal. We made it! Wednesday Harriet, George, and my mom came over and helped paint. We put the carpet in Wed night, it was suppose to be Thur morning but there were technical difficulties. Thur Kaite spent all day helping put on the outlet covers and cleaning up so we could move down there, the in laws came up that night and we successfully moved them in. Here are a few pictures.

Harriet and Kaite.
I really enjoyed spending time with Harriet and getting to know her better- she is so funny! I also loved hearing about the wedding details, I am so excited!!

Kaite installing the outlet covers.

Kaite enjoying her new room.

Kami enjoying the new room.

Ash just chillin on her bed.

So I have had a lot of questions on the basement and I will clarify a few. I think everyone seems to be confused as to why it has taken us so long to get to this point, unless you saw the original product! The first is the work we had to do. Ky said that most unfinished basement pretty much just need walls and a few other things and then they are ready to go, not ours. Our basement use to be the house, a basement house, which had been previously done and then TRASHED. We had to start by demolishing everything down there. We hauled out over 350 intact cynderblocks, previous walls. We had to pull out all the old duct work, nails, sheetrock, then we had to clean it and spray, you name it we did it. We had to get to the "start over" point which is where most basement are to begin with, this took us months. Which brings me to my second point of time. We spent the majority of our "work" time down there on nights and weekends, this doesn't accomplish much when there is tons to do, but every little bit helps. When we finally got to the point where we could do the fun work and actually build things went pretty quickly. Although, we did change the floor plan like three times, but we got it right and love it. So, now we have the girls in the one finished room in the basement and we do still have some work to do on it. The planer blades are sharpened and should be here any day, this took about three weeks longer than they estimated! So, the trim is not in yet, but should be in next week- cross your fingers. Anyway, we are still building shelves in the storage room, but the floor is in. We are hoping to have all the shelves built this week and then the storage room will be completely finished. The girls just need trim and then we are stacking the beds again, for floor space, then we just need to get all the decor transferred and up and their room is completely done! The stairwell needs some touch up painting around the top, which I can't reach, and it is done minus carpet. The hall is done, we put can lights in, dropped the ceiling, and painted. That is our stopping point for now. We will continue to work on the basement over the summer and throughout the winter but we need to get the garden in. Okay, so the other confusing thing is that the basement is not entirely finished. I keep talking about having the basement finished and I mean finished to the point which we where shooting for. We still need to finish two more bedrooms, a bath, and the family room. We are not finishing the bedrooms or living room until next year. The reason- we need to cut and install the egress windows and we are paying for London first. So, in the mean time we will finish the bath down their and start putting up the sheetrock we can put up, all the walls we can build will be up. We are hoping that once we cut the windows we will just need to frame and sheetrock just those three walls and then we can start painting. So, we have a ton to work on over the next 10-12 months. The stairs will get carpet when the family room gets carpet. Chad said we need to do that for two reasons 1. the color may not come out exactly the same because they will be off two different rolls and the dye may be different 2. the carpet on the stairs will get hashed from all the construction. So, we will carpet the rest of the basement all at once. I hope this clears up the confusion. I will have to post more pictures later, it is late and we had a long busy weeked. We spent the weekend with Ky's family and so I have lots to post and say. I am also tired and hope everything made sense!

I have been meaning to post this picture for awhile and have been too busy to do it. This is Ash driving the lawnmower. We taught her how to mow the lawn a couple of weeks ago, she does a great job and just does the basic easy parts. She is so proud of herself!