Keeping Up With the Joneses

A wonderful couple in our ward, the Burnhams, called us last week and asked it we would like to bring the boys by to pick apples. Yes please! Brother Burnham has an amazing orchard and taught us all about growing and grafting fruit trees. He had all sorts of exotic trees and we came home with some great samples of different fruit and a huge bag of gala apples. The kids loved climbing the a ladders to pick apples and promptly came home and started picking the not-ripe-yet plums from our trees!

First day of 2nd Grade. First day of kindergarten. Sniff sniff.

We came back from Canada in time for the ward campout. The kids were so excited to camp. After dinner one of the women in our ward caught a snake and let Myles play with it. SCARY! When he dropped it I screamed and totally embarrassed myself. Max was especially excited to camp and "helped" daddy set up the tent. For the next few hours he jumped around in the tent, pretended to sleep, and loved it, until it got dark and then he started crying "I needa go home. I needa sleep in my own bed." Truthfully, after the snake incident I wasnt so thrilled about sleeping in the tent so I was happy to take him home. But as we were leaving Myles broke down and wanted to come with me. I couldn't believe that after being away from Marshall for 2 weeks, the kids still wanted to be right by my side 24/7. So Marshall stayed up and camped with Mason, Myles slept with me in my bed, and Max was thrilled to be back in his bed. So happy to be home.

We snuck in one more quick trip up to Waterton this summer before the kids start school. Unfortunately Marshall couldn't come with us, but the kids are so used to that long drive that they did just great and it wasn't a problem. They are so happy and comfortable in the cabin and had a fantastic time.  Max is absolutely a "papa's" boy. About 20 times a day he would ask "where papa go?" and stuck by his side whenever he could. The main reason we went up to Waterton again was because the kids insisted on coming back to pick saskatoon berries. Myles would eat these by the handful and fortunately they liked picking them as much as eating them.  HOWEVER, the bears also love these berries. The first place we went to pick them there was a bear standing right there on the lakeshore where we wanted to go, so we quickly found another spot. Myles has been absolutely obsessed with China lately, and so the last day we were in Canada we went into Le...

Last weekend we had Max's birthday party. He had been looking forward to it for weeks. We had a water summer party outside and everyone seemed to have a great time.   Max was right in there dumping water on everyone. The amazing cake that Hannah made. She sets the bar pretty high. Max just loves being in the middle of everything and loved the attention. I sure love my little pirate!

I'm feeling like a pretty crappy mom right now. I know a lot of families make this mistake, and I fell right into it. Last week our neighbors were dog sitting their aunt's adorable 3 year old toy poodle Bruce. Bruce was so dang cute and getting a dog has been on my mind for a while. When I was doting on him, my friend said that they were thinking about selling him. I got excited, begged and begged Marshall (who was against it from the start), and we decided to "test-drive" the dog for a few days. Well, all it took was a few hours and we were all in love with him, but especially Mason. Marshall gave in and I decided we would probably adopt it as long as he checked out at the vet.  Then the next morning I started feeling not great about it, but I ignored it because it was so opposite of my initial feelings and Mason was so thrilled. But I kept feeling worse and worse about it. Finally on Wednesday it got groomed and shots and when they brought it back I was shocked...