Motherhood

 I can't specifically remember what happened right here, but something definitely happened.

 If you look closely, you might just see a little bit of lint in those baby toes.

 Noodle necklaces for the letter "N."

 My little Lottie worked so hard on her necklace and spent so much time on it, 

I love her proud face here.

 Baby in the bumbo.

 I really do love how much Charlotte loves her baby brother.

Loving his frozen bananas.

Field Trip #2

For our next field trip, I took the girls down to the aquarium! This was hands down one of my favorite days of the entire summer. The girls and I really enjoyed looking at all the animals, especially the Octopus.

Signing frog.

Both Hazel and Charlotte got to pet the sting rays.

It's so funny to me that these penguins were really the exact same size as my girls. There was a third one next to Charlotte's that was Ellie's size, but we couldn't get her to hold still.

Somebody climbed into Edison's bumbo and got stuck...and yes, while she was crying, I ran and got my camera for a picture.

Ellie was playing with Edison and singing to him. I love these two together (when Ellie's being nice).

Cute babies.

Four months old

Here are Edison's four month pictures. Such a cute baby boy.

Love those dimples.

Hawaiin Luau

Is there any greater cliche in the LDS culture than the annual ward luau? Ours was pretty great this year:

I wish I could remember what Ellie was looking at in this picture because she's so excited about it!

This picture kind of reminds me of Hazel at this age, except she would have had on three necklaces, two bracelets and a headband.

Oh my goodness.

I love this girl's poses.

David was asked to participate in the "Chubby Bunny" contest. They used the extra large marshmallows, so he only fit two into his mouth, but that's still saying something.

Aloha!

Summer

 Hazel eating leftover watermelon.

 I got this out for Edison to play in now that he's big enough and I think it was all a little overwhelming for him!

 Sometimes my day starts like this. I knew this summer would probably be one of the hardest since I have all four children home with me. I'd say the hardest part is the constant cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning up. But the rest has been pretty good so I'm counting my blessings.

 The girls and I studied the letter M for mountains. And boy do we have great access to those! At Mount Ogden park, there's a little stream where I showed them the little water hoppers that I always believed were minnows! Later I found out that minnows are a type of fish....whoops.

 I decided to start taking the girls on a weekly field trip these last few weeks of summer and visit the places that I love around Ogden. For the Letter N, we visited the Nature Center and spend some time with these beautiful birds.

 Coming up on four months.

 The girls put this together while I was chatting with a neighbor.

 Fighting over the boy.

 At the Nature Center, I got one small gift for each of the girls and Hazel picked a peacock feather. I showed her how to make it into a pen (a small business idea I had when I was seven).

 Helping mom shuck corn.

 Best picture ever! I love this. She was sliding down a slide at our favorite park and the static made her hair stick out. Pure happiness right here.

 Hazel kept trying to get her hair to do the same.

 Eating green beans from the garden.

 

Another one of my favorite things in Ogden is the weekly Farmer's Market in the summertime. Hazel got dressed up for it this time (sometimes you just have to let them be themselves with their own fashion sense...)

 

Our favorite horse. He can dance and "talk" and is always fun to visit.

Phipps Family Reunion, Part 3

And the FOURTH! This is David's favorite holiday. (Besides Christmas of course.) I love this tradition of the entire family coming up to the valley. They do such a great job at Liberty Days!

Our trailer was ready and we piled on the kiddos for the morning parade.

Someone in the back is a little grumpy.

Pretty pretty girl.

Kennedy with Gram's flag that has all the grandkids' feet and hands.

Got some candy and feeling much better.

Here's the rockets we made out of toilet paper holders.

Sweet Ellie was taking this whole ordeal very seriously.

Turns out, dressing up a little boy can be so much fun.

And then came Hazel's moment of glory. She's done the chicken catch before and was always very shy and nervous about it. Well now that we HAVE chickens at home, she's a lot more confident about her chicken catching abilities. In fact, that morning, she was practicing how to jump onto the ground, catching a pretend chicken under her chest. She said, "I'm going to catch one this year."

And she did!

It was the proudest day for David and I. David was watching from the other side of the rink where he had dropped her off, but we both yelled out "That's my girl!" I almost cried. At first she named her new chicken, "Polly" but later changed it to "Caramel." This beauty is now part of our chicken family and after a while she started laying light pink eggs!

Later in the day, we saw these young women from Africa braiding hair with beads. Hazel has ALWAYS wanted to do that, so we let her. She did just catch a chicken.

While we waited, Ellie was checking herself out in this mirror.

Charlotte got her face painted with a fire cracker.

Charlotte with her beautiful grandma.

Ta da! She was so happy with the results.

David did the fish catch with both of our older girls. The first year we did this, we accidentally left the fish in our car (it was bad). The second year, we accidentally left the fish in Kevin and Vicki's basement sink (also, very bad.) So this year we them away. Wise decision.

And he smiled for the camera. So in love.

We were lucky enough to get all of the cousins on the caterpillar ride at the same time.

Little Lottie loves these babies.

 Edison fell asleep on Papa Kevin during the fireworks.

We kept Hazel's chicken in Kevin and Vicki's basement until the box was too disgusting. So we finally let it roam in their backyard for some fresh air and brought it into the box at night.

On Thursday morning, Kevin and Vicki had rented a boat for all of us to go out on Pineview lake with wave runners! Such a fun idea, only the weather didn't quite cooperate.

Turns out, it was the COLDEST day of the month! It had been so sunny and warm all week and then it rained on Thursday and was freezing, especially at the lake.

But we had a boat and we were going to enjoy it!

Asleep.

So once we started heading out to the middle of the lake, I thought we were all crazy to be out there, especially with babies. I had Edison bundled up in his carseat at my feet and had just barely laid a towel over him when Kevin hit a huge wave and SOAKED Gram, who was holding Eli. And when I say soaked, I mean a huge tidal wave came up over the front of the boat and drenched her. She had a very good attitude about it all and they covered her in blankets since both she and the baby were wet. I had to take a picture of her hair.

The kids were brave enough to get into the tube for a ride while David and Chris went out on the wave runners. Chris was dropping off Sam, who was terrified of the water, and he missed the boat and fell in. He was screaming bloody murder, so I jumped in and held onto him while we made our way to the boat. He kept saying, "Sharks! Sharks!" Poor boy. So I decided since I was already wet and freezing, why not have some fun on a wave runner? I took Kennedy out and we had a blast. Good memories.

Since my cover-up was wet from jumping in after Same, I squeezed into Hazel's sweatshirt that she didn't want to wear. Look at me in 4T!

That afternoon, once we were all warm and dry, we had a Princess party for Isabelle.

And Ellie woke up from her nap, like this.

On Friday, we headed out to a Bee's game in SLC!

On the way there, we saw this crazy lady dancing on the sidewalk and I had to take a picture.

First baseball game with Dad.

Saturday morning walk.

And then it was time to clean up, pack up, and head home.

Such a wonderful reunion!