I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures from my wonderful trip to Arizona. (I'll have to do this in segments...kind of a lot of pictures)

 This was right after I got there. We went to Peter Piper pizza and the kids had a fun time playing all the games.  You spend about 50 bucks to get to do all the fun things there...then if you play the games well,  you earn tickets that you can trade in for fabulous prizes like these vampire teeth!  Ha!  Oh boy I remember our kids used to love to go to those places.  Only back then it was Chucky Cheese and Show Time Pizza.  It's a racket, but it sure makes the kids happy.

 Olivia has mastered the new bicycle and zips around like a pro.  She even has a bike seat for her Americn Girl doll.  How cute is that!

 Emily is just a little doll.  She is happy and just pleasant to be around. 

 Tickle fest

Camille is such a fun mommy

 We  went to the new Gilbert Temple on Tuesday.  I had wanted to go last time I visited, but they don't rent clothes at this temple.  So I packed mine this time so we could go.  I have to say it was probably one of the most beautiful temples I've been in.  The celestial room was incredible.

We just had a good day at the temple. 

I remember asking my mom what one of her favorite experiences in life was and she said it was when she was in the temple with her girls. (That just brought a wave of emotion thinking about the many wonderful days we spent in the temple together...I miss her so much)  This was when I was younger and the kids were small.  Now I can sure understand what she was saying.  I hope someday to be able to say that too.

 Emily helping me sew. 

 Livvy getting ready for church.  We decided she looks pretty cute in my reading glasses.  (Hope she never has to wear them!)

 Going after the moles again...this made me laugh so hard the first time I saw her do it!

 Olivia is so good with Emily.  She is definitely mother # 2

Happy Fathers day to my sweetheart.  He is such a great father and husband. Seems like as time goes by, he just becomes more  and more dear to my heart.  Watching him as the father to our kids makes me love him I think about more than anything.  The relationship he has with each of them is pretty extraordinary.  His life revolves around them and I know he would and does do anything he could to see them be happy.

You would think after almost 36 years, I would know just about everything about this guy, but he continues to surprise me about every day.  He has had a very interesting life and he can remember incidents that happened long ago with great detail.  The more I learn about his life, the easier it is to understand  what made him into the man he is today.

I think we have both kind of evolved over our married years to become a part of each other.  He makes me want to be a better person and I hope I compliment him as well.  I know that he makes me very happy and I thank Heavenly Father every day for sending him to find me so we could make a family together.  There really is no greater happiness than the joy of a loving family.

Ok, these are way lame pictures of our yard sale, but it's all I've got.

We had been collecting things from people in the ward for months and had quite a lot of stuff.  Becky had been storing things in her garage so we had the YW meet over there at 6 am so they could help load things into the trucks.  We had quite a few show up and they all pitched in to help.  (I was pretty disappointed in the amount of help we got from the young men.  That's all I will say about that.)

I had a ton of stuff to bring just from our house.  Katie had sent a bunch of stuff home with us when she moved...lots of house stuff and clothes.  Then a couple of months ago, Morgan called and asked if we would like to have a bunch of stuff from Seagull book that he had to sell.  He had gone to them to ask for a donation for a fund raiser he was doing for school.  They gave him a ton of books, cds, videos that were all brand new.  They had used them for demo in the store so they couldn't sell them.  Anyway, he took this stuff for his fund raiser, but they wouldn't let him use any of it because it was church affiliated.  So he brought over all these boxes full of new media  to use for the yard sale. That was super nice and helped out a lot.  People bought them right up!

We had asked the girls to all bring something for the bake sale and most of them did.  The Garlitz also had a snow cone machine and a popcorn machine from the senior break out party the night before that they let us use.

Man, people started coming as soon as we got there.  It was kind of irritating because we hadn't even had a chance to unload anything and they wanted to look through our bags and boxes of stuff.

It was really great cause people in the ward brought more things over for us to sell and some just gave us money without buying anything.  Bryan gave us money to not let Martha bring any junk home!  Ha! 

Charity brought over some real nice things to sell.  I feel bad cause people don't want to pay anything for stuff and I know she could have sold these things online and got some good money.  She brought over this little glider bike and I bought it for Sam.  She also had a real nice stroller that ended up going for 25 dollars.  I felt pretty good about the lady who ended up with it though...she looked at it and said she really needed one, but didn't have much to give for it. We had started out at 75 dollars...I mean it was a deluxe stroller.  But then we realized that people aren't going to pay that much for stuff at a yard sale.  I told Charity she ought to just take it home and sell it herself cause she was feeling pretty bad that nobody would pay that much for it.  She insisted she wanted to donate it so we dropped the price to 50 dollars.  Lots of people wanted it, but wouldn't pay that much.  So by the time this lady came to look at it we were thinking maybe 30?  She said she would try to round up that much money and wanted us to call her if it was still available at the end of the yard sale.  Well it was still there, so I called her and she came back over.  She had 24 dollars and a lot of it was in change. I was glad that she could get it. 

Boy, you get to deal with a lot of different people at a yard sale like this! There are those that come at the crack of dawn and go through your stuff like it's their job.  They want your stuff pretty much for a quarter. ( I had to keep reminding myself that any money we make is great because all of these things were donated) Then there are people that pop in quick and are looking for a specific thing.  If we don't have it they will take off.  Then there are those that come with their whole family.  These people  seemed like they were on some sort of an outing and would look leisurely through the clothes and things and let their kids pick out something from the toys.  Then they would get something from the bake sale too.  It was fun to talk to the people.  There was a lady who was asking about crocheted items.  Stacey sent her my way.  She said she makes little dolls and she is looking for someone to crochet clothes for them.  She says she sells them like crazy on etsy.  I didn't know there was such a demand for something like that.  She asked me if I would make little clothes for her.  I told her I  would but I don't really know how to make up my own patterns.  She was like "oh you could do it!'  So she gave me her email address and wanted me to contact her.  I thought it actually sounded pretty fun so when I went to get the napkin she had written her email address on out of my pocket and realized it must have fallen out when I was unloading my pockets from money people had given me, I was really sad.  I will have to check into it on the Internet and see if I can somehow find her.

All in all, it was a really successful yard sale.  We ended up making 1580.00!  That will pay for about half of our youth conference. 

 

 We had a fun night with the young women Wednesday.  We had planned to have a outdoor movie night in our back yard, but it evolved into a swimming party.  I was grateful Stacey offered her back yard and swimming pool because our back yard is full of everything that was in the garage! Kelley has been redoing the garage floor in the hut.  This is a pretty big deal.  I mean when we ever even think of moving, we have to say 'oh no, we could never move because that would require cleaning out the garage!' Kelley has so much stuff in that garage!  He is borderline hoarder.  I can't really say anything because I have stuff too, but his is kind of over the top amounts of things. (how many gas cans does one man need?) Well Kelley and KC have really been working hard out there.  They brought everything out of the garage...took several trips to the dump and a bunch of steel to the recycle place to trade in.  It has been a huge project but something that needed to happen real bad.  (They were actually searching for a stink that was somewhere in the garage...smelled like something had died.  Finally found some rotten eggs that had been left in the ice fishing sled  Ha!)Once they got everything out they cleaned the floor and walls till it was spotless.  Then they put this epoxy stuff all over the floor...let that set up overnight, then another coat of epoxy.  Then they put this speckle stuff on top that made it look really neat.

 

They found some treasures that have been buried for a while too.  I can't find my pictures of the finished floor, so I'll take some more and add them.  It looks really nice!

 

 

 

 The kids had a ball in Stacey's pool

 We grilled hot dogs and s'mores

 Played some water games

 Little birthday celebration for Sarah

Here's a few pictures from the last couple fishing trips.  That's just pure happiness there.

Isn't he the cutest?

 We are sure enjoying this boat!  It's gotta be the best one yet.  It's so comfortable I caught KC and Dan with their shoes kicked off, laying back on the couches having a nap while they were fishing!

 This was on the way up to Strawberry...there's a deer in there somewhere.  We saw several up in the hills and unfortunately, several that had been hit on the road.  They are such beautiful creatures...I seriously don't know how anyone could shoot them.

They were catching some good sized rainbows. We don't usually keep any, but some of these were so big, we decided to bring them home for some friends that like fish. 

 The water was just like glass.  So calm and peaceful up there.  The only thing making any racket was the birds.

 KC is always so careful to put sunscreen on, and it was a bright sunny day so he slathered up with some he found on the boat.  Only problem was that what he put on was not sunscreen,  it was Shea butter.(very deceiving container...I don't know where it even came from!)  Oh dear, I felt so bad for him.  He really got fried.

 Yesterday when we went up, we headed right for Haws point.  Ken next door had just been up there and said he caught a ton over there.  He  always goes up with Jerry and they fish from the shore.  So  we thought we would give it a try.  When we got close to that area, we heard people hollering and whooping it up.  There were two big pontoon boats full of Polynesian guys that were having some sort of competition to see who could catch the most fish....and they were catching one after another and really carrying on each time they did.  It was kind of entertaining at first...they are such a happy carefree people, but then it just got to be irritating because we were not catching any!  We thought sure they would scare any fish away cause they were being so loud, but it didn't seem to have any ill effects on their catching.  We decided to move to a different area and then we started catching too.  (And when I say we, I mean Kelley, KC and Dan.  I was pretty much skunked...well Dan let me hook one that had been nibbling on his line, but those don't count)  It was still such a fun day

We couldn't  stay too long cause we were feeding the missionaries at 5:00.  Kelley and KC cleaned the fish up there, then Kelley gave them to Judy, Belnaps, and Rick.  Later, Belnaps came by with a piece of the fish she had cooked.  She wanted Kelley to try it the way she cooks it.  They are the nicest people.  They bring their kids over to feed the fish and gather the eggs all the time.  It's nice to have them come play when I'm missing my own little ones.  They are really cute kids. Xiao Yu is trying to potty train Leila and she is really giving her fits.  She said Kelley probably saved the kids life when he showed up with the fish and played with them for a bit. ..  She said she was at her wits end after her daughter peeing on the floor for the 10th time that day.  She said she hasn't been able to go anywhere because Leila will just wet her pants. Have to admire her for powering through and refusing to put a diaper back on so she could take her out.  The kids wanted to get up in the chicken coop and play which was fine.  Then the older boy hollers out the door at his dad, "Hey Patrick...your daughter just peed in the chicken coop!"  I was dying!  This kid is really a character!