the first t-ball game...

So tonight was Tucker's first game, and he did AWESOME. He totally loved being out on the field, though even at 7:00 it was pretty hot still. He hit left handed and threw right handed, which I know makes his dad proud, and he was eager to do a great job. :)

how i know olivia is my daughter...

well there are lots of reasons that i know olivia is "mine", but the most recently obvious reason came a few nights ago when we were having family scripture study...

olivia always has a bit of trouble calming down and sitting still for the 2 minutes that we study the scriptures, but on this night she sat down on my lap and very earnestly (and with an obvious twinge of frustration) asked, 

"why do we always have to read about BOYS?"

dan and i looked at each other, and i had to tell her honestly, "i know, hon. it's hard sometimes that there aren't more girls in the scriptures, but when we do read about a girl, we know that she's really special." and then i reminded her about the story of abish, and what an amazing and faithful girl she was, and so now we just talk about abish, or queen of lamoni, and we have a better time getting her interested. i love that girl of mine!

hooray for new friends!!

i don't have much time, but i just want to say Hooray! for our new friends, the Jensens. We stopped by today and Olivia and Aubrie were best friends on sight. I'm just so happy that Olivia has a new friend that's a girl. (We have lots of good friends her age who are boys, but no one to play ponies and dolls with, or to help put stuffed kitties down for their naps...) They played together today for five hours with no trouble. Hooray. :)

tucker's first t-ball practice!

I didn't get to go since I had to be at mutual, but Dan took Tucker to his first t-ball practice and he loved loved loved it. I'm so glad we were able to get a little scholarship and register him for some fun summer activity. He wrote in his journal this morning about how excited he was for this, and drew a picture of himself hitting a homerun (and the ball going so far it went off the page!) I love his hopeful confidence. :)

This is Tucker just outside the fields. 

And here he is at the team meeting - talk about ready to play!

He's pretty proud of the fact that he gets to wear a helmet to bat.

rylie's swim time snack

so rylie loves to eat chalk, which is especially awful at swim time. today she ate some green sidewalk chalk and so she looked a bit like a wet baby clown. i love her dearly, but she is a tad more mischievous than the other two were at this age...

Strawberry Picking

Well, we had a wonderful morning picking strawberries last Saturday...Rylie ate a zillion along the way, and crushed as many with her chubby fingers trying to "help" pick them. We filled four gallon buckets full in no time at all - it was a beautiful sunny morning and we worked our row pretty quickly. Washington Farms has a great little playground for the kids to enjoy after all the picking, and a super fun rope swing. Even Dan took a ride on the rope swing - and held Rylie for part of the time, which she LOVED. Unfortunately, Olivia had an allergic reaction to something, and she broke out in hives all over her body, so we had to cut our morning short and grab some benadryl on the way home. Poor gal. It was super fun, though. And we got 3 batches of freezer jam, 2 gallons of frozen berries, and a delicious strawberry shortcake (not to mention the fresh berries for lunch, dinner, and breakfast.) Yummm...

Fun times with John and Lindsay

And don't forget Bailey! Pretty much all last weekend all we heard from the kids was "Baaaaileeeeey!" I'm so glad that they love that puppy now. We had so much fun when John and Lindsay came down - I showed Linds the house and we spent most of the morning "redesigning" the house and the yard. It's so fun to have such a smart, stylish sister. Then we took the afternoon to play at the botanical gardens. And aside from poor John's allergies, we had a great time. The kids had so much fun running around and playing with Bailey and racing uncle John. We do love to be here near our family. :)