A Sleep Over

My brother Steve took his wife Vicki out for an overnight birthday surprise and Ameri and I went down South to babysit their kids. Charley had a fabulous time and they only got into a few big fights. Thanks Emily and Josh for a great time!

Josh, Charley and Emily at dinner.

The next big rock band. Josh is the lead singer (all of the attitude, good looks, and no pants!), Emily will be the manager (notice the cell phone), and Charley will be back-up vocals and lead guitar. Oh yes, Emily will also be in charge of hair and make-up. She found that ketchup is a great way to get hair to stay just where you want it. Charley is sporting the ketchup "half back/half straight" look. Thank-you Emmers!

Emily and Madeleine trying to find some reprieve from the hot sun.

Charley actually posed for this one herself. She got into position and then said, "Mommy! Take a picture of me like this!" A model in the making!

When Steve and Vicki came home Steve decided to set up their new pool for the kids. It was REALLY hot and you can see everyone enjoying the cool water. Vicki and I decided to stay dry!

Madeleine's First Service Project

When I was Young Women's president in our ward the girls did a lot of service projects. I'm no longer the president, but there is one clean-up project that I want to keep doing every year even if I'm not in charge of the girls anymore. We go to one of the local trail-heads and clean out all of the overgrowth, etc. It's fun and our family gets outside and helps the community.

Madeleine: working hard!

Charley using her "guns"!

Just hangin' around.

I was remembering Charley's first service project and went back and found this picture (July '05 - planting trees!). Whenever I go back through these old pictures of Charley I'm struck by how much my girls look alike!

Charleyisms

Charley says some pretty funny stuff. Here are some things she has already said to me today:

We sat down to eat breakfast and she says, "Mom you didn't pray for your food. You better do it."
I start to pray and she says, "Calm down Mom. Just calm down. I'll do it."
I must have been praying pretty intently!

We were sitting on the couch reading a story and it was about the "Care Bears". She is looking at one of the Care Bears in the story book and tells me that he has a "cute little tail". I ask her if she thinks she has a cute little tail and she looks at me with exasperation in her eyes and says, "No Mom. I have a bum."
I guess I didn't study anatomy hard enough. Duh Mom!

While we were eating lunch Madeleine hits one of the little sound makers on her exersaucer and it roars like a lion. Charley declares, "I like to eat lion."
Me: "Oh, you do? Isn't it a little gamey?"
Charley: "No. It's just a little 'roary'."
She must like it raw.

Comical cuties

Charley's birthday was last month and it was a very small affair. I decided to get Charley a little cake of her own. She eats very slowly and after an hour this is the progress she had made.



Madeleine has not mastered the ability to roll from back to tummy, but we were able to get her to roll over from tummy to back. It takes a couple of minutes so be patient! Charley likes to be a cheerleader but she has a hard time with the he/she thing!

Embarrassing moments

Have you ever just randomly remembered an embarrassing moment? It's awful. Last night I was getting ready for bed and I just remembered some random moment pulled from the cosmos of my brain and I instantly remembered and felt every feeling that I had had when it happened. I have a lot of embarrassing moments so it's not hard to bring one to memory, but man, I could totally skip it!

On that note, my brothers and sisters and I like to exchange email "strings" every now and again and inevitably one of us always remembers an embarrassing moment to share. It sets us all off and we tend to share WAY to much information with each other. For instance, we were sharing stories about peeing our pants last time. You can only imagine . . .

In honor of embarrassing moments, here is one of mine:
I was in high school at the time and my friend and I were at church. We both had taken an unnecessary bathroom break and I finished before she did. I thought I would be silly and wait for her then scare her as she came out of the stall. I still love scaring people. Ameri hates it. Anyway, I was standing in anticipation of the big scare when the stall door opens. I yell as loud as I can, "Arrrrrr"! Much to my dismay it was one of the old ladies from church in the stall and not my friend. She gave me this look like I was crazy and then just walked past me out the door (maybe she washed her hands first I don't know).
I was mortified! Where had my friend gone and how had I found myself in such a horrible situation. Well, my friend had indeed finished before me and heard the whole thing go down. That just made it worse. Not only had I made a fool of myself, but someone had witnessed it. Yep, even writing about it I get the flushed skin and creepy-crawlies. Feel free to share yours with me - the only thing to make a fool feel better is to know that there's a bigger fool out there!

My kind of visiting teaching!

My visiting teaching companion (Saskia) and I decided to go to the botanical gardens to teach our friend Erica. We all have kids and it's much easier to do when the kids can run around and go crazy. Here are some fun shots I got of the kids.

Charley and her new friend Claire

Charley, Claire and Jack

Madeleine and Me

Showdown in the Children's garden! June is Erica's little girl, Charley is in the blue hat.

Saskia, me and the kids

A bit blurry sorry! The kids after a fun day. June looks a little haggard eh?

I'm looking healthy today

I was at church today and a well-intentioned friend said, "You look healthy today."

All I could think was, Have I been looking sick? I don't remember being sick. Was I unhealthy? Was I not wearing make-up the last time he saw me (a real possibility)?

I told him that I was getting more sleep these days and he said, "I can tell."

Here's to looking healthy!

Sierra Madre Fire

We decided to start off the fire season this year! Last Saturday Ameri and I were driving home from the O.C. and as we rounded the bend on the 210 I looked up and saw huge flames on the mountain. I told Ameri it looked like it was right over Sierra Madre. Our ward (congregation) includes Sierra Madre so we were a little worried. When we got home we turned on the news and, sure enough, it was Sierra Madre. The boyscouts were at a camp up there when it started and were some of the first to be evacuated. The next day we got to church and many families weren't there because they had either been evacuated or had stayed to hose their homes down. Luckily the fire was contained a few days later but it was nerve-racking while it lasted! I wasn't able to get any pictures of the flames, but our friends the Hicks' did: hicksfamilyadventures.blogspot.com Check them out - Jennifer got some good ones!