Sunday Family Dinner

My Mom is an overachiever. Which means that despite having a hysterectomy earlier this week, she still planned a Family Sunday dinner today with all the grandparents over. Greg and I headed over a little early, to try and help out, but of course she already had almost everything done. As crazy as I thought she was planning a big meal the week of surgery, it was great to have all the grandparents around to get some pictures with Isaac. Plus, it's always fun to get together with my family and hang out. And, it gets me out of the house, but to a place where everyone plays with my kids and cooks my family a good meal. Works for me!

My cute little boy

Here's Isaac with Great Grandma

Grandpa Robert (or 'Bobby' as Ellie randomly started calling him awhile back) working out Isaac's biceps. Grandpa assured me that if Isaac exercised more, he'd sleep better at night.

My sleepy little boy with his Mama

Isn't he like the sweetest thing ever?
And, I'm happy to say I did my hair today. Straightened it for the first time since giving birth. Felt very human. :-)

Isaac with another Great Grandma

Greg freaking out all the Great Grandmas by flipping Ellie around in the air

Great Grandpa with Isaac

Isaac chillin' with Aunt Talina

Ellie and Mommy mugging for the camera . . . Ellie's ever-present 'cheesy smile'

Ellie with Daddy

Grumpy Ellie

Talina and Isaac again

Cheesy Annie

Grandma Karine holding Isaac while Great Grandma works the laptop, checking out the internet to read her grandchildren's blogs -- something I never thought I'd see.

Uncle Cody pretending to be asleep with Isaac. Isaac wasn't very good at pretending to sleep -- Cody kinda sucked too :-)

Have I mentioned the amazing sandbox my parents put in their backyard for the girls to play with? It's awesome. It's huge and the sand is literally a couple feet deep. Cody and Annie have been working in it all summer -- building walls and towers and flooding it at every chance.
I put Annie in there to try to show some scale, but I don't know if it truly does the sand structures justice.
The walls around the outside of the 'lake' are over a foot high in most places, and the towers range from short to huge.

It probably doesn't help too much, but for some perspective, the yellow boat in the lake (half hidden by one of the towers) is like two feet long.

Annie and Ellie could hang out with Cody all day every day, if he didn't have that pesky 'work' thing getting in the way of their fun and building.

Summer Fun

As kids there was nothing we loved more than flooding our giant sandbox and building large mazes of rivers and dams. My youngest brother, Cody, hasn't grown out of this in the least, and is over at least once or twice a week to flood the sandbox with my girls. Here's a picture of them from yesterday (before they actually dug out the entire middle of the sandbox, filled it with water and made a very muddy pool) while Ellie, Annie and her friend Kian, all buried Cody is the sand.



The kids are loving this weather. Me, not so much. It just got so hot so quick, and I haven't had time to adjust, and I'm uber-pregnant, and I would kill for some mild 72 degree weather.

We got home Sunday night to find our house a balmy 85 degrees. And that was the main floor. I don't know how hot our bedroom was. I'm guessing 90, and I'm not exaggerating. (Well, maybe a little, but not a lot. Like 88 degrees maybe.) We got the kids in bed and Greg went right to work and installed our brand new window AC unit (courtesy of the greatest in-laws in human history who remembered they had an awesome one they weren't using anymore and just handed it over), and pretty soon it was 72 in my bedroom and I was the happiest pregnant woman ever. Greg decided that if ever there was an 'ox in the mire*' kinda situation, it's having a nine month pregnant wife with a 90 degree bedroom :-) (We're thinking the example, with a well timed mention in General Conference by President Monson, could quickly become the modern Mormon version of the ox example for appropriate reasons to break the sabbath . . . :-). I am a much happier person with a cool room to sleep (and hide out in the heat of the day) in.)

My lawn also seems to hate the sudden change in temperature -- just last week Greg and I were all smugly patting ourselves on the back for our lush green front lawn. Oh, what a good job we'd done this year! It was so healthy and strong looking! So of course this week, it looks so fried and it hasn't even gone more than a few days without water! Stupid hot weather killing my lush, green (front) lawn. (My back lawn is full of crap grass (and crab grass, but mainly just a variety of different grasses that are all crap). We bust our butts all summer watering and poisoning and fertilizing and we still end up with pathetic, patchy, ugly grass back there. One day we want to kill it all and start from scratch, but that little yard improvement project is still down the list a few years.)

Although, we did spend an hour at the splash park the other day, and the girls ran through sprinklers yesterday, and have spent every spare minute out in the sandbox -- and they love it all so much, I'm kinda feeling guilty about begrudging their fun summer weather. At least I'm 37 weeks pregnant this week, so I'm taking comfort in the fact I'm not going to be pregnant all summer . . .



* Rescuing an “ox from the mire” is a popular Mormon euphemism for breaking the Sabbath Day (and for other Christians, but Mormon's seem to really like it -- possibly due to all those oxens in pioneer stories). This phrase kinda comes from when the Savior was accused of doing work when He healed a man on the Sabbath. His response is in Luke 14:5:

5 And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?