Black family stay-cation!  My sister's came to visit us the first part of June.  Karyn and her husband Matt were moving from Hawaii to Maryland.  They are in the Army so they have lived everywhere.  They were living in New York City when 9-11 happened.  They have been in Hawaii for the past four years, and they were so excited to get off of that island.  They flew from Hawaii to Sandiego and spent some time there and visited sea world.  She said you know it's bad when you request no ocean view.  They were actually tired of the ocean.  Kristen Came from Colorado Springs.  It was so fun to have the entire family all together again.  We toured downtown  SLC.  My sister's wanted their kids to see the temple and the church sites.  We also checked out city creek.  It was so nice, I'd really like to go back down when I could have more time to shop.  We also did alot of swimming, caught a movie with just us girls, and took the kids up to the mountains for an afternoon.  The only hard thing about having my sister's visit is that I realize how much I'm missing out because they live so far away.  I wish our kids could see their cousins more, and I wish we could have girls nights all the time.  We were able to get a great family photo together.  My neighbor Randee Worster is an amazing photographer.  I'd highly recommend her.

Dance recital 2012 and summer fun

Kate had her ballet recital last weekend.  The production was beautiful.  It was peter pan, and she got to be a fairy.  She has really grown so much since when she first started ballet.  She has grown into such a  beautiful mature girl.  I always feel so blessed to have such a close relationship with her.  I hope we can always be really great friends. 

Also the kids had quite the successful lemonade stand.  Kate made one with a few neighborhood kids.  Here is a picture of Jence eating his first Popsicle.  He loved it!

Mom's and Muffins, and girls night out!

Here we are on our girls night out.  We ate at the Brick Oven, it was yummy!
 I took this picture with my phone, it doesn't take great pictures.  But I always forget my camera.

Kate is the one in the middle with the purple shirt.  The class did a darling song for all of the Mom's on Moms and muffin's day!

Kate and I had a lot of fun this last weekend.  Dan took the two older boys on a father's son campout.  They enjoyed it so much.  The boys had a blast.  Kirk and Benjamin had been looking forward to the campout for weeks.  Kate, and baby, and me were left at home by ourselves.  We decided to make it a girls night out.  First Kate invited a few friends to go swimming.  It was the last day of school, and a pool party seemed like the perfect way to to kick off the summer.  Then we got home from swimming we got ready for dinner.  We ate out at the brick oven it was really good.  Then I did some shopping at Down East.  Kate was really patient with my shopping, we did get her a new backpack for school which she was excited about.  Then we came back to watch enchanted.  We were going to do pedicures, but Kate fell asleep during the movie.  I think all that sun, and swimming,  and shopping wore her out.  It was a fun night.  I think the ward should do more father son's campouts! 

 A little photo shoot of the kids.  I love the simple white on white.  THey are kneeling in front of my white couch in our living room.  There's tons of light in that room around 2:00 in the afternoon.

Kirk looses his tooth

 A couple of weeks ago Kirk lost his first tooth.  He pushed it out by himself with his tongue.  He was so excited I feel like loosing your first baby tooth is such a huge mile stone.  He is growing from little boy to just grown up boy so fast.  Kirk has been doing very well at soccer this year, he usually scores a goal each game, and is starting to be more aggressive.  He has decided that this will be his last year at soccer since he prefers baseball and basketball more.  I can't say that I'm disappointed.  I won't be missing our busy Saturdays dominated by soccer games.  It will be nice to get our weekends back. 

We are also in a dilemma.  Kate has been taking ballet for the last few years.  Each year Dan frowns on

on the costume she has to wear on stage, it usually consists of a short skirt, and spaghetti strap leotard, 

I usually reassure him that it's fine, to wear these things on stage.  It's ballet and it's beautiful.  But this year....... as you can see in the picture above, Dan is pretty upset.  Kate has to wear a flesh colored leotard with a see through lace over lay?  The leotard is so close to her skin tone that it looks like she's just wearing the lace.  It's beautiful I suppose if your into the arts, It's not sexy, but the problem is that it's so close to her skin tone.  If Kate had dark skin or if the leotard was a color, I wouldn't be as worried.  Do you think this is something you'd let your seven year old wear?  Am I over reacting?  Please leave a comment.  I don't know what to do.

Kate had her piano recital tonight she did a great job.  She actually wanted to sing and play.  She memorized her pieces, and she just played them so well.  She wasn't nervous at all which for her first piano recital, and that she was singing too, was really amazing.  Way to go Kate, you are awesome!

Jence recently just had a growth spurt.  He is almost seven months old  I pulled out the next size up of clothes out of storage but they were really tight, 12-18 mo. clothes barely fit him, I happened to have some 2T shorts left in Benjamin's drawer that he doesn't fit in anymore, and I hadn't stored yet.  I thought they will be way to big, but I'll just put them on until I get out some 18-24 mo. stuff out of storage.  I put them on and sure enough they fit!  They are a little long, but at least they don't squeeze his fat legs.  Here is a picture of him in his 24 mo. old shirt, and his 2T shorts.  He is getting so big!  I'm taking him in for his doctors check up next week,  I'm excited to see how much he weighs.  My arms are getting really toned from carrying him around everywhere.  Yesterday I was at the store and Benjamin wouldn't walk in.  I was in a hurry to get Kate from piano and we just needed to run in get some laundry detergent and milk, and then run out.  I carried Benjamin in one arm, and Jence in the other just until we got up to the store front where they had the carts.  I was pround that I was strong enough to do this, I guess weight lifting class at the gym is paying off!  I got some funny looks from people who were in the parking lot though.