4th of July Birthday!

Porter is 8! His birthday was on Friday, but I think the whole weekend was one big party for him. Friday afternoon after swim lessons, Will and Christy (Andersen's brother) and their two girls came to celebrate the 4th of July weekend with us. After Friday Night Pizza, it was PARTY TIME!
Porter was pretty specific on how he wanted his cake to look this year. He even drew me this diagram of what the cake should look like.

He seemed pretty satisfied with how it turned out, so I guess I came close enough :0) It is supposed to be a scene of the Goo Lagoon from the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants, in case you were wondering.

Porter took a few weeks to compile this huge list of possible presents and it was up to Andersen and I to narrow it down. We finally decided on a Pirate Lego set. Porter loves Legos and put the whole thing together himself.

Porter got some paints and "project" supplies along with some books from Nana and Papa Grigg.

Here is Will trying to hold back the masses who thought they needed to "help" Porter open his presents.

Explosives! Will and Christy, you know the way to an 8-year-old's heart.

Grandpa and Grandma Adams sent these cool hover cars that got ALL the boys excited.

The paints were a huge hit with everyone. We have quite a family of artists.

On the 4th we had invited a bunch of friends from our ward over for desert and fireworks, but were a little nervous when it ended up raining most the afternoon. Luckily the rain broke long enough to break open a pinata and shoot off some fireworks. I loved this cake that Nancy brought. It doesn't get more patriotic than that!

Here is Coolidge taking the first swing at the pinata. We decided youngest to oldest would be the most fair.

Christy and Cambri trying to take a whack at the swinging pinata.

It was a lot more hilarious once we started blind folding the kids.

Unfortunately, there were a few who just couldn't keep out of the way of the swinging bat.

Mason learned this lesson the hard way. I can't believe I actually got this picture of Kaylee connecting with Mason's head instead of the pinata. Honestly, she didn't even see him there. Mason had gone in to grab a piece of the pinata that Kaylee had just knocked off and, wham! Home run! I love Christy's reaction the best in the background.

Don't worry, Mason is fine and the bump is almost gone already, although at the time it was pretty impressive.

Here's Porter trying to get his hits in. Too bad the pinata was nowhere close.

The pinata put up a good fight...

But in the end, the kids won. Here's the race for the candy. Sweet success!

It turned out to be a great 4th inspite of the rain. Thanks to all who were able to make it and celebrate with us!

Sock Puppets

Right before school let out for the summer, Porter's teacher decided that the kids needed one more project, a book report. Yep, a tradition at his school I later found out. After a few books his teacher finally approved Cam Jansen, The Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds by David A. Adler. So the assignment was to read the book, write a short report, and then prepare some kind of diorama, song, video, etc. to help them with their presentation in front of the class. Porter's choice -puppets. So here are the puppets that Porter and I made of various characters in the book. Luckily they were a great hit and Porter passed the assignment. The boys still love playing with them.

Kentucky's Natural Bridge Park

I just have to start off this post by giving props to my little Mason. A few weeks ago we were starting to run out of Mason-sized diapers when I had the brilliant idea, "why not just potty train instead?" He turned 3 in March and at the time I just wasn't feeling up to the whole pooping and peeing all over the house (can't imagine why). But, with a new baby on the way it was now or never? Thankfully Mason was totally on board and after only a handful of accidents and less than a week he was using the toilet like he'd been born using it! I was and still am completely amazed at my little super hero potty trainer. No more diapers! Not even at night (he hasn't had a single accident at night and even gets up in the middle of the night if he has to go)! He even uses the bathroom at the store and made me laugh my head off when he made it to the bathroom at Macy's just in time and while he was sitting on the toilet, threw a fist in the air like Superman and yelled out "YAY." My feelings EXACTLY. Don't worry, he was well rewarded with a shopping spree at Toys 'R' Us. Thank you Mason for being the most incredible little guy!



For Memorial Day weekend Andersen was informed that he had 2 vacation days left (how he missed that I don't know) that he needed to use so not only did he have Memorial Day off he also got the Thursday and Friday before off. On Friday we decided to check out some of the National Parks around here and ended up at the Natural Bridge Park in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Here are the boys at the bottom of the trail, only 0.75 miles to the top!

ALL the boys did a great job hiking up and back down, but Coolidge did get a few free rides just so we could move faster. Otherwise, I think he would have hiked the whole thing.
O.K. So the bow in these pictures were made by the boys themselves. We rented Robin Hood from the library last week and the boys have been re-enacting it ever since. Being in the woods on a hike seemed like a perfect time to use their bows and arrows. It is amazing what a stick and a few rubber bands can launch. Luckily Andersen found some light weight sticks to use as arrows and no one has poked their eye out...yet.
Coolidge and I were good hiking buddies, our paces were evenly matched :0)
This is just under the natural bridge. It makes me laugh how well these guys can play it up for the camera!

To get on top of the bridge you have to climb up these narrow stairs...
Squeeze through this long crevice between these two huge rocks...
And then you're finally on top.

This is what Mason calls his "angry face." As soon as he showed it to me he started laughing, he really wasn't angry.
It was a gorgeous day so we could see quite a ways from up there. Campbell was disappointed we wouldn't let him "shoot" anything off the bridge, but he's got his bow ready.
Once you're on top you can hike around to this viewing spot so you can see the bridge. The bridge is right by my head in this picture. Porter wanted to run back and stand on the bridge while we took a picture from here, but Andersen or I didn't feel much like running at that point.
We all made it safely back down and were rewarded with over-priced popsicles. Hey, we figured we'd saved quite a bit of money by spending the day on a FREE hike instead of going to the Zoo. Here we are enjoying the popsicles while watching some fish in this pond. Mason is obsessed with fish so I think it was the highlight of his day.

My Head Was Hot, So I Cut My Hair

Pedro: "Well, when I came home from school my head started to get really hot. So I drank some cold water, but it didn't do nothing. So I laid in the bathtub for a while, but then I realized that it was my hair that was making my head hot. So I went into my kitchen and I shaved it all off."




This is exactly what Campbell told us yesterday when we asked why he cut his hair. Campbell:"My head was hot so I cut my hair!"

As you can see he was quite proud of himself and was pretty upset when we decided to shave his head to "even" things out.

I don't even know how he was able to cut the back!?! But now ALL the boys have summer hair cuts. Among other news, we decided to plant a garden in our back yard this year which we were really excited about until we started digging up the spot for the garden and found that under the top layer of grass was a layer of rock! This is a picture of all the rock we dug up out of the garden. A few of the rocks were so big that Andersen had to break them up into fourths so that we could lift them.

So Friday, Campbell, Mason, Coolidge and I were finally able to plant the garden. Campbell was a huge help and did at least 3 rows all by himself. I think I have a natural born gardener (as long as there are plenty of popsicles around). Here is Campbell spacing out the seeds.

It's not a very big garden, but hopefully it will do. Porter got home from school just in time to put the last cucumber seeds in the ground and then it promptly started to rain. Talk about good timing!

And for our final news, for those who haven't heard yet, we are expecting a GIRL August 3rd. Here is a picture of the growing belly. I'm just glad that she isn't here yet and that Campbell decided to practice cutting his OWN hair :0)

House No Longer Under Construction.......for now

I know I posted back in July about our house remodel project. Now, 5 months later I think we're ALMOST finished. We still have a little trim work to do, but the bulk of the work is over! Here are a few before and after pictures of our last 5 months.

It was ALOT of hard work, and looking back now, Andersen and I both think we were totally insane, but I LOVE my new kitchen. And we had a lot of fun along the way. Here are a few pictures of our house under construction:

Here is Andersen building cabinets in the place of the old dishwasher since we had decided to keep the existing cabinets. Let me just say, it is NOT fun to sand, wipe, prime, sand, wipe, paint, sand, wipe, and paint two walls worth of cabinets!

Here we are in the kitchen laying down tar paper before we could put in the hardwood floors.

Steven and Jerusha came to visit while we were putting in the floors and we were EXTREMELY grateful for all their hard work. Nice form Jerusha!

Oh yeah, I love my hardwood floors too!

Andersen surprised me time and time again with his handy-man abilities. I think I WILL keep him around :0)

Although...I am glad that the granite guys talked him out of installing our countertops himself.

Will and Christy came to visit too and of course we put them to work. Will and Andersen trimmed up our tree out front and it is the perfect climbing tree. Good work Will!

Of course all the stuff we ripped out of our house had to go somewhere.

Luckily we were able to rent this huge dumpster for $30 and the city hauled our mountain away.

Ahh, nothing like a job well done! At least we think so.

Christmas Packages From Grandpa and Grandma Adams

Sorry Mom and Dad this took awhile to post. I had to teach myself how to use the movie maker so I could split up the video. The whole thing was too big to upload all together. I hope you enjoy the videos. The boys were all really excited so I think you accomplished your goal. We love you!

I Have a Date

So, this morning when I opened the door to my bedroom I ran into a rose hanging from the ceiling in our hallway. Andersen had hung 2 dozen roses from the ceiling while I was sleeping all the way into the kitchen and on the last rose there was...

this note:
And two tickets to see Twilight next Friday. Not only that, he cleaned our bathroom and did the dishes last night. I'm definitely feeling special right now.