It's about time...

If I would make time, I would have plenty of things to blog about.

We finished school with out too much harm to the mother or children. And all children managed to make it to the next grade.

We have been busy doing nothing for most of the summer. I instituted Bathroom Mondays. I thought that would be fun. We have three bathrooms and three big kids. Each kid cleans a bathroom on Monday. There is the small half bath downstairs and then two huge tub/shower bathrooms upstairs. They rotate through them each week cleaning a different bathroom. The dad and I are always glad when it is Allynn's turn to clean our bathroom because she does such a good job. The other two do good, too. Allynn just seems to leave a gleam.

Anyway... Allynn had summer band for the month of June. She is still playing the trombone and having a good time. She is one of two girls in a group of boys in the trombone section. She has spent the summer babysitting, hanging out with friends, and getting ready for girls camp.

Sydney has done a great job of keeping her room clean and the dishwasher empty. Those are the jobs she had to have done before exiting the house to play with friends. This neighborhood we are in has two girls her age and they are always busy floating from one house to the other. The decided to have Alphabet parties this summer. They started with A and did things and ate things that started with A. They got very creative. N happened to be the same weekend as the father's and son's camp out - so they had a No boys party. Those three girls wrote a skit and then performed it while we had cake and ice cream. I think a fun time was had by all.

Austin has been having just as much fun in the neighborhood. He is surrounded on all sides by boys his age. There is something in the water here that our ward is full of boys. Austin also has jobs he has to do to be able to get out and has done a good job getting them done. Some mornings he gets up early to get his jobs done and then wants to leave right away. We have to remind him that not everyone is up and ready to have friends over at 8 am. My favorite thing he has done with his buds is fill the large green and blue tubs we have with water. We happen to have four and there always seems to be four boys. They set the patio chairs in front of the buckets and put their feet in the water while sitting in the chairs. They look like little old men sitting on a porch talking about the weather. Then someone will challenge another to old his head in the freezing water for as long as he can and then a water fight breaks out. Silly boys.

Kelsey is also lucky to have friends in the neighborhood. She mostly talks about when school is going to start and how many more days until.... whatever (my birthday, Christmas, school starts...) She seems to always have a pen and paper in her hand writing things down. She has also been sick and on an antibiotic for some of the month of July which meant she had to stay out of direct sunlight. She is finally better and able to get out to play with all the kids in the yards. She was a trooper through it all.

Jason has been working. He was called to the Elder's quorum presidency and seems to be having fun doing that. He also has been working on getting healthy and eating right. He lost over 30 lbs in the spring and is still working on more. He has more energy. So much that he put in our beautiful garden. We have two rows of corn, a tomatio plant, two sunflowers (volunteer), 6 tomato plants full of tomatoes (we are waiting for them to turn red), squash, zucchini, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, carrots, and peas. Everything has grown big and beautiful. No food from and of the cabbage plants (probably too hot), and the radishes just went to seed. It has been so fun watching it all grow. The kids did have to do some weeding and they did a good job of not complaining too much about it.

I have been crocheting. I started at Christmas time with some YouTube videos. Then I got myself a book and have made some cute things for Lola. This week I made two blue hats for Thing 1 and Thing 2, an elephant trunk, and a Cat in the Hat hat. I have been having LOTS of fun. I have also been getting ready for girls camp. I was called as the Laurel adviser and have been having much more fun than I thought I would. We have a great group of girls who seem to like each other. Next week it camp. The last time I went to camp, Allynn was 8 months old (she will be 14 this year). Jason's parents will be here the Friday we get back from camp for the weekend. Then the next Thursday we will leave for West Yellowstone for the Alan and Joy Busath family reunion. We have been looking forward to that for almost 2 years now. All the planing has come together and now it is time to go. That will be more fun camping.

Then we will come home and have about two weeks and school will start. All the kids will be in school this year. I asked Kelsey what I would do without her if she went to school. She said, " I don't know you will be OK." I'm glad she thinks so. I will substitute teach again and I will have Percy to keep me company.

Big long blog, but thought you might want to know what was up.