oh what do you do in the summer time?

 when all the leaves are green?  Well, while anna and daddy and grandpa work away, julia and i relax in the shade of the willow tree.  i love her toe in this picture!

 that's anna's body in front of julia in case you were worried about who's skin im showing.

 what a lovie!

 cute sisters on grandpas patio.

when we are helping we are happy

 Paul found my camera!  So walla!  We have pictures from early august when we came out to visit the Buhlers in Vernal.  Here anna and richard are helping build a shed.  look at that cute helper!

ANNA AND ELIZABETH

 the girls and the dolls

Scavengers and sideponies

Julia must be hungry.  She is eating food droppings from under the table

Anna wanted hair like Julia's, so she got her first side pony tail.  Doesn't she look pretty?  And from the 80's?

wow, that was a mess!

I went to help Virginia today.  She had her little tractor henry last week and for me the sleepless nights start wrecking havoc at about week 1 or 2.  So I had grandiose plans of making her lunch, dinner and a freezer meal as well as finishing her laundry, cleaning her bathroom and taking her kids out so she could get a nap.  I did make it to the grocery store before I came and had supplies to do all those things.......but instead I spent all day cleaning up the natural disaster that was Remi and Chloe's room............

From Virginia's Facebook Page: So what happens when 2, 3 year olds are left to play behind a closed door and sound like they are playing nicely, you ask? Nothing but absolute mischief making and major mess making. They managed to dump every single toy, puzzle, blocks, blankets, art supplies, barbie, pony, cars, trucks, mattresses, stuffed animals all over the room. They had to dig out the doorway enough so that we could squeeze in and help pick up the disaster. Yep, that happened. Remi and his awesome cousin were 2 mischievous little worts this afternoon. Bonus, bedroom got cleaned and vacuumed really well. Thanks Nicole Buhler for coming out and helping me out today and for awesome produce you ROCK! Love you.

After that we came home and I dehydrated some food for our backpacking trip and then went out to dinner with some friends.  Richard is the best!  He's watched the kids every night this week it seems!  Anyways, that was a mess, and I'm very grateful that nobody peed or pooed while they were trapped in the disaster area!  Wish I had a picture of how bad it was.

millions of peaches, peaches for me

peaches come from (brigham city) then they are put into a can in a mom factory (in morgan)!  Sorry, that's from the peaches song if you know it.  It was a big deal when I was in like 4th grade.

So my amazing sister teaches 'lets play music' classes out of her home.  She invited Anna to come to her "black Spider" class every tuesday morning.  So we had our first class this tuesday.  Anna loved it and still loves it.  She sings the songs from the class while she is playing in her room.

After class my sister and I canned 61 quarts of peaches.  6 boxes.  It took all day because we were refereeing Evan (5) Ashton (4) Anna (3) Jane (2) Julia (1) and then after school got out Gavin (8) Amber (7) and Amber's friend (6?).  So there you go, every age from 8 to 1.  Good thing neither of us are pregnant or with a newborn - otherwise nothing would have gotten done.  It was fun but my feet HURT by the end of the day.  Anna had a great time playing with her cousie and his friend (she read them books and played "special" games with them).  Julia was needy because she was tired from our spur of the moment hike and hung onto my legs all day.

Oh yeah, we lit a big fire on the range because a hot pad got stuck under the steam canner.  Amy calmly took the pot off while I screached like a chicken and covered the fire.  Her million dollar fire alarms worked (thank goodness!) and Evan led everyone in a fire drill out to trees near their house.  It was adorable to watch these little kids march in a line out to the tree, so cooly and calmly with Evan in charge.

Julia couldn't handle it anymore at about 6:00 so we went home.  I just wish i lived closer to my sis!  But i'm glad I'm not 750 miles or so away anymore.

working, librarying, eating squash and hiking

 I had to work this morning for a few hours.  I left the kids iwth my neighbor and when I got back put them down for quiet/naptime.  After that I took them to the park/library.  I loved today, it was perfect overcast weather.  I love pictures of julia walking.  what a cutie.

 doddling our way into the library.

 Anna spent a good 30 minutes in here while I chatted with Kaelie's sister Kristen.  Julia and Eyrie fought over some library toys.  Good times with 2 year olds.

Look at this guy take off and leave me to carry Anna.......l After a good dinner of squash from pauls garden ( love the spagetti squash, you are amazing paul) we went for a hike up Desolation trail.  It's a 4.8 mile round trip hike.  We started at 6:30, we were a bit unprepared....anna wasn't wearing shoes.........we didn't have any water........I was wearing crap socks and shoes........it was getting dark and was almost Julia's bedtime......we didn't know how far the trail was........but we went anyways.

 We are going backpacking this w/e so I thought I would carry anna to get a handle on hauling heavy loads up passes.  My backpack better not be 45# or we won't make it to our destination!

 Richard wasn't sympathetic to my heavy load and took off.  Let play where's waldo (richard).......see the little dot.  That's what I looked at on the way up until i got mad and told him to wait for me.

 see him?  yeah a little dot.

 After much whining on my part (i wore bad socks because I originally thought we were going biking!  anna was very heavy) we made it to the top!  hooray.  What a good FHE activity.  It had nothing to do with our lesson on baptism and was actally pretty lame for the girls as we had no intention of letting them hike or play.......

 Julia fell asleep on the way up and was pretty dazed in this pic.

 me and my little dolly!

 mountain yoga.

 beautiful sunset.

 anna fell asleep on the way down.  look how sweaty richard is!  yucko!

can you read this sign?  neither can we.  I think from looking online the hike was 4.8 round trip, but the sign says its only 2.  i refuse to believe that.  its at least to the top and maybe 2 back down.  What a fun spur of the moment date (since the kids slept greater than half the time can we consider it a date?).

snuggles

we moved the recliner in julias room so i can read her books before her nap.  the girls also like to get their blankies and snuggie in there!

Anna reading to Julia

Shadrach Roundy Ranch

For my parents 40th anniversary mom wanted to go up the the ranch.  John was nice enough to saddle a horse and I took Julia and Anna for a ride.  Julia sucked her thumb the entire time.  She was ok once she was on.

Anna loved it she about fell off at first, but then I moved her to in front of me.  John walked out of his house with his cowboy hat on and Anna gave a little chuckle.  He also taught her some good language so we hope it doesn't stick.  

She wasn't so keen on being on by herself.

This is how Julia really thought of the horse. She is terrified.

Thanks mom for taking us up to the ranch.   I use to spend my summers at grandmas and help john at the ranch it was a great time. He and Grandma would make us work hard but they would also make sure we would have a good time.  grandma would take us to rodeos and john would take us on  horse rides, golfing, and always buy us a coke. 

I think about buying grandmas place so I timed the commute and it would be 35 to 40 minutes, so doable, but not great.

Here is Grandma True (2011).  We miss you and think of you often Grandma.