Whole Family Meeting

Liberty gets very excited when we tell her it’s Monday night, which means “Whole Family Meeting,” aka, Family Home Evening. Of course, the bulk of her excitement is for the ice cream that we traditionally have at the end. She does get pretty excited about getting the manual out for the lesson though. Sometimes during the week she’ll find it and ask if we can have Whole Family Meeting. So, occasionally, we’ll have FHE 3 times a week, only the additional 2 times are condensed versions. Usually, our routine is a lesson from the nursery manual – often accompanied by something for her to color, family prayer, and singing several primary songs while I play the piano. We sing a couple that coordinate with the lesson, and then let Liberty pick a few of her favorite primary songs. She often asks to play a game that was part of the lesson one time, and she thinks we need to do it after every lesson. The particular lesson was about obedience, so it suggested playing a game where Liberty stands up in front of us, while we give her directions, such as, “jump up and down, turn around, make a happy face, act silly, etc.” She loves it, and asks to play it often. The best part is when we tell her to make different faces, like, "sad," or "excited," or our favorite, "surprised," and she excitedly yells, "Surprise!" The game is pretty entertaining for us, to be honest. And, to wrap it all up, we usually have ice cream afterwards. We did that a couple of times, so now, Liberty would be very disappointed if we didn’t.

Tonight, we had an extra special “Whole Family Meeting,” and we got out the inflatable pool and let the girls swim. Our electric pump wasn’t charged, so we used a bicycle pump to inflate it. As you can imagine, it took us awhile to blow it up! Especially since Liberty and Hadley were playing inside the pool the entire time we were trying to inflate it. We finally got it inflated and took it outside, and let Liberty at it with the hose. She had a total blast! Hadley on the other hand, thought it was too cold, and preferred watching Liberty and laughing at her while she played in the pool. We put Liberty’s slide into the pool, which Liberty loved even more. I wonder if Liberty will ask to get the pool out again next time we have FHE. We will see!




Hadley's infamous clenching of her fists and tensing up of her entire body when she gets mad.


All happy now, as long as she's not in the water.

More from our Liberty

(Playing at Grandma & Papa's house 7/26/09)

I try to write down the things Liberty does/says, and I have a little list that I need to document:

A few weeks ago we were in the dressing room in Old Navy. Liberty was holding onto one of those metal bars with one hand and sliding her feet apart from each other. She said (something to the effect of), “Mom, look at my trick!” I responded, “Wow, you’re doing the splits!” She immediately replied, “No, I’m doing the slips!” I tried teaching her they were called the splits but she insisted her trick was called the slips. Definitely cuter that way! Plus, it makes more sense.

The other day I was giving Liberty choices for breakfast, and she chose a bagel, and said, “And I want scream cheese on top.”

A few days ago Liberty was playing another one of her made-up games with Hadley, and repeatedly chanted and sang “I shopped hurray because I winned!” And, when Hadley was the winner she shouted, “You shopped hurray because you winned!” She is a riot!

If I could only have a recorder on that girl 24/7 (minus her occasional feisty times) to capture the things she says (sings) and does...

Oh, and she calls me, "Mom-pump." ... on a regular basis ... and even when she's creative playing with princesses, dolls, and animals, she refers to the moms as "mom-pump." I have no idea what it means or where she came up with it. It used to be "mom-punk," and revolved into "mom-pump."

MHS Class of '99

Last night was my 10-year high school reunion. I can't believe it has been 10 years! It was held at Rockin' R Ranch. We had a lot of fun catching up with everyone! It felt like we were still in high school, just most people were married and had kids. It was so fun seeing everyone and reminiscing about the good ol' days. I had quite a few laughs! Unfortunately, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked.

Trever & I ready to go!

Beth, Me, Tassi

Me, Ali

Crystal, Chantel, Michelle, Beth, Me, Hillary, Allison

Me, Hillary, Allison

Back: Sarah, Lynn, Michelle, Natalie, Crystal

Front: Angie, Me, Hillary, Allison

Crystal, Me, Dane (won for being "Most Famous"), Allison, Hillary

Me (and my 50 chins), Amanda

Afterwards a few of us girls went to Applebee's for tradition's sake. We downed two baskets of fries and 3 desserts.

Me, Crystal, Hillary, Chantel, Angie at Applebee's

Crystal's Cabin

Crystal invited us to go with her up to her dad's cabin in Show Low. Crystal, Hillary, and I, and all of our kids (plus some) made the trip. The cabin was super nice and perfect for the group of us. The weather was beautiful, so we enjoyed a lot of outside time - just what we needed! After the trip, Liberty reported that her favorite parts were eating popsicles, going on treasure hunts, and playing on the "swing." We did a lot of relaxing, and even played a few games when we had some down time. The kids definitely kept us busy, but they had a great time playing together, and got along really well. Thanks, Crystal, hopefully we can do it again!

These three played together so well!

Liberty, Hudson, and Emery sharing pretzels

Hadley spent most of her time crawling around and eating everything she could get her hands on.

Hadley stood here for at least a half-hour straight, happy as can be!

My little camoflauge girls!

Naptime - look closely for Liberty, Hudson, and Gavin sound asleep!


Liberty enjoying her turn on the "swing." The kids would very impatiently take turns swinging on this. They thought it was a swing, but it was actually a foot rest for an adult hammock-type chair.

Hadley trying to play with Owen's toys.

Sitting on the porch enjoying the beautiful weather and scenery.

The babies playing together.

All the kids enjoying popsicles. (I love how the neighbor kid is in this picture!)

Crystal, Me, Hadley, Hillary, and Owen (photography by Jackson)

The girls!

Liberty was a little nervous to get close to the "Big Hungry Bear."

Oceanside 2009

We just went on our annual summer vacation to Oceanside, California, which was another success! This was at least our 6th year going. We left early Saturday morning, and surprisingly the drive went well. The girls were very good for the most part. We took a little break at the Viejas Outlets for lunch and a little shopping, and the kids played in the splash pad there. We finally made it to the beach house late in the afternoon. We got unloaded, relaxed a little, and the kids got to play on the beach while Emily watched them. The rest of the evening the kids did a lot of playing, while the adults did a lot of lounging around. On Sunday, we went to church, and then drove down to see the beautiful San Diego Temple. Liberty loved the colorful flowers, and couldn’t resist picking a few, even though we told her not to over and over. We walked around the grounds for awhile, and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

When we got back we had our traditional fish and chips dinner – YUM! Later on some of us took a nice stroll on the beach. After telling Liberty over and over only to touch the sand and water with her feet, I gave up! She was in pure heaven on the beach. She ran, jumped, danced, twirled, splashed, stomped, and leapt! She even occasionally sat and dug in the sand. I knew she was going to love being on the beach with her cousins for the next several days!

Monday morning we didn’t waste any time, and hit the beach after breakfast. I bought Liberty some new beach toys for the trip, so she was excited to try them out. Liberty had a total blast playing in the ocean and sand throughout the week. She played and played non-stop with her cousins. At one point during the week, Jessica asked Liberty where she lived and she said, “California!” Liberty also bonded quite a bit with Avery the last couple of days, and announced to me that they are now “best friends.”

On Saturday we were all packing up to leave and Liberty and Avery were standing at the top of the steps outside. I told them to make sure and stay right there, and don’t go down the stairs. Liberty responded, “We are just protecting ourselves!” which Avery repeated in her cute little words. I think Liberty has finally decided Avery isn’t a “bay-bay” anymore.

Hadley was introduced to the ocean and sand this week. At first, all she wanted to do was eat the sand, which I totally expected. I came prepared with a little inflatable pool, thinking she could play in it and not get too sandy. It worked for a few minutes here and there, but anytime I turned my head, she reached over and grabbed a handful of sand to stick in her mouth. The thing that actually worked the best was to have her sit on the wet, packed sand right on the shore, which wasn’t as easy to grab handfuls of sand that way. She was so intrigued with the sand that I could hardly get her to look away from the sand. Aside from waking up a little too early each morning, Hadley was a really good baby on the trip! Oh, and her first tooth came through while we were there!

Trever enjoyed the ocean by doing a lot of boogey-boarding (he even got some new fins for the trip). He also took advantage of the beautiful weather by taking a few beachfront runs and bike-rides. Trever’s book of the week was Glenn Beck’s, “An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems.”

One of my favorite parts of the vacation was relaxing on the beach reading my book. I found, “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan” on the shelf in the beach house and read that during the week. It was light and entertaining, which was a perfect beach read. I also enjoyed the nightly games of Liverpool and Scrabble. For some reason, another one of my favorite things about our stay was eating lunch in the yard right on the beach. Each day we took a break from playing and relaxing on the beach for lunch. Instead of cleaning up and eating lunch in the beach house like we have done in the past, lunch was served on the back patio and we ate our lunches on our towels in the sun and grass. I guess is what a simple pleasure for me.

A few other highlights of the trip:

Our traditional trip into Old Town San Diego for some delicious Mexican food
Shopping at Fashion Valley Mall and the Carlsbad Outlets
Trading off cooking meals throughout the week – always good food!
THREE trips to Rite-Aid for THRIFY ice cream – I can’t get enough of that Chocolate Malted Crunch!

And of course, all the time we got to spend with each other (We missed Jeff, Devry, and kids!)

On the way home we stopped in Yuma for a break from driving. We went to lunch and went to a couple of stores. One of the times we loaded up into the car Liberty asked, "Are we going to the beach house now?" Trever and I agreed that Liberty definitely got her money's worth out of the trip!

Does she look happy, or what?

***I have a lot more pictures to post, but I gave up because it takes SO long to upload pictures, and blogger isn't very user-friendly these days. Or maybe it's just me?