July part 1

Here I am working on catching up on my blog. I don't know if anyone reads this anymore. It's really ok.... I'm really just doing it for journaling purposes these days. It's literally the only place I've organized all of our pictures over the past 9 years. Yes I started this in 2007! Isn't that crazy!

July was so busy, just like I knew it would be. It went by in a blur! I felt like between Ashlyn's surgery and the traveling we did in June that we didn't get to do much fun summer stuff that month, so I made more of an effort to do summery stuff in July. I didn't get a ton of pictures, but here are the random ones I do have!

Three of my friends and myself made plans to have a little "Science/Activity" play group every Wednesday for June & July. My friend Liz had found an awesome book full of screen-free fun exploration activities for kids and we each took turns weekly planning a couple of activities for our kids to get together and do. This one was bubble tower contest at Liz's house, Ashlyn blew the biggest one!

My sweet little dudes.


My friend Megan moved in July so we got to have her sweet kids over to play a few times. They had so much fun playing outside and then chilling watching TV. Love summer!


Collin competed in his first triathlon! It was a sprint triathlon so the distances were like half (I think) of what they are for a full triathlon. It was still way more than I could handle, that's for sure. It was in Brigham City on a Saturday and he went down with a few of his wrestling buddies from Jerome and spent the night at Morgan's the night before. I think he enjoyed having something to kind of focus on and train for leading up to it.... and enjoyed competing and learned a lot about what he'd like to do differently next time. I wish we could have gone down to cheer him on, but we had been traveling so much I just didn't think the effort would be worth it to make yet another trip on one of our only free weekends.



It was a pretty small race! This was the finish line! ha ha! I laughed when I saw this picture. A big reason he wanted to do it was that it was like half the price of most triathlons. You can't tell it was a cheap race by this picture at all! ha ha ha!


(Cookies Ashlyn decorated while we were home with sick Elan, pretty huh)

Elan got pretty sick over the triathlon weekend! It was sad. Like so sad. I had plans to take the kids to Boise for a day trip to hang out with friends that Friday, and the night before I had just gotten done packing our lunches and packing up the car, when I heard Elan crying and when I went in to help him he threw up.... then again... then again. He had a decent fever as well. After we got all that cleaned up and got him back to sleep, when I went out to the kitchen to Collin I just started crying. I was SO sad we couldn't make our trip to Boise. I had really been looking forward to it! And I knew Ashlyn would be devastated, she was so excited too. Elan woke up about every 4 hours when his fever would spike and it was a long night. And Ashlyn was in early in the morning so excited about the trip.... when I had to tell her we couldn't go she lost it. Sad day! But I think she was ok with sitting around watching TV all morning, and we did some fun things like make cookies. I was also supposed to feed the missionaries that night and I had to just give them their dinner to go because Elan was feeling so awful. He stopped barfing but continued that fever spiking every time Tylenol wore off for like 3-4 days. He was of course teething at that time too. He seriously turns into a big mess when he's teething. Poor guy. He won't eat, has bad diapers, has a runny nose... and often gets some sort of sickness too. Sheesh! So, that was our weekend. Sick boy. Thankfully he perked up a few days later, although I had taken him to the doctor anyway. Fevers always scare me!


You KNOW he's not feeling ok when he will fall asleep on me!! Love it but also I'm always so worried about him at the same time.


So after that kind of lame weekend, I took Ashlyn out on a little Girls Date to the movies Monday night. I let her pick between Finding Dory and The Secret Life of Pets. I was definitely disappointed when she picked the Pets, but oh well! She liked it. It was fun for us to go do something fun without Elan in tow after him taking all my attention all weekend. I definitely had a cute date.



Beautiful girl.




Ashlyn really takes a lot of time being a good big sister! Doing stuff like this. Elan is always thrilled when she'll pay attentino to him and especially when she'll actually play something fun like this with him.


The Friday after we had to cancel our Boise trip, my awesome friend Lindsay brought her kids over to visit US! It was so wonderful. Ashlyn and Addison love every minute they get to play together. We took the kids to the Jerome pool to swim for a bit and then got to sit and chat for a while before she headed home. It was really such a great day!


That same night was my birthday date! I really just wanted some good sushi and to sit in a movie. So that's what we did! We had some delicious sushi and went to Central Intelligence. The movie totally pleasantly surprised us by being pretty funny and not too dirty. It was a great night!


The next day I had a quick trip to Boise for myself planned. My friend Jacqui was visiting from Alaska where she moved the year before I moved.... so all us girls who were once in the Maple Grove Ward together had a girls night planned. It was SO fun to see so many old friends. It was such a big group I didn't get to chat with everyone as much as I wanted to, but it was still great! We had Thai food which of course was lovely too. I went over a few hours early so I could get my hair done by my long-time stylist Natalie Marti. It was also SO awesome to get to catch up with her and chat while she did my hair. I have REALLY missed my sessions with her talking about life! So overall it was a super wonderful trip. It was hard to quit chatting and leave and I finally headed out of Boise at like 10:30pm. Late night drive, which I don't love, but it was worth it for sure! An awesome day-early birthday present for myself!


I made a lot more effort in July to get us to the pool! We met up with one or two friends probably once a week there that month. I would just put Elan down for his nap a little early and then we'd head to the pool to swim until it closed at 5:00. Ashlyn was doing so well and would play with friends in the water, and I finally felt like I didn't have to keep a super close eye on her in the shallow end anyway. Elan on the other hand.... is a total wild man in the water!! He tries to copy what he sees everyone else doing, so he will literally just dive in, or just completely submerge himself. I have to constantly be within "saving" distance of him. I finally bought him a Puddle Jumper (floaties) at the end of the summer, and I was really wishing I had done it first thing! He LOVES the water. Luckily I almost always had a friend who was there to hang out with so I could chat with someone while I was chasing him around. Plus work on my tan! :)
(ps-I think photo cred for this goes to my buddy Megan :) )


My birthday was on Sunday this year (boo), always kind of a let-down. But Collin invited the Binghams, Flys, Musgraves and Sheffields over for cake and ice cream that evening. And he made dinner... which was really all I wanted, was a break from cooking! ha ha. It was nice to have some friends over for a bit! They were so nice and brought me presents too. Collin had gotten a decently small cake from the store and we seriously BARELY had enough to feed everyone! Like, literally just enough! Everyone got kind of a sliver of cake with their ice cream. Ha ha. It was funny. But I didn't mind and I'm sure they didn't either. Probably better that way! It was like over 20 people when you counted the adults and kids, and the cake he got was probably for like 8-10 servings. It worked out though! The friends stayed for a bit then went home and we had a nice relaxing evening of watching Gilmore Girls :)

My awesome friend Megan gave me this shirt! If you don't catch the Friends reference you haven't spent enough time watching Friends! It is seriously my favorite shirt right now.


And ending with a pic of my little buddy at Target. We had several lunches at Target this month. By the time we'd get there and get our shopping done, it was time to eat so the kids would have pretzel and applesauce in the snack bar. I seriously love Target. It's got everything I need! :) The rest of July to be continued....