Something from Sara

We took our NEW trailer out for a little camping trip last weekend. We took Harley with us. He had a pretty good time. See his smile?

Tyler and Chris had a good time too. The kids almost immediately started playing hide and seek in the woods. There were so many places to hide, they had fun.

Saturday morning breakfast time. I generally prefer the outdoor cooking method, but since it was our first time in our trailer I went ahead and cooked the whole thing inside. I even MICROWAVED the water for our hot chocolate!

Later on Saturday we had ART DAY. We made nature pictures...

And SUPER SNAKES...

And more NATURE PICTURES.

Our Super snakes were friends.

Before we went home Sunday Morning, we took a self portrait of ouselves with our new trailer. Just a side note on this, don't enlarge it to get a closer look... we've been camping folks, trailer or not, it's not pretty.

Now these are an interesting set of pictures. They were not taken while we were camping, but somewhere in there is a little baby something that probably came home with us from camping.

I think that this might be it's tail.

Here is a view of the inside of our truck, under our seat. It's looking at us from this view.

Still looking at us. Guessed what it is yet?

A BABY SKUNK! Guess what day these pictures were taken. We got home on Sunday Morning...Pictures are courtesy of THURSDAY AFTERNOON! That's right it lived in our truck for 4 days!

We are pretty sure that it's gone this morning. It tore apart the driver's side visor of all things. Other than that and a few minor "accidents" that didn't include any spraying the truck seems to have come out OK. I'm going out to carpet clean the whole thing today. Soon in fact.

Once I was asked a question in an interview that hinted about what type of person I was. I can't remember exactly how it went but I remember my answer was "assistant manager." Because I wasn't really the leader type, but I could carry out orders fairly well, and tell people what to do, as long as I didn't have to come up with "the PLAN." Lately I feel like all of this lifelong strategy has just gone out the window. It all started the night of the little buckaroo rodeo. As I was heading out to the car after it was all over, I got stopped by an old friend who happens to be the PTA president. She wanted me to be the HEAD ROOM MOTHER for Tyler's class this year. I'm all about volunteering to help out in the classroom so I said Yes. Then last Sunday, the bishop called me into his office. He needs a new BEAR LEADER. Of course I'll do it. What is a Bear Leader? I don't know. Neither did the Bishop. But we both kind of suspect that it has something to do with the Cub Scouts. He thinks that they have meetings on Thursday afternoons. That's all he could tell me about it. Anyone know anything about a Bear Leader? I could use a little help here.
I'm going to have to evaluate my volunteering status after this.

I told the twins that they couldn't open their presents until Dad got home from work, to which they replied "But we can't wait that long!" Something that they would say about 100 times each throughout the course of the rest of the day. They had to wait. But when Shane stopped by the house to fill up his water bottle about 8:00 they made a rush for the presents and had them open in about two minutes.

Here's Brook opening the first present.

She was so excited and screamed "It's GIRL STUFF!" (Fake nails and silly bracelets)

Chris got a new puppy (these are the best kind folks). His new name will be "Puppy Boy."

New Puzzles

Chris wanted new "undies" more than anything else he could think of.

What do I want to remember most about Brooklyn's 4th Birthday? This picture right here needs to have a little audio with it. She is whispering to her new unicorns that live in the castle. "Don't be scared, I'm nice." She was being so gentle with them, and placing them in their little windows. It was SO CUTE! Where did I get her from?

We got Chris and Brook new bikes! Chris wanted a Dark Blue bike with Bullseye on it. He had to settle for Buzz and Woody, but he LOVES IT. Brooklyn's has a baby seat on the back for her baby dolls. She also loves it.

Later we had CAKE AND ICE CREAM. I let the kids pick out their own flavor of ice cream. Brooklyn picked out Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Chris picked out Blueberry Pomegranate Chocolate Chunk (ugh). I picked out my favorite Kroger brand Caramel Delight. If you haven't tried it, you should. It's light, and it's delicious.

We got two cakes. What do you do.

We sang Happy Birthday twice and they blew out the candles separately so I was able to get a good picture of each of them this year. I think it was a pretty great birthday party!

The cake masters put brown frosting in the dump truck so that it looked more realistic. I told Chris he could eat it after he blew out the candles. He didn't wait around for this opportunity, he also didn't share with anyone (except for maybe Chels. I'm not sure I got all the details on how that went down.)

So that was the Birthday. We'll do it again next year!

One more thing that I just remembered that I don't want to forget about this birthday. Last night during the party Chris started to go around to all of his guests and he would say "Tell me Happy Birthday." "Suz, tell me happy birthday." "Chels, tell me happy birthday." These guys are the best.

This weekend the twins and I stayed at Susie's house. Rose and her kids came over and we had a little pizza for dinner. Then Saturday morning Rose and I threw a huge YARD SALE over at her house. It was a great morning for a yard sale and the best part is that it didn't rain on us! And after we made our DI run with everything that didn't sell and counted up our sales we came out $10 ahead! So that was pretty awesome. Later that day (after we all took a big nap) we went over and checked out the Sam's club open house, and then Suz and Justin, Rose and Jeff, and me and all of our kids went to a little place called the Beehive Grill and we had a little bit of dinner. Okay, so I had A LOT of dinner, but that's just the way I roll. Anyway, we came home on Sunday morning and it was a pretty great weekend. I'm really glad that Susie let me stay at her house and was willing to entertain us for the weekend. This week is going to be pretty crazy with the twins' birthday (#4) and all. They've started to ask me every morning now if this is the day of their birthday. And how much longer because I just can't wait anymore!