Daron's Day...

And WHAT a BUSY day it was!!! We had our family party for him and special dinner and then it was off to band night at the school! He's waited a WHOLE YEAR to sign up for band!!! He picked the Saxaphone and is sooooooo excited! Band starts Mnday and we have to be at schoolearly all week now for the rest of the year! YAY for early mornings, not! He'll do great and he had a blast on his birthday! Thanks to everyone who called and emailed and sent cards!

Messing Around...

Sometimes you just want to pick up Maddie and throw her!!!! LOL... (and all of the other kids too!)

More of Maddie...

Madison is over her "tomboy" phase of no jewelry, no cute hair stuff, etc., so.... YAY!!!!! She loves fixing her hair and accessorizing in the mornings for school. Terri has kept us in cute hair flowers for the GRILS!!! (spelling intended!)

What THE... ?!?!?!?!?

Okay, so last Thursday I took Lauren to drop the kids off at school. On the way home we usually talk a little, but mostly sing to the radio. I'm at the rail road tracks at a stop and I hear her say something like "owie" or "Yuck" amongst other words that made me turn to look at her behind me. What I saw was horrifying! She was bleeding and blood was EVERYWHERE!!! All over her arms, face, chest, shirt, pants... I told her it was okay and talked to her until I could pull over. I got out of the car and took her shirt off of her and used it to clean her up a bit and figured out it was a bloody nose. Until that point of course I wondered what the heck! How does your 3 year old get injured and spring blood riding in the car?!?!? She was fine, never freaked out or cried and was even laughing. Very calm! This was her when we got home before going straight into the bath tub... and believe me it was much worse than this before I used the clean part of her shirt to mop her down!

Argghh....

Lauren LOVES to play dress up ALL day long, EVERY DAY! Some day I will do a collage for posterity of just her in all her dress up clothes over the years! This is her being a pirate last week! I believe that she is even MORE dramatic than Kaitlin... and will definitly need to be in the entertainment business when she grows up or she's truly missing her calling!

Mommies Back to School Lunch...

The whole Fam Damily!!!!! (Well,not really... but I wanted to say it!)

Me and Bugga Boo!

Aunt Jade is always smiley!

Lauren 2-spooning her sundae!

Emmy girl, so sweet!

Fun times with FUN CHICKS (and chickees and BOB!)... We ate at California Pizza Kitchen and it was GOOOOOOOD! I love getting together with these girls and it was nice to visit with my little brother as well! I miss all of them when we don't see each other a lot because we are all super busy I know, but it makes the time we do spend together that much better!

Kaitlins Apron...

Here is Kaitlin sporting her new apron she made in Young Womens last week. There is a scripture on it referring to the "hands of God..." and they painted their hands and put them all over the front. She will blog aboout all of the details, but she did SUCH a great job I wanted to post about how GREAT she did!!!!

Along with making this lovely apron, she has set the goals in order to accomplish her first 10 hour project in Divine Nature. She is to learn to make 10 meals that take about an hour each and help serve and clean up afterwards. She's done 2 hours so far, and in the end she will also have to teach Maddie & Daron to make one of the meals and be the teacher for a switch to show what she's learned!

She's such a good girl!

First Day of School 2009...

The whole gang...

The 6th Grader...

The 3rd Grader...

Yo, yo, yo!!!

The 7th Grader...

Last year on the first day of school I was in the hospital because Emmy was born the day before. So Kevin got everyone off to school and lookin good! This year it was my turn and he was out of town on business. Next year I hope we're both here!!!! Anyway, the kids and I had a fun day... we were up, ready and cute, and inthe car at precisely the right time, they had a fun day seeing all of their old friends again and making new friends too, we stopped by Sonic on the way home for Happy Hour slushes and wnet to Fresh & Easy for Nacho fixings for dinner, we had nachos and watched Race to Witch Mountain and then we were in bed on time for day #2!!!! We also have a tradition every year of a special family dinner and Fathers Blessings the night before school starts, so we did that Saturday night before Kevin left out of town Sunday. He's such a wonderful Dad and I am so thankful that he can do this for our kids. Lauren even wanted a blessing this year and was so happy about getting hers! Next year I am seriously taking this tradition to the next level and surprising the kids with some fine tuning thanks to an inspirational Mom out there in blogger world!!! YEAH for the 1st day of school!!!

Emmys !st Birthday Party...

SHE LOVED HER LITTLE CAKE!!!!!!

Junk in the trunk!!! Had to be done for journaling purposes!!!

Handkerchief from Oma that belonged to Grandma Pearl... all of the little great grand daughters will have one!!!

Oma made Emmy this cute, cute, cute picture frame!

Both of the cakes... one for Emmy and one for the rest of them!

Goofs!!!

On the way home from CA we stopped at the Cabazon outlets for a little school shopping. It was a fun afternoon helping the kids pick some things. We tried really hard this year to let them pick things that are in style even if we didn't like it... which was hard for SOME of us, but HE was a good sport and realizes his babies are growing up!!!!

San Clemente Beach Trip...

The kids got home from Texas on the 1st of August, just in time for our family beach camping trip to San Clemente. Tawna's husband Nathan grew up going to San Clemente every summer with mulitple families and ward members and the Mowers introduced us to this when we were living in California growing up. It's a very pretty beach and I love the memories of going there as teenagers and hanging out together around the campfires and on the sand! So, Tawna, Mom, Jade and I decided to try and go as a whole family this year. Tawna and Nate, and his Mom Frances (Brown Grammy!) were nice enough to call in on opening day for reservations and get camp sites for all of us, which is no easy task because they are all gone within about 8 minutes of the phone lines opening up! So, the plan was set and everyone was going... Granny & Grumpy, Tawna & Nate and the kids, Kevin and I and the kids, Jade & Jeff and the boys, RB & Stacie and gang, Frances & John Mower, Stephanie, Rachel and her cute kiddos...! Well, Grumpy couldn't come at the last minute due to an inspection/audit at work, so Granny stayed behind with him and we missed them a lot! But, the rest of us packed it all up and headed out on August 2nd bright and early off to CA!!! This was our first family trip in 2 years and we opted to take the 3 oldest kids only since it's the ocean and camping and not fun for babies (or Mom!). Plus, it gave us some great quality time with the older three!!!

The kids helped pitch the tent... there were campfires, smores, card games, walks to the beach and the light house (LOL), good food, fun people!!!! There were also lots of ANTS!!! Here's some of the pictures...



Eating at Fishermans Wharf Restaurant on the Pier... Had to be done for the crab & lobster lovers of the group! Maddie and I ate grilled ham & cheese sandwiches and fries off of the kids menu!


The coastline looking down from the little cliff, and the train was coming. I guess the train runs all the way down the coast, which would be a pretty view...

Lobster LOVER!!! All of those little tools just to get at the meat!

Sunset...

I love these people!!! :)

Blurry, but you get the idea! The weather was awesome...

The Restaurant on the Pier...

This is the joke of the trip... I always called it the lighthouse, but in fact it was a life guard head quarters or something. Funny how you remember somethings differently when you're a kid. I also remembered the walk down to the beach differently!!! It's a trek for sure!!! When I was young all I carried down was a towel I'm sure, but with a family Kevin and I felt like pack mules, and the way up almost killed us both! There were many rests taken along the way and some walking backwards!!!

The view...

Monkeygirl!

Pitching the tent...

All done and proud of the helpers that they were! All in all we had SUCH a fun time! Camping is a lot of work though... I was exhausted and needed a vacation after our vacation! We ended up staying Sunday and Monday. Monday on the beach was very relaxing and I loved just watching the kids play together with cousins and talking to my family and reading. Kevin and Daron boogie boarded for a couple of hours early in the morning and then Kev took respite in the shade tent with his book too. I was glad that he got a little R&R and believe me it was a LONG time coming!!! He's been working sooooooooooo hard this past 2 years (he's always worked hard, but the last 2 years had many changes and gearing up!), and he definitly deserved a couple of days off finally! He did manage to get burned though from the knees all the way to his toes, even in a tent. I think his legs were sticking out at times and then the sun moved throughout the day and we didn't move the tent to accomodate. He was so burned that his legs & feet swelled and hurt him for about a week. Dress shoes for work were not fun that week!

Daron boogie boarded ALL day! Nathan also went out with hime for a bit and that was fun for him! Maddie and Kaitlin wanted to look for sea shells for their room and we walked the beach and found zilch! This beach just didn't have any that day. The break on the shore was a little rough the day we were there and the kids had to be cautious and tough, but they all had a great time!

THANK you to the AZ MOWERS and the CA MOWERS!!!!! Good times!

Happy, Happy Birthday, DARON dear...

Oh how the time does fly!!!! Daron is turning 11 today! He is my FAVORITE son!!! He is really such a great kid. He got off of the plane at the end of the summer and I couldn't believe how tall he had gotten. He too, will pass me up by next school year and Maddie pie & I will be the resident "shorties"!!! Here's just a few of the reasons I luv, luv, LUV this guy...

1. He always tries to give me his puppy dog face to get his way

2. He is sooooo good to his sisters. It's got to be hard being over run by girls!

3. He has such a good relationship with Lauren especially and treats her like a little princess

4. He is an amazing student and always gets good grades

5. He LOVES music and has waited a whole year to be in band at school

6. He is generous

7. He is an awesome skate boarder

8. He is learning to be such a great friend to others

9. He loves all of his parents and is really trying to be a pleaser and wants us all to be proud!

10. He loves all things artistic, scientific, and hands on!

11. He gives me the best hugs and tries to be helpful everyday!

He has just earned his Weblos Badge, Religious Knot, Arrow of Light, and numerous other activity badges and they will all be presented to him at the September Pack Meeting. He's advancing to Boy Scouts now and finishing up his Faith in God requirements this year and then it's off to Young Mens sooner than we know it!!!! WOW!!!

I am so glad that Daron is a part of our family and COULD NOT imagine my life without him. Today we made sure that he had his favorite oatmeal on hand for breakfast, and tonight we'll be celebrating with stacked enchiladas (2 years in a row he's picked this now!), going to meet the band teacher and picking out his instrument, and coming home to have ice cream sundaes with the girls before bed!!! Saturday he's having a skateboarding party with 6-7 of his friends at a skatepark. We have a pro skater coming to show the boys some new ticks and refresh on some basics as well, and then it's back to our house for Pizza, cake & ice cream, and video games!

He's really growing up fast!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY D-DOG!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Well...

It's 10pm and all is well! I have successfully managed to drop daddy of at the airport (no small task since I am airport drop off retarded and sweet Lauren opened her car door 3 or 4 times on the way home! Stinker...), have a fun day with the kids, bribed them all into doing some kind of blog updates on their individual sites, fed them a yummy dinner of tacos (which they scarf BTW... Maddie eats 3, Kaitlin 4 and Daron 2 (what's up with that?)), we had pjs on and dessert, then teeth brushed all by 7:30pm, talked to Kevin on the phone to say goodnites (his company sent him to Iowa until Tuesday), and had 30 minutes to play a fun game of cosmic catch before my strict 8pm school bedtime!!!!! I am doing laundry, unpacking suitcases that have sat in my room on the couch since we got home Tuesday, and making sure everything is ready for a hectic morning. There is still sand everywhere from our beach excursion!!!! Crazy... Anyway, I miss my man and have a lot to do, but all is well!!! :) Hope everyone had a relaxing weekend and will have a great day tomorrow without the kiddos with school starting. I wish Lauren were going!

Oh Kaitlin...

The kids are back for the school year to begin and made it in time for the Harmon/Mower/Jarvis/Goodwin family trip to San Clemente!!! I will be posting as soon as possible once school starts to catch up this blog! One thing I didn't want to forget though...

On the way home from CA, we are sitting at In&Out in Indio and Kaitlin asks:

"what's the difference between a hamburger and a cheeseburger?"

REALLY?????? She is almost 13 folks!!!

I'm glad she can laugh at herself, because we all sure did! We went on to explain that a cheeseburger is simply a hamburger, WITH CHEESE!!!!! :) Love you Kaitlin!

More to come...

Happy Birthday Emmy Girl...

I LOVE this baby!!! I can't believe she's 1 today... What a sweet addition to our family she has been!!!!!