Dr. Vernon

My last few posts have been from here in Cali...

working from Dr. Vernon's lap top.

I found some cool pictures on his computer that I don't have at home on mine.

Turns out, he's a pretty good surgeon.

Some poor little doggie's knee surgery below:

Dr. Vernon loves power tools...

Okay, the below picture is my real motivation for doing this post.

I was going through his library of surgery pictures, and got to this one, and was like, "Bruce, WHAT are you doing here?" He looked at it and claims he has no idea.

But it sure looks like he is howling at the moon, ha ha...

maybe it helps him in surgery.

Thankyou

We are in Solana Beach, and I wanted to remember this...

Sophie, who hasn't been a super early talker, and will be 2 next month, said the word "thank you" for the first time today. Because I was busy on multiple business calls tonight, Bruce made dinner. Chicken Alfredo. He grilled chicken out by the pool, and made the pasta, broccoli and sauce. We were all sitting around the dinner table and Bruce gives little Sophie her dinner. After the other kids say thank you, Sophie looks at Bruce and also says, "tank-ooo".

It was especially sweet for her to say to him today. This morning a large group of us went kayaking in the ocean on this "cave tour". Bruce missed the fun kayaking adventure to stay home with Sophie because she was too young to go. Our oldest 5 kids and I went without him. Instead he took Sophie on a walk, played at the Fletchers Cove park with just him and her, walked around shops and took her swimming.

After a special daddy-daughter day with his little baby girl, how appropriately sweet for Sophie to learn to say thank you just for him. :)

ps- All our kids got to help paddle their kayak through the ocean waves... poor Lily had a little adventure, she was with her Aunt Carrie and Uncle Geoff and their kayak tipped over and dumped them in to the sea.

Military Stuff

Greetings from San Diego, California.

We just went to the "Mormon Battalion" museum.

It is my new fave place here... you seriously have to take your family there... run!

The church just re-modeled it amazingly (looks like an old Spanish Mission). So interesting for parents, but SO cool for kids!!

(Notice Above- Ashlin got a hair cut and now has bangs, big moment in her life. Its way cute, Dallin said, "Isn't that the hair cut you had when you were 4? Um, actually, yes it was... ha ha, but its still so cute on her)

Someone described the new museum to us as "Harry Potter meets Mormon Battalion"...

you'll have to check it out to see why.

ps- I just have to write this down to remember what Emma said. After watching a 20 minute movie on the Mormon battallion (but before the amazing tour)... a missionary asked the big group if anyone new what a battalion was and Emma raises her hand immediately, so excited, and yells, "A WATCH!".... um, NOPE. Really Emma, after a whole 2o minute movie on it?

Definition:

Battalion- a military unit or group of soldiers prepared for battle; infantry

Sophie's Breakfast

So before I left on a quick errand this morning, I said to Dallin, my 13 year old son... please get Sophie (almost age 2) out of bed when she wakes up and make her some scrambled eggs for breakfast.

I get home 30 minutes later and Sophie is in her high chair with green chunks all over the floor, her tray and in her bowl... I was like "WHAT DID YOU FEED HER DALLIN???!!!"

And Dallin says, "I made her green eggs and ham"

ha ha ha, freaked me out.

CAPTAIN UNDER-PANTS

Today while Bruce was at a sunday meeting and the baby was napping, I made the mistake of taking a 45 minute nap in my room... and leaving the kids unattended.

I heard the doorbell ring so I left my room to get the door... unfortunately Logan beat me to the door and answered it dressed as

"CAPTAIN UNDER-PANTS"

(a costume he came up with all on his own while I napped... oh yes, tights, underwear, a t-shirt he wrote C-U-P on with sharpee marker, and a cape)

Luckily it was just DJ at the door.

I was actually still really embarrassed at first, because our house is just always so retarded, but then I thought, well, at least he's creative...

ha ha

*all the camping stuff on the floor behind him is from Scout Master Bruce and Dallin who just got home from 5 days at Scout camp yesterday, so of course its still in our entry way.

Summer List

Looks like something yummy is going down in the kitchen...

I was at Walmart with 5/6ths of my kids...

(recipe for nervous breakdown)

when Ashlin and I happened upon this CASTLE CAKE kit. It looked so fun, that we decided to buy it, go home and have a day activity of making a cake as a family.

Oh Yes... THREE hours later...

It was not as cool as other amazing cakes I see, but we aren't super talented and really my kids decorated it, so we thought it was awesome...

and extremely hard to carry down the street

Since we had a huge castle cake, and it was not even anybodies birthdays... I called up Rachelle and told her we were all coming over for a swim party/SURPRISE SUMMER BIRTHDAY PARTY for her, me, Vanessa and baby Sophie... since its SUMMER and all 4 of our birthdays are next month in JULY.

ha ha

We even put candles in the cake, and really sang ourselves

"Happy Summer Birthday to Us"

This project was awesome, because on our traditional "Summer List" the kids put:

-Make Castle

AND

-Cake decorating day

SWEET, we got to cross TWO things off our list, hooray!

Girl Stuff

Miss Lily with Miss Bailey

at Bailey's fancy Garden Party birthday last month...

These hanging tissue paper ornaments made by Miss Bailey's mom added so much ambiance to the table setting underneath the big shade trees.... it was SO darling!!!

Now my 16 year old Ashlin is wanting to have a Tea Party with all her friends under a big shade tree, wearing gloves and hats and party dresses. ME TOO! I think thats why I could watch the movie "Pride and Prejudice" over and over and over, well the dresses... and Mr. Darcy.

GOT MILK?

I am so thankful my sister lives close by.

A regular old boring summer day becomes fun when cousins come to play! (and sleep over)

For breakfast we made Banana Shakes...

Our Banana Shake Recipe:

3 bananas

1/2 c. cottage cheese

1/4 c. sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 c. crushed ice

milk until right consistency

{Whenever bananas get a little soft, we make shakes, and really too soft bananas get put in the freezer for later use in banana bread... never a wasted banana!}

Then later in the afternoon we made homemade pizzas for lunch.

We were cracking up in the above picture at the size of Sophie's little pizza. I really gave them each a ball of dough and a rolling pin and let them shape it however. Sophie was having a grand old time playing with her dough, pounding it with the rolling pin, then unfortunately she decided to throw more than half of it on the floor to Chug (our black lab) who happily ate it up. We made a pizza with her little bit of dough left, ha ha, it fit one pepperoni.

Above "L" is for Logan of course.

Friendly Skies

Within that Private Jet below are 6 very happy boys...

Wednesday Bruce got a call from Br. Walker in our ward, who is a pilot and flies a corporate Private Jet. He told Bruce that he had to move the jet from Sky Harbor Airport to Gateway for some maintenance. He invited Bruce (who is the Scout Master) and any of his scouts to come along for the short flight, since he had 6 empty seats and knew they could earn an Aviation Merit Badge by doing so. They had like 45 minutes warning before he had to leave.

Luckily the boys are buddies and were already hanging out together. I called their cell phone and was like hey, you guys want to go take a ride in a private jet right now?? Um, yah!

On that short of notice only 4 of the Boy Scouts could go, so lucky Logan above got to go along. He cracked me up that as soon as he heard he was flying in a plane he went and got his "Aviator" sunglasses on for the trip.

I was cracking up when I saw Isaac pull out like 20 Nerf gun darts from his pocket... ha ha, BOYS! He thought he was on his way to DJ's for a Nerf gun war, but instead ended up flying in a plane. Luckily there wasn't a tight security screening process to confiscate his darts, ha ha.

Cost of plane: $4.5 million

Cost of fuel for their 17 minute flight: $540

CRAZY

Thank you Br. Walker!!

How incredibly thoughtful of you to think of our boys!

Porter

And now there is a sidewalk on our future street...

here are my kids heading towards our cul de sac.

Asphalt to come.