More Summer Goings On

Chick Fil A "Cow Appreciation Day" - We dressed up as cows and got a free meal. I was so surprised how great the service was: no line, workers walking around refilling people's drinks, someone got me all situated at a table. It was great.

The kids took swim lessons, so for two weeks Austin, Ian and I waited while the other 4 swam around for 40 minutes. The kids loved it and all really improved. Megan and Ben were both moved up to the next level on the first day because they could both free style swim. They all graduated with flying colors. Nathan is becoming quite the little fish. He wants to constantly take off his floaties and try to see how far he can swim. Megan also really improved. I thought I wouldn't get to the pool much this summer, but we spent several Wednesday afternoons at the pool in June and July. Most of the times Ian would just sleep in his chair which I would keep close by. One time I put him in his wrap and had him strapped on me - he didn't even flinch when I got into the water and he slept for two straight hours there on me. He loves being outside, so I think that helps.

Goodbye to the Big Travel Van

We sold our van. We decided we were going to sell it earlier this year which is when we bought our other Suburban. There was a little problem with it, so it's been sitting for several months since then. Sean fixed the problem, and then we finally got around to cleaning it really good and taking pictures of it. Sean took it to work and sold it the first day it had the "For Sale" sign in the window. One of his employees came up and was interested in buying it. He brought the money the next day and we signed over the title. The funny part about this story is that we had 4 cars. The new Suburban started having brake issues which Sean had been fixing but there was still something wrong. It had gotten a little scary so I wasn't going to drive it again until we got the final problem taken care of. Then last week while Sean was driving home from work in the little Honda, the sunroof glass was sucked off the car and shattered on the freeway (totally strange). Since we were in monsoon season we really needed to get that fixed, so Sean took off the whole sunroof unit and was hoping to get to a junk yard to find another one. We sold the van and so I was probably going to pick him up from work in the red Suburban, but while I was in town I was at a store waiting to pull into a parking spot and the car just stopped. I tried to get it started and it wouldn't start. I called Sean. He came and checked it out and couldn't figure out the problem so we had it towed to the house so that we could figure it out from there (luckily we have towing on our insurance...up to 13 miles, so we only had to pay the difference). We went from 4 cars to zero in a manner of about a week and a half. AWESOME! He he he. Actually the very next day Sean went and got several parts from U-Pull-It (like a junk yard) and got the Honda and the new Suburban up and running. Within the next week he also fixed the red Suburban which ended up just being some wires that weren't connected. Nothing too serious or expensive, but still kind of funny.

Ian's Blessing Day

Ian was blessed on July 7. My family couldn't make it out. Sean's parents were here that weekend - on their way home from Philmont. Unfortunately Lindsay went into the hospital on Saturday with lots of pain and was going to have her gall bladder removed, so Sean's parents had to leave Sunday morning before church so they could get home to her. So Sean told the bishop to invite the whole bishopric up during the blessing. It was Sean, Bishop Foutz, Paul Crozier (1st counselor) and President Jay Manning (from the Stake Presidency who is also in our ward). We considered briefly postponing the blessing until we went up to Utah and then we could do it with Sean's dad and Kelly, but we decided we would just do it. So we did. It was a nice blessing. He was blessed to have a desire to serve a mission and to be worthy to do so. He was blessed to gain an education and also more importantly to gain a spiritual education. He was blessed to have a desire to find a companion and marry her in the temple and have a family.

Toothless Megan

Megan has had a pretty loose front tooth. She's good at wiggling it, and she's really been trying to get this one loose enough to pull out. She came up to me one afternoon telling me that it was really loose. She said, "Maybe Ben or Nathan will accidentally punch me and then it will come out." (Just a couple of months ago Ben's friend, Aaron accidentally punched him while they were jumping on the trampoline and knocked his loose tooth out...which we were so happy about - that thing had been sticking straight out for weeks). I smiled at her and she headed down the stairs. She didn't even get all the way down the stairs when I heard her exclaim, "Mom, it's out." She came running up to show me and said, "I wanted to get it out myself so I punched myself in the face and it came out. First I missed (as she demonstrated by punching herself between the eyes) but then I got it (as she demonstrated by punching right at her mouth)." I had a good little laugh.