Summer Fun!

Ok, get ready for a long post! Now that I've learned you can make your postings on here into a photo book, I've decided that this is my best journal! I'm excited to learn about this new feature and can't wait to use it and see how it turns out. Now on to the posting!

The end of June sent us to the Oquirrh Mt. Temple open house. Rylan didn't go but the rest of the kids and myself went to South Jordan area and met a friend that I hadn't seen since high school. It was so neat to go through the temple and so much fun to meet my friend and get to know her and her family!

A few days later, the twins celebrated their 6th birthday!! YIKES! Where has the time gone? Bradly wanted a Transformer's birthday, and Addi wanted a Barbie Princess brithday. They seemed to have a lot of fun and enjoyed it.

We've done so much this summer, the time just seems to be flying! We decided to go on a "fun family" vacation. Well, as fun as it can be with a single mom and 5 lovely, LOUD, kids!! We broke up the trip by families geographically. This allowed only a few hours of driving each day and a chance to visit just about everyone on my side of the family.

The first stop was Boise, ID, to visit my sister Annette and her 3 kids. My kids always love to go visit Annette's. They have so much fun with dress-ups and their backyard. We just stayed one night and then the next day we headed to my parent's house in La Grande, OR. We took the kids to a fun park they have there and then we got some KFC. We just stayed one night at their house as well, and the next day we got up and drove to Portland, OR, to my grandma's house. The kids had fun at my Grandma's. She always has some bizarre toys she's collected somewhere and they played with those things and then she took us out to Red Robin. We took the dogs for walks around her track below her neighborhood and showed her the DVD that Jered made of our Disneyland trip. The next morning it was time to get up and hit the road again. We drove to our final destination, Eugene, OR.

My sister Liz lives in Eugene. She just had a baby and we couldn't wait to see her! It was my sister's first girl. She is so cute! The first day we got there, I heard of a highschool friend in the hospital on bed rest with a baby. I thought it would be fun to surprise her. It took her a while to figure out who I was until I started talking and then she recognized me right away. It was fun to visit with her and catch up on things.

The next day, we decided to go to the beach. I love going to the Oregon Coast. Liz lives fairly close to Florence and I really wanted to go inside a Lighthouse. We went to one of the brightest lighthouses along the western coasline. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough cash for the parking, so we decided to risk it and just hike up there and back "real fast" before anyone realized we didn't have a tag. It was only a 1/2 mile, but with 8 kids and one in a stroller hiking up to a lighthouse in gravel seemed to be slower then we thought! After we got up there, they told us that it would be 40 more minutes before we could go through a tour. The tour lasts 20 min. Well, we all know that there was NO WAY my kids could wait 40 min to go through a 20 min tour and we had our car illigaly parked anyway! I had hoped they'd just let us poke our heads in. I really didn't care about a tour ... I just wanted to run to the top and go back down! Of course, they wouldn't let us. Oh well. We bagged the tour idea and ended up just going right back down. It was a beautiful lighthouse, and I really wish we could have gone through it, but I guess I'll add that to my list of things I plan to do once I have no kids left at home!

After that, we went and rented sandboards. It was extremely reasonable in price and so much fun! The sand dunes in Florence are huge and so bizarre, as you can't see ocean anywhere around the sand. The wind was out of control, and that made things a bit frustrating and made our time short there with little ones, but we had a great time and enjoyed trying a new activity.

After we got done hanging 10, we went to Moe's for some famous seafood. After leaving dinner, we went down to the beach to let the kids have fun. Once again, we came to a paid parking lot, so we thought we'd be daring criminals again and risk it. I had my sister's two boys while she fed her baby and the kids made me pretty nervous following the tide out. Sure enough, a sneaker wave came and got Bradly and I saw him about 1/2 a football field away, tumbling head over heels as a wave hit him from behind. Fortunately it pushed him to the shoreline, but I was afraid that when it retracted, it would continue taking him. I screamed at Rylan to grab him and fortunately he was able to get him out of the water. He was pretty worked up and that ended our day at the beach! Fortunately I had packed extra clothes for the kids!

We just chilled out the next day, and the day after that, we headed back on our way home. We stayed at my parents house for 2 days and got there the 4th of July. I was getting quite exhausted this time and Addi lost her chance to see the fireworks show so I put the younger kids to bed. I started feeling pretty guilty by 10 p.m. and so I took Morgan and Rylan to our church just a 1/4 mile from our house. We were able to see the fireworks at the college perfectly, so I sat in the car while they ran around the baseball field at our church and watched the firework show. Great 4th of July, huh!

We stopped at my sister's house in Boise and they took us to a fun park that has play equipment as well as water shooting out in fountains. The kids had so much fun and it was great to get them running their energy out! The next day, July 7th, we got home later that night.

It was good to finally be home, but we didn't have much time to recouperate! Wed., I had a friend that we'd been stationed with in Mt.Home come visit and spend the afternoon and evening. The next day Richard's parents and nephew came for 2 weddings we had that weekend. On Thurs. I went to my SIL's house to help set up for a dinner that her son and future bride were having. They decided to have a Luau, which the girl's and I performed in. For those that didn't know, while living in Italy, Morgan and I were able to take houla lessons and did some performances on the base there. So the girls and I did a houla for Dan and Ally's dinner. It was a lot of fun.

The next day (Fri) was their wedding in the Bountiful temple. I left the kids and went to it with Richard's parents. The officiator did an amazing job and I really loved listening to the things he had to say. It would have sucked to be the ones getting married, however. I'm sure they were wishing he would stop talking and just marry them! I can't remember a thing our officiator told Richard and I when we were getting married! But for me, it was wonderful to sit inside the temple and receive a reminder of the covenants I've made and listen to this man's wonderful words of wisdom. That night they had their reception at a beautfiul reception center down in SLC, so after the wedding, we got home, had lunch and got the kids ready for the reception. It was a very pretty place, but not a great place for my kids that get bored so easily. At around 8:00 I was pretty well done wrestling and intercepting my children so I opted to head home. I am so grateful I made that choice, because about 15 min after getting home, Elayna threw up ALL OVER THE PLACE!! During the reception, 4 other kids also got sick. I was sure it was food poisoning. Elly contintued to throw up every 10 min or so until finally at 12:30 a.m. I decided to take her to the ER. Finally at 3:30 a.m. they saw her and we got home shortly after that. When we got home I noticed that Addi threw up all over the couch. After getting her cleaned up and in bed as well, the phone rang at 4:30 a.m. Rylan had been spending the night at a friend's house and he also threw up at their house. When I got him, I saw he threw up all over their carpet, so I went home and got the carpet shampooer and shampooed their carpet. The parents never did wake up with me walking in and out of their house and shampooing their carpet! I finally got to bed at 5:30 a.m. and the kids got up about 8:30. UGH!

So now it's Sat. and we have another day of wedding plans. Shelda's last daughter was getting married that day. They had a luncheon, but I opted not to attend, with kids home sick. I took Morgan and we went to the wedding. It was such a sweet ceremony, but the poor bride and groom were so ill that they couldn't stand much and had trash cans behind them. I felt so horrible for them, but it will surely be a day they will never forget!!

They had their reception right after and unfotuantely, it was so nice outside and beautifully decorated. I wish I would have been able to help with the set up and take down. They did a great job, but with sick kids at home and no hubby, I ended up not being much help. The next morning, we got a phone call that several more people got the flu bug. Richard's parents were heading out to West Virginia and Rylan had a talk in sacrament. We have so many elderly in our ward, that I kept the kids home and sent Rylan to give his talk and come straight home. Besides, I had a friend in the States visiting while she is living in England. We had a house to clean and disinfect! Unfortunately that night I got it. Angela stayed away for most of Monday, but on Tues we went to SLC and met with another friend from Aviano and we had pedicures done. It was so relaxing and so much fun. We went out to dinner that night. Angela left on Wed and at about 1:30 in the morning on Wed Bradly came up from his room. He threw up all over the floor. Now we had one more person to finish it. Morgan got sick on Thurs and we have about a week before we have visitors again, so we are now done and catching up! Whew! It's been an exhausting few weeks. Angela's family ended up also getting it and I think almost 30 people that I now know of have been infected by this horrible stomache flu!

Our other news is that we got word that we are just keeping our follow-on here at Hill. We knew that orders would probably change with Richard making Master Sgt. He called me while on vacation saying they officially canceled our orders to South Dakota and to put in another dream sheet. He asked the assignment clerk what his options were and it was, Kadena, Japan; Langley, Virginia; Warrens AFB in Georgia; and Shreveport, Louisiana. He wasn't too thrilled with those options, so he asked to just follow-on here at Hill since we are already here and they approved it. Of course, things can still change, but it's not likely, so it looks like we're staying put. I'm a little disapointed, but it's where we're supposed to be, so I'm fine with it. I think we'll go ahead and move to another house in the area, as we'd really like to have a garage and live in a better school district. Well, that's about it for now. Hope all is well with everyone else and enjoying their summer! I just got my passport in the mail this weekend, so my next big thing will be going to Korea in Sept! Can't wait! Love to you all!

Kim