Weekend Road Trip

We spent our Fourth of July weekend in Salt Lake with all the kids (except Jordan, who went to Star Valley with Heather's family). We stayed at Little America and had fun playing in the pool and eating at Spaghetti Factory at Trolley Square. We had a room up in the tower, so we had a great view of the valley and numerous fire works shows!

Look at how grown up Megan is looking now that she's gotten her permanent front teeth!

Kyle still thinks it's necessary to pose as some kind of super hero or monster in every picture....

Max's Poodles

Max celebrated his 9th birthday on June 19th, and all he really wanted was a dog. Well, after seeing an article in the newspaper about this little poodle, we made a trip out to the Humane Society, and came home with not one, but TWO dogs. These little doggies have been together for their whole lives (well, the younger ones' at least) and recently their owner passed away.
The black one is "Onyx" and the brown one is "Simba". They follow Max around wherever he goes, and when he leaves, they sit by the door and howl until he returns. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. They are going to the groomer next week, (it's taken a month to get them in! and so I'll take some more pics when they're looking a little prettier!)

"Cousin Means Family"

Kyle and Miles are still inseparable and love each other to pieces. They attend the Sweetwater County YWCA Day Care and Pre-School (with Brooklyn too) Monday thru Friday and play with each other every chance they get. They know that Friday nights mean sleep overs and we've faithfully taken turns between the two houses for months. The other night when I was putting Kyle to bed he asked me "Is Miles my family?" I told him that since they were cousins, that meant they were part of each other's family. He answered very seriously, "well, my teacher doesn't know about that." Apparently, one of the teachers told someone that they weren't in the same family, they were "just cousins". So, the next morning when we walked into school, he marched up to the teacher and said "COUSIN MEANS FAMILY!" It was so cute and the teacher didn't know what to say.
I really thought that after we had lived here a while, the novelty of being able to see each other all the time would wear off, but it most certainly has not.
Here's a silly picture of the two of them being "monsters" at the game the other night--

Paper Routes

I forgot to tell all of you that we are professional newspaper delivery people. What started out as my bright idea for Jordan and Connor to make a little extra money, has turned into a family affair.
We now have 4 routes around our neighborhood and deliver over 200 papers Tuesday thru Saturday. Dave and I thought it might be a good family project to earn money for a family vacation at the end of the summer. Although we get up early in the morning, I've enjoyed the one on one time with Jordan and sometimes the boys, and sometimes just Dave and I go. We kind of rotate so that no one person gets burned out. Anyway, a lot of people think we're crazy, but it's nice and quiet in the early a.m. hours and it gives me the exercise that I otherwise wouldn't get sitting behind my desk all day. We started with two routes in April and we'll keep you posted on how long our little extra job lasts......

By the way, Connor appeared in last Friday's edition, which is becoming "old NEWS" around here.

Thomas the Cat

("Fluffy Tom"--before his spring haircut)
Here is a picture of Meggie with her kitty. Tom came to live with us a couple of months ago when my friend Monica's house burned down and she couldn't keep him. She had already talked to our family about adopting him before this happened because she thought he really needed to be around kids and would thrive on all the attention. It is a small miracle that Dave agreed to a cat, but Megan has just loved him, and he definitely knows that he is HER cat.
He sleeps in her bed with her every night, and when she's not home, you can usually find him in her room. I was happy that Megan had this opportunity to have a pet for the first time. We have a few more creatures living in our house now, so stay tuned for more pet updates......