Strep x's 3

Maybe this makes me a terrible mother or weird, but I have to say that I actually like it when my kids are sick.  The exception to that statement is if they are sick with the flu and throwing up.  That I DO NOT like!  All three of my children have strep throat right now, so we have three bottles of pink goodness in our fridge.  I just love how life is forced to slow down when my kids are sick.  We don't go on errands, we don't have to be places, except maybe the doctor.  Most of all I love how my kids are so cuddly when they are sick.  They love to be snuggled and they love to just sit and rest.  Yesterday was the first time ever I think that all three of my kids and I were able to take a nap at the same time.  It was wonderful.  I am thankful for medicine however, because I don't think I would love it so much if the pain and sorrow lasted weeks and weeks.  It really is amazing how fast those antibiotics work!  I am always reminded when I go and pick up an antibiotic prescription for my kids of how thankful I am that I was not a pioneer whose babies died from a cold.  How horrible!  So yay for modern medicine and yay for illnesses occassionally to slow life down and to remind us of how blessed we are to have healthy bodies and medicine.

Fun with the Poyfairs and garden parties

The Poyfairs came for a fun weekend visit a couple weeks back.  It was so great to spend some time with them and catch up on our lives.  The kids were thrilled to see each other again too!

The girls destroyed the toy room and tried on every single dress up within minutes of reuniting.  And the boys played and fought over toys just like old times:)  Carter is not so great at sharing his cars.  Maybe preschool this year will help with the sharing problems...we hope.  The parents just hung out and chatted and then we got a babysitter and went to Eclipse together.  It was humorous trying to catch Adam up on the Twilight saga, but I think he actually liked it.  

The next day we went to Coeur d'Alene to swim and play at the beach.  We have never been to the beach there before so we were really excited to have an excuse to go.

Beckett mostly liked being held.  He was not a fan of the water which is unusual for him, but it was pretty cold.

As you can tell in this picture since carter is shivering to death:)

Rylynn always seems to create a mud hole when we go anywhere with sand and water.

Beckett ate his fair share of sand and rocks, but oh well.

Carter opted to eat doughnuts instead.  What a smart child!  These doughnuts are UNBELIEVABLE!  We discovered them when we lived in our apartment because we lived right behind the doughnut shop and it always smelled like doughnuts.  I was pregnant so that was a great combination!  I thought I would be okay though since I am never or rarely tempted by doughnuts, but these are not your typical doughnuts.  After one try I was hooked.  Now every time we have visitors come to town we have to buy them some to try.  We've never had a single disappointed guest.

The little sunbather

This is the sunhat that I bought for Beckett after I burned his little head earlier this summer.  I felt so bad so I decided I would bring a hat whenever we go out in the sun.  Well that doesn't really help if your child refuses to wear the sun protectant hat!  I can't believe we got a picture with it on his head!  It never stays on for more than a few seconds.

Nothing like burying yourself in nasty rocky sand!

These two cuties had so much fun together.  Rylynn cried and cried after Olivia left.  She kept asking why she couldn't live right by us so they could play together everyday.

I was asking myself the same question!  Carissa and I have so much fun together.  Oh well, I shouldn't complain, at least we live in the same state!

This picture makes me laugh.  This is so Adam, I just had to post it!  Sorry Adam.  These guys have so much fun together being huge dorks.  We love you Poyfairs!!  Come again.

After the Poyfairs loaded up the car and set off for home, we went downtown to meet up with Stacey and her family for a picnic in the park.  This park is beautiful and has tons of different gardens surrounding it.  It was kind of late, so we only had time to make it to the rose gardens.  We will definitely go back to see the other ones.

Rylynn was in heaven surrounded by all the beautiful roses

Beckett was just cute as usual

Carter was too busy running around like a maniac to really care about the flowers and of course notice he has a car in his hand:)  He can't go anywhere without his cars.

I did manage to get him to pose for one picture in front of the flowers and of course he had his eyes closed.  At least he's giving me his patented Carter grin.

They had every color of roses throughout the gardens.  I especially loved these yellow ones.

I think these were my favorite though.  I love multicolored roses!  This one looks like a sunset to me.

This little guy loved crawling all over the huge lawns.  He was really good about not picking all the flowers.  I was a little surprised.

Of course we needed a picture with the red ones!

Rylynn gathered a little pile of flower petals to bring home.  Of course they had already fallen off the roses and were on the ground.  They smelled so good!  What an awesome weekend!

Miss Independent

My little Rylynn is so independent these days!  We have a new chore/behavior chart in our house and it has proven how responsible she is.  She will get up and go to the chart and get all her chores done first thing.  We are so proud of her!  Just to prove how independent she is I have to share the following story:

So Rylynn has been begging us for weeks to take off her training wheels on her bike.  This all started when two of her friends on the street started riding their bikes without training wheels.  However, their bikes are the tiny little kid bikes like Carter's size so we told Rylynn that it wouldn't be as easy for her since she had a much bigger bike.  She did not care and was determined!  Now in our defense, we know how Rylynn is and we knew she would be so disappointed if she couldn't do it and she would just get frustrated and never want to ride her bike.  That is why we procrastinated the day of removing the training wheels.  Well, she had other plans...so as we are going in one night Rylynn hops on the neighbor girl's little bike and says, "hey mom and Dad watch this!"  Then she proceeds to hop on and cruise all around the cul-de-sac like she'd been doing it for years.  Garrett and I just looked at each other in amazement!  So we asked Rylynn how she did it and she said, "I don't know, I just got on and it clicked!"  So she made us promise we would take off her training wheels the next morning to see if she could ride her bike as easily.

Garrett got up early and took them off before work and then left.  When Rylynn woke up the first thing she did was run to the garage.  She jumped on her big bike and cruised around just as easily as the night before!  I couldn't believe it.  So basically we were robbed of the big moment of teaching our first child to ride a bike.  She took care of that all on her own.  That's our Rylynn.  I don't know why I was suprised by this event considering she is my child who at two years of age insisted on picking out her own clothes AND dressing herself no matter how long it took!

Camping and the 4th

All winter long my kids have been begging to go camping!  Every time they asked, I would say, "we will go in the summer when it's warm."  So Garrett got a massive tent for Father's Day and we were all set for camping over the 4th.  Little did we know it would be more like camping in the winter than summer camping!  It was cold and rainy for most of the trip, but we still had fun.

Here is the massive tent with three rooms!  We love it, and it definitely proved to be waterproof; thank goodness!

Everyone had their own bed, but somehow in the morning we still all ended up in the same bed.  Did I mention it was cold?  We had lots of snuggling to warm up.

This was the beautiful river we camped along.  It was in Northern Idaho.  On our trip we saw two moose, several deer, a huge herd of Elk, and of course lots of fish jumping in the rivers.

Daddy and Carter even caught a few of them!

The second day cleared up a bit and we were able to go for a hike up to this beautiful waterfall.

Our trip was made so much more fun by these awesome people!  Thank you Slacks for enduring the rain and cold with us!  Erin cooked us some amazing dutch oven goodness the first night.  I think that was the only time I didn't care that it was raining.

Just off to the side of the waterfall there was a little cave area and then a huge cliff that the kids loved climbing.

Rylynn was the first one up and had no fear!

All the girls at the top of the cliff.

Beckett and I stayed down by the waterfall and cheered on all the climbers.  Don't we all look awesome?  That's what camping in the rain does for ya.  Lots of dirty wet kids and puffy, frizzy hair:)

All it takes to keep Carter happy is a body of water and some rocks for throwing.

We ended up going back earlier than we had planned due to the weather and Beckett's numurous blow- outs.  That definitely made camping in the rain so much more fun!  Needless to say, we ran out of clothes pretty quickly.  It was nice to sleep in a warm bed on Saturday night.  On the fourth, we went to a bbq at cousin Stacey's house.  We roasted marshmellows and had s'mores and watched the fireworks up on the hill over Liberty Lake.  It was lots of fun, but unfortunately I forgot to bring the camera!  I am so thankful for this country and the freedoms I enjoy.  I just hope we don't forget as a country who gave us those freedoms: In GOD we Trust!!

Pre-K graduation

Still playing catch-up on the blog here!  Rylynn's graduation from pre-K was the Tuesday after we got back from UT.  It was so cute!  They had little caps and gowns for all the graduates!  Rylynn got into a "fancy outfit" for the occasion.  She was so excited.

At the ceremony, they read off each child's name and then they got a little diploma and a hug from Miss Shakra.

Then they walked across the podium for all to cheer and then on the other side they got to hug Miss Teri.  So cute!

All the graduates got to stand and cheer at the end.

Then they sang a couple songs and did the cha-cha slide!

We are SOOO proud of our little graduate!  I can't believe she is off to Kindergarten next year.

They had this cute cake for everyone with each child's picture in their graduation outfit.

It tasted good too!

This is Rylynn's cute friend McKenna.  She got a little teary at the end of the party when she realized how much she would miss her friends and mostly Miss Teri.

McKenna was always so sweet about including Carter and giving him lots of attention.

And of course we had to have a picture with Izobella!

Rylynn loved Miss Teri more than I can say.  If we ever went to school when Rylynn was in a grumpy mood, Miss Teri could cheer her up in no time.  Rylynn loves her so much and really misses her.  She tells me that she is excited for Kindergarten, but not to get a new teacher!  What an amazing preschool experience we have had at LLCA!

Grandma Monson's Funeral

I have been a major blogging slacker and have tons to catch up on because these past few weeks have been a blur of craziness.  But the most important event during this time was the passing of my Dad's mother Nelda Wilson Monson.  

This is a picture that was displayed at the funeral of my Grandma and Grandpa when they were younger.  Grandma Monson raised 6 boys, all with names that start with "D".  She was a wonderful mother and Grandma.  She was also a beautician and had her own business.  I remember going to their house and thinking it was so cool that Grandma had her very own beauty salon!  She lived just one month short of being 96 years old.  She lived a good life and truly "endured to the end".  I knew she was going to be gone soon since she was living down in St. George right by my parents and when the news came that she had finally passed away I only felt joy for her.  She had been a widow for 19 years and had outlived all her 9 siblings and parents.  I was so happy to think of the reunion she was having with all those people on the other side that she loved so dearly.  This experience just struck me that when you live your life righteously and you do all that you can do, it is not a sad thing to pass onto the next life and receive your eternal reward.  As my Dad said in his talk at the funeral, "she deserved it."

I was so grateful to be able to attend the funeral and it was an awesome surprise that all of my siblings ended up coming as well.  It was so good to see our extended Monson family and to all be together to celebrate the life of such a wonderful woman.

Ben took Rylynn up to the casket to lay a beautiful rose on top and say goodbye.  Garrett's step-mom helped Rylynn pick out a rose from her garden and cut it to give to my Grandma.  It was very sweet.

Rylynn was really curious and reverent about the whole funeral.  She and Carter kept asking about where Grandma's body was going and when it would be back with her spirit.  I thought it was a really cool learning experience for them because they know that our spirits go back to heaven, but seeing a dead body kind of confused them at first.  It was special for me to be able to talk about that with my kids in such a personal and up close way.

The grandsons all got to be pallbearers.  This is when we said the final prayer and dedicated the graveside.  Unfortunately it was like a tornado outside that day.  I have never seen weather like that in Farmington!

Our family at the graveside.

Just the kids and two stowaways:)  Carter and Thais were freezing so they couldn't move.

At the reception, we took a bunch of pictures of all the boys, and their posterity.  This is the six Monson boys together.  Doug, David, Dwight, Dennis, Don and Darold (L-R).

It's a rare thing to have all my sisters together and all with curly hair, so we had to document it.  We should have gone in curliness order, Marianne puts my curls to shame!

After the luncheon we got to go over to Grandma's old house where my Dad grew up to take some pictures.  I remember coming to this house as a girl and thinking it had the biggest front porch in the world!  My Grandma sold the house a few years ago which made us all really sad, but the new owners restored the whole thing inside and out to it's original.  They always let us come and look through it when we visit too, so it's not too sad.  Ben's got his smiley face on for this one:)

This is the plaque in front of the house since it is a historic home in Farmington.  I think it is so cool that it mentions my Grandma and Grandpa and even my Dad.  

Rylynn and I on the front porch where I used to swing on the porch swing and eat blue Popsicles when I was her age.  That was a pretty amazing moment for me to be on that porch with my own little 5 year old.

Marianne, Nathan and Aria wanted to join the picture.  Carter snuck up on accident too.  I don't think he would ever jump in a picture on purpose.

After the funeral events were over my siblings and parents all headed up to the cabin so the cousins could have fun together before we had to leave the next day.

Seriously how cute are all these cousins!  We were just missing little Reagan.

Walking through the mountains we love so much!  Of course in our PJ's, we wouldn't have it any other way!

Marianne and her darling little Aria.

I just LOVE Carter's face int this picture!  He is such a goof ball.  I love how he has his hand on Rylynn's shoulder too.

Little Beck was loving the hiking backpack.  He is such a happy little guy.  Not like his grumpy Daddy:)  Just kidding!  For some reason Garrett looks gloomy in this picture but he is really just looking at the river and trying to figure out how many fish he can catch in his limited time up at the cabin.

I love how these girls just walk along and chat like they're best friends.  Thais is holding out a handful of worms to show me!  She had no fear of touching the slimy guys.  The funniest part about it was that at the end of the walk we told her to throw them in the river(since she had squished most of them to death) and after she did she said, "I kind of hate worms."  So matter of factly.  It was hilarious.

Farewell to a wonderful woman, Mother, and Grandmother.  We're happy you're home.