Colton said to Kayla as they were doing a worksheet about who he loved..."Kayla hurry up or the neighbors might see us loving~!"

Baseball's future MVP?

Who says toys have to be expensive? These made a great ball/bat for Carson and Colton. They each had a bat and they loved it!

The next NASCAR champ

Let's go Dad! I won't tell !mom if you and Colton won't! PLEEEEEEEEAAAAASSSEEE!!!! Vrooooom, Vroooom!

Precious hand in precious hand

Kayla and Carson going into church. Sweet.

Colton at the beach

Colton in shorts at the Mendenhall River beach during our warm spell.

THE BEACH?

Carson at the beach down by the Mendenhall River, which is run-off from the Mendenhall Glacier. BRRRRR. The sand was warm, though.

Mowing the dining room

Carson is sooo happy to play with his mower and wear Colton's hat. He loves to be BIIIIGGGG! Look at his smile. I could just eat him up!!!

Get ready for the ball

Colton at his last game and he's looking good. My little ball playing man looks like a future pro-player. (Only to us, of course.) It was a good, fun season for him. This was a bitter sweet day for all of us.

Kayla and the mantises

Kayla with 2 baby mantises on her hand-not me! They were cute minis of the big guys. AWWWWWW!!! Brave Kayla! My hero!

Mom, Colton, and mantises

Colton and I were getting ready to put the mantises into their habitat. We had to put foil inside the lid so they didn't crawl out the top. A real exercise in composure for me-the not bug lover. ;)

Colton with his mantises

Colton is holding his praying mantis babies and very excited to see them coming out of the egg sac.

Praying mantis eggs hatching

This is Colton's praying mantis egg sac that we thought would never hatch. We had a spell of warm days so I moved the jar outside and set it in an empty flower pot that had soil in it hoping it would hold the heat a little and work. Well, it did! I checked on it one day and sure enough, they were beginning to come out by the ton. We probably had over 100 babies total. This was a neat experiment because we saved the sac for a few days and they continued to hatch out of it. We got a little habitat and had to go to the pet shop for baby crickets-live ones to feed them. The crickets were actually eating the mantises because they were bigger. Soooooo, we had to be careful to feed them ones that were smaller than the mantises.

The tourists are coming! Just kidding!

We did a "touristy" thing and stopped to look at this anchor. This thing is huge-about 12-15 feet tall. We realized that we might only be here for a little over a year longer and so you see things differently, I guess. So here we are with a big anchor.

Armed robber?

NOOOOOO! It's Kayla! She was playing blind tag with the kids. She worked so hard before and during vbs to plan fun games for the kids. She kept everyone's score and participated in the games. Every night she came home and tweaked the games to better suit the group of kids that were coming to vbs.

VBS games

Aaron, one of our missionary helpers, plays blind man tag with his group of kids at our vbs. They had so much fun with their helpers-the kids thought they were extremely cool-definitely a good outreach for anyone that wants to reach kids. How much better does it get?

VBS kids and helper

Savannah, Colton,Emma, Turner (vbs missionary),Caleb, Ephraim. This is at Kayla and Robert's game station-FUN!!! The biggest hazzard at VBS were the GINORMOUS mosquitoes and the gnats-ewwwwww! They were horrible because we had very little wind and hardly any rain-imagine that. You could hear the kids laughing and playing all around the whole church.

VBS 2009 Sign In

Katie and Savannah are at the sign-in table for VBS. Katie did this all week along with assisting our pastor teach and one day of teaching on her own. We love VBS.

VBS

Colton, Elijah, andEphraim at our VBS 2009. We did the Go Fish Guys, Backstage with the Bible. They learned about the 10 Commandments and how we can be saved by faith through grace.

For my mom

This post is especially for you, Mom. I know you get great joy when you see your grandbabies getting dirty. So here's proof that I do let them get dirty-even though I gave him a bath promptly after he was done-ha! (He did play in the dirt for at least 10 minutes before I started wiping him off.)

Carson playing

Carson is wearing one of my favorite outfits. I love it because I actually sewed it up myself. I made it for Colton and it was waaaay too big when I finished it. He wore it when he grew into it and I found it in a box in the garage 2 weeks ago. It's just his size and it was a real blessing to find it. It's just one of those unexpected joys of being a mom.