Lily Turns 12!

My baby girl is now 12! Crazy!

Lily got a couple presents from some of her aunts and uncles earlier in the month.

Since Tom was going to be out of town on Lily's birthday, he took her out on a special birthday date.  She dressed up nice and he got her a bouquet of flowers and then took her to Olive Garden for dinner. 

Friday, August 21st was Lily's birthday party.  She had about ten friends come for a swimming party!  Unlike so many years past, we had a hot, sunny night!

Aunt Maren made Lily's cake and did an amazing job!  Lily wanted a cake with fondant frosting.

In fact, with Tom gone I had a few friends come help, so Maren, Candalyn and Rebekah were my go-to parents.  My friend, Diane also came at the end and helped me with the clean-up.

All the friends.

Sophie had several of her friends and cousins there too (Rebekah brought her foster kids who aren't pictured).

For dinner we had pizza and apples.

We then sang "Happy Birthday" and Lily blew out the candles.

Mmmm, cake and ice cream!

However, dessert soon turned into a food fight.  

The girls swam a bit more and we cleaned up the cake mess.  Then it was time for presents.

It turned out to be a great birthday party!

Saturday, August 22nd was Lily's real birthday.  She got a cute hair cut in preparation for school.

It wasn't the most exciting day.  Lily had spent the night and gone clothes shopping with her cousin, Savannah a few weeks earlier, so I told her the new clothes were her birthday present.

However, the kids gave her a new bike lock since she'd be riding her bike to middle school.

That night we went school shopping.  Although the boys kept running off and Sophie lost her shoes in the shoe department and it took 20 minutes and the help of a stranger to find them!  I was about to just buy her new shoes, because I didn't care much about the old ones, but the shoes there were all so expensive and I'd already bought her new shoes.  

After shopping we went to Wingers for dinner.  The kids devoured about four bowls of popcorn before their dinner came.  But between the popcorn and the coloring menus they were pretty good kids.

That night though ended in tears.  It just wasn't the birthday Lily expected, and I was pretty stressed out that day, which didn't help.  Little did she know, good things were yet to come...

Sunday was a much better day!  Lily was recognized in Sacrament meeting with her Faith in God and advancement from primary award.  She got to recite her favorite Article of Faith (#13) in front of the pulpit and did a wonderful job.  She was excited to attend Young Women's for the first time and got several presents from primary, activity days and YW.  But the best part of the day was when she got her temple recommend!  I took her to the church that afternoon and just waited in the car.  She came running out to the car with tears streaming down her face.  "I'm worthy to go to the temple" she said to me as she gave me a big hug.  She told me how she had been praying to know if she was worthy to enter the temple and never felt like she had gotten her answer.  Then as she was walking into the church, she said she felt the Holy Ghost tell her she was worthy.  She excitedly said "I can't believe I get to enter the temple!  I am so excited I can go!"  It was one of those proud mommy moments as we sat in the car a cried with the spirit so strong.  What an amazing girl to know how important the temple is and to feel such a desire to go.

So Lily's birthday weekend came and went.  However, on Tuesday night, while Tom was heading home from his trip, he had picked up her real present from us. First I gave Lily a little box and said I'd felt bad for the bad birthday she had and I'd gotten her one more present.  Her reaction to opening the cat collar, with the name Baby already engraved on the tag, was priceless.  

Meanwhile, Tom was walking in behind her with a kitten in hand.  Lily had been the one to tell us about this kitten.  Her Activity Day leader had cat-sat for a family who had five little kittens.  Lily saw some pictures and videos of the kittens and fell in love with the runt.  She said if she could have it, she'd name her Baby.  So Tom and I talked about the fact that she's been asking for a kitten forever and she's showing a lot of responsibility now that maybe it was time.  (and frankly, after cleaning out Jeff's turtle tank, a cat would be a breeze to clean up after).

She was so excited and recognized Baby right away!

 This two-month old kitten is so cute and we've had a ball playing with her.  (I love that Sophie and I get her all to ourselves while the kids are at school. ☺)

So Lily's birthday ended up being her best one ever!  A lot of big milestones at age 12, plus a cat to boot!

Here are 12 things I love about Lily...

1. She has such a strong testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and loves to share it.

2.  She wants to do what's right and is a peacemaker in our home.

3.  She's helpful and does what is asked with little or no complaint.  She's our #1 babysitter.

4. She loves coming up with cute new outfits and likes to wear make-up.  She's not a little girl anymore!

5. She has an amazing singing voice and loves to share it.

6.  She's creative: musically, artistically and imaginatively.

7.  Even though she's growing up, she's still ok being my little girl.

8.  She always makes sure to say she loves me (and Tom).

9.  She's an animal lover and LOVES her kitten.

10.  She is willing to do hard things.

11.  She loves listening to audio books, watching Studio C, baking, drawing and  playing Minecraft in her spare time.

12.  She is a good friend, especially to her family.  

Happy Birthday, Lily!

July Adventures

We stayed busy in July!  I did pretty good to keep up on our activity-a-day goal. 

One week we went on a field trip to Scheels.  The kids love playing there!  (We had our adoptive, child (Jeff's friend), Cedar come with us on some of our adventures).

Sophie was big enough for the ferris wheel and loved it!  She and Cedric would put their hands up and say "my hands are in the air, just like I don't care!"

We continued to swim on Mondays, mostly at the dairy pool.

I continued to do projects each week too.  I cleaned out Sophie's room and turned the corner into a little hut.

She loved it so much I found her asleep in it that night!

The Fourth of July was a fun day.  I can't remember where Tom was that morning, but I took the kids to Home Depot for their free kids craft.

They built Minion scooters.

It was Tom's 39th birthday.  I can't believe we are he is getting so old! ☺

That night we had a little party at the pool.  

We went with pizza for dinner instead of the traditional barbecue.

That night, we did sparklers and just watched the neighboring fireworks.

Sophie did not like them at all!

Once she started crying, I took her inside.  She sat on a stool by the front door and then was completely content to "watch" the fireworks.

I took the older kids to watch the city fireworks that night, but they started so late, the boys were too tired to enjoy them (and Jeff was mad I didn't bring snacks).

Another fun field trip we did (although we went on a Monday and counted it as our swimming day), was Liberty Park.  We went with our friends, Kristi & Carolynn and their kids.

The kids loved the Seven Canyons fountain and we stayed for hours!  I was watching my niece, Charlotte that day, so between us we had two, three, four and five year old girls.

The "little' boys.

I had to laugh at the poses they each did.  It was not even planned, but I thought they looked a lot like the Avengers!

The "big" kids.  We brought stuff for the kids to make boats and these three had a blast racing their boats all over the fountains.

The moms.

Another fun field trip we did was to the zoo.

My sister-in-law, Maren had a pass so we all got in for free!  The kids loved the train.

You can't tell from the picture, but it was actually cold and a little rainy that day.  I wanted to go that day to avoid the July heat, but I wasn't expecting it to be that cold!

We continued to do our service days as well.  One of our bigger days was when we did free babysitting.  

We had a total of 13 kids!

Ironically, all the little kids were girls.

And all except Lily (sorry Lily), were boys.

Another day we weeded the yard of a recently widowed sister in our ward.

And another time we made cookies and took them to some neighbors.

One night Jeff really wanted to play tennis.  So we went to the DI and bought two rackets and a ball for less than $4 and went and played tennis at the park until dark.

We are always excited about free stuff.  So on 7/11 we got free Slurpees from 7-11.  

That night we were picking up some pizza and noticed another 7-11 next door... so we got more Slurpees!

The following week, Chick-fil-a had free meals if you dressed up like a cow.  It ended up being a lot of work (including fruit punch leaking all over the van), but we got full meals, so it was an amazing deal!

I love inviting friends to come to the pool with us. I hung out with Tiffany during the day...

And then Tom and I went golfing with Chris and Nick that night!

We had a lot of big field trips in July.  We had some coupons for Discovery Gateway, so Kristi, Carolynn and I got together again for another fun day.

Lily's starting to get a little too old for places like this, but she was still a good sport.

One of our swimming days we went over to my sister, Aimee's neighborhood pool.  I love the little kiddie pool they have there.

And the kids love the big pool too!

My niece, Aubree came with us and kept me company while the kids swam with their cousins.

Tom's been so busy that he hasn't been around much to do the things at home he normally takes care of.  So I decided to mow the back lawn.  It was my first time mowing an entire lawn and I had blisters and was a sweaty mess by the end.  I didn't even know how to start the mower!  It made me appreciate the work he does (and that I had three brothers and a dad who mowed when I was younger).  

One of our field trip days we were going to go bowling, but we missed the free bowling time and so we just played in the arcade instead.

Toward the end of July, Cedric finally got his cast off.  He was kind of sad the night before because he felt safe with his cast.  He told me if any bad guys came he could hit them with it, or if the house was on fire he could break the window with it.  He's my sweet, sensitive, frightened little boy.

On the 24th the only thing we did was go to the pool for a party that night.  It was a comparatively small group of cousins, aunts and uncles, but it was still fun!

Tom was gone because he and his brother, Kurtis and our brother-in-law, Matt were all participating in the Burley Idaho Spudman Triathlon.  Thankfully Aimee was there to take pictures for me.

Our last field trip day of the month was kind of crazy.  First we went to Greece Monkey to get the van's oil changed.  They have free popcorn and soda, so the kids like it (although, they were almost out of popcorn, so they didn't get very much).  Next door is the Gale History Center.  This is a free, hands-on museum about the history of South Jordan.  The kids had a lot of fun there!  We finished it off with a trip to the library.

I'm so lucky I can spend so much time with my kids during the summer.