July 2012

July means one thing to my kids! Back to school. :)

I know it's crazy to think about, but truly, we love year round school. And after a year of traditional school in Chicago, I feel qualified to say that I much prefer it.

Olivia turned one. :) She was adorable, of course!

 Della helped her eat her smash cake.

  Here she is with her Grandma Barb.

 

Before her party I did a photo shoot. Kim made her tutu. So adorable. 

In other news, Avery had something? Maybe an ear infection? I don't even know, but I stole this off facebook because it's adorable. And it was still in my file for July. I don't know if this is from July or not. But I think she is pretty cute, so I don't really care. ;) 

Shawn had me take some head shots. He is so handsome. I wish he let me take pictures of him more often. But I'll take what I can get. 

 I also found these pictures that I had scanned in to my computer.
This is my Aunt Marintha. She is my grandfathers sister. When I was a little girl my grandparents would take me to visit her fairly often. I loved her home, especially her kitchen and yard. And I loved her to pieces. This is from a family reunion years ago. I miss her.

 This is my Uncle Chester. He was my grandpa's brother, and lived on the side of a mountain in Idaho and ran a saw mill. His grandaughter Becky and I are the same age, and we spent lots of time together in the summers, she lived just down the hill from him. I loved him tons and miss him too.

 This is my Grandpa. This picture brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes every single time I see it. I can't explain in blog land how much this man meant to me. How much I loved him and my grandma. How much their love and closeness shaped my life and made me who I am today. I just can't even find the words. He has been gone from this earth for ten years now, and I still have yet to be able to talk about that without feeling a tremendous ache. Maybe someday I can get it down in words. But not today.

 This is my Grandpa right before he passed holding Kira. I wish she could remember meeting him. My Grandma passed while Kira was still cooking.

On a lighter note, we helped Kim make over Olivia's nursery.  Here is a before:

 Kira and Grammy putting the finishing touches on the mural.

 I have no idea why I don't have an after shot. I suck. Sorry.
I should look into that, because the room turned out great!

Here are the kids on a random night we had dinner with Brie and Chris just because. You can see Kira was really thrilled about something. Tweens are such a joy.

We were starting the process of our solar panel install, this was the first step and the rain was just ironic. I kind of felt bad for the guys. They tried to stick it out because they came from Phoenix, but it just wasn't happening and they wound up coming back the next day. 

 Kira had to do an all about me poster for 5th grade.

 Plus some obligatory back to school pics. 

Evan first day of 3rd grade. 

 First day of her last year in elementary, fifth grade!

July was busy, and I have a bunch of pictures, so rather than make this the longest blog post ever, I'm going to break it up a little bit.