Dad's 60th b-day party!!! :)

Last Saturday we celebrated my dad's 60th birthday. We held his party at the church building right down from their house. It was a really nice day so we got to eat outside. The food was SO yummy and the company was GREAT! As many siblings on my dad's and Gail's side that could come did and my dad's mom and Gail's parents. It was really fun to see them all again. It's been a while.






Us kids did a program for my dad. My sister Robyn put together an adorable slide show of his life. Then they sang songs and all of us siblings sang one together - For baby for Bobby - a John Denver song. It turned out really well. I think he really enjoyed it all. Here's a video of us singing the For baby for Bobby song if you'd like to watch it. I wish I had my sisters other songs they sang, but I didn't get to record them on my camera since I was recording them with my sisters camera for her. They are SOOOOOOO good. Really.




The kids sang Popcorn popping and I am a Child of God. They did a great job. That was Katelin's first experience singing in front of people, Kaiya just held her hand the whole time and she was fine. When they were done she was so proud of herself and kept saying "I sing, I sing" over and over. She loved it.
This iswhen we were singing Happy Birthday to my dad and he sang a long and pointed to himself. We sure love that man!!!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. We had this yummy cake along with homemade ice cream.
Then we went outside where there were water balloons to play with. All of the kids would put balloons into the towels the guys were holding...
...then they would run back a ways and wait for the water balloons to fly at them and try to catch them. They laughed and laughed. No one ever caught one, but they loved to try.

Here are the guys shooting a bunch of them into the air. I think they had as much fun as the kids did.

Happy birthday hugs for Grandpa Ottley.

The kids let a bunch of balloons go and watched them fly away. They thought it was great until they were gone. They then turned and saw Grandpa with some balloons so they all ran to him and he raised them in the air to save them. It was so funny.

Happy Birthday day dad!!! We sure LOVE you!!! :)

THANKS MOM!!! :)

Burke went to scout camp this week and so I asked my mom if she wanted to come and hang out with us for a few days. She said yes of course, she is always ready to help out. We had so much fun with her. I can't find my camera anywhere so I'm glad she took some of our time together.

She comes on the train and so since she's left every time we hear a train Katelin looks to the window and says "Omi" a few times until she believes us that she's not on the train to come and see us this time.

My mom hadn't been to our "beach" before so we had to take her. It was the perfect day too. It was SO hot outside that it warmed the water right up and it was perfect. I told the kids that we could roll up our pants and walk in it for a while, but that didn't last for long. They were soaked a few minutes later. It was really fun though so it was ok.



In the mornings I went to exercise and my mom hung out with the kiddos. One morning I came home and she had done the girls hair up in the high piggy tails she did on us girls when we were little. Kaiya LOVED it and was so excited to show her friend that day. Her friend said she looked pretty, so Kaiya was pleased. :) So cute. Also this week's ritual has been to sit on the front porch and eat icecream or a Popsicle even though it was only like 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning. They loved that.

Also my mom had been telling me about these bags they made in Relief Society out of place mats. So we decided to head over to our local Thrift Store and see what they had. We found 8 of these cute pleated place mats. Two blue and six pink. She made each of us one. She made Kaleb's out of some of Burke's old levis. They are supposed to be scripture bags for church, they're so excited to use them there. THANKS MOM!!!
We had a lot of fun hanging out with you mom. Thanks again!!! :)

2nd week in Logan

Our second week we were in Logan we stayed with one of Burke's mission companions family, Bryan, Abbie and Eli. Abbie was off to girls camp for most of the week so we missed hanging out with her, but the kids and I went and had fun during the days while Burke was at class. We had a lot of fun together. We went to a movie, the library, park, cheese factory, played the wii, watched movies, did crafts, went to the Riverside walkway ( I think it's called that - I forgot!) , rode the bus to Summer Fest at the tabernacle there, played and played and played! Whew, we had fun. I only got lots of pictures on our walk. So here's some of those. This is my favorite place to go on walks. I wish I would have gone there more while we lived there. It it SO pretty and looks so different with every season.

This tree was a huge hit with the kids. It is great for climbing all over the place.





It was so cute watching Katelin look up so high at all of the huge trees.They all found great walking sticks.

Prettiest place to go walking EVER!!! I love it there. I'm glad we got to go back and go for a walk. The kids wanted to go again one of the other days, but it was raining. They loved it as much as me.
We brought plastic popcicle containers and made grape juice popcicles a couple of the days. These ones we took out too early and the sticks came off so we put them in bowls. Luckily it was nice enough to sit out on the porch and eat them so we didn't turn their house purple.
Thanks Bryan and Abbie for letting us stay!

(few more posts below if you want to see the other parts of our weeks away - I still need to get pictures taked of Burke's watercolors. I will get those on as soon as I can :)

Fairy Party

This is the second year my mom has done the Fairy Party for the girls. It was such a fun special time to hang out together and do girly stuff and enjoy being girls together. The boys went with their dads to see Night at the Museum 2. They had fun together also.

My mom always goes all out and gets the girls such sweet gifts to play with together. They all got dressed up in their little tutu's and crown with a wand and had a bag that matched the color of their tutu. She gave them each a fairy and a fairy necklace and some other jewelery. After they got their dress up stuff on and we ate cake. My mom got this sweet cake made for them. It was so cute and yummy!

My sister's little boy Jared was the only boy there. We surrounded him with the girls for the picture. He had a great time too.
We all got a kick out of Kennedy when we looked at her and saw her crown had slid down her forehead. She just left it there like it was normal. She's such a cutie!
They played "Pin the horn on the Unicorn". Later they watched Barbie and the Diamond Castle while we painted their nails. Then they colored in their new My Little Pony coloring books. What a fun time! THANKS OMI!!!
Here's Katelin and Opa (Grandpa in German). This was later that weekend, she had fun swinging out back with him.

Hangin' out with cousins

We stayed at Burke's parents house while his brother's family was in town. They live in Colorado Springs so we don't see them much. We had a great time with them. We went to Lagoon one of the days, I didn't bring the camera, but of course they had a great time. Katelin was on and off as to whether she would go on a ride or not, but she did go on quit a few and loved it. Some of my siblings went that day also so it was really fun for the kids to go on rides with so many cousins in one day. They loved it!

One of the days we decided to go on a walk outside and here are some pictures of our little hike. The kids chose the steepest path go go up of course.


Katelin decided to go up a less steep way. There were lots of pretty things to see. We met the others at the top.
Kaiya and Larissa picked these pretty flowers and put them in their candy bags. The bags were from the birthday party the night before (post below) and the kids took them everywhere for the next few days.
Burke's parents house is down below and up here is the golf course. The next day we went on a walk with everyone and collected golf balls. The kids thought that was awesome!
Burke, Kaleb and Kyle making the treck up to us. Kyle is a little trooper. He walked the whole way and loved every minute of it.

Candice's 30th birthday party

Burke's sister Candice had a very fun birthday party at a park near their parents house. Candice and her husband Josh planned so much fun things for us all to celebrate with them. It was really fun. Josh made some awesome food! He grilled up some really yummy chicken and we had so many things to go with it.
It was a really fun get together. Here's Burke and Katelin checking out the ants.

They had a huge pinata. Cuties watching someone take their turn at the pinata.
This is Candice's husband Josh. He did a nice karate kick. It was great.
The kids loved the pinata pieces and decided to wear them as hats. We had to get the birthday girl in on the picture too.
Then we played water games. First we played water balloon volleyball with towel's. That was really fun. And the kids caught on after a while also. Then it was baseball. When you ran to home base you got sprayed with the hose and then you had to jump into the mini pool for home base. Katelin and Kyle had a blast together. They thought eachother's game ideas were great. They were always on the same page with eachother. Such cuties!

Good thing grandpa was there to warm them up.
What a fun party. THANKS Candice and Josh!!!

Our week

Burke needed to take some art classes in Springfield this summer. His first one was this last week and then next week he has one also. We went with him and decided to camp for the week. It was rainy on and off on Monday and Tuesday, but I thought it would just pass because that's what it always did when we lived there, but no. It didn't pass, it rained ALL WEEK LONG!!! And I left my camera at Burke's parents house. I would have had some great ones for you too!!! Oh well, I'll just leave you with some highlights of the last week camping in the rain:

• The kids thought is was SO great. They found so many worms and caterpillers all over our camp. They found some rocks and made the top of one the worms home wtih dirt and the top of another rock the caterpillers home with leaves. Kaleb would go around finding them and Kaiya would make sure they didn't escape.
• It wasn't roasting hot. That's one thing I really dislike about camping. It wasn't too cold either, just rainy - just the muddy clothes, shoes and well muddy everything drove me nuts!
• One man in Burke's class told us about this great park nearby so we went there often. They even played there in the rain in there ponchos while Katelin slept in the van. So nice.
  
• Burke's class went GREAT! It was a watercolor class and he hasn't really done that since high school so he had so much fun. He teaches art so he has some new great ideas on how to teach watercolor. He did some flowers and a couple of cars that are just really amazing. I will post pictures sometime. He had so much fun in that class, I'm so glad he got to take it.
• We got to go do whatever we wanted. We went to a dollar movie, hit the libraries in town, fed the ducks, went to the small Willow Park Zoo, visited friends and drove around town to show the kids where we used to live. It was really fun to see them light up when they remembered something or some place.
  

• The last night we finally went to a hotel because we were sick of the rain and so were our tents - yes I say tents. We set up Burke's parents and it started getting water in it on one side so we set up ours and it started leaking on us in the night. The kids loved the change also and had lots of fun going swimming and just watching TV.

We're done with that week, I'll update you on the next with pictures when we get home. Yay for home!!! :)