Jared's Jungle Safari Party

 This year Jared got to have a friend birthday party.  I decided to plan a jungle safari party, since Jared loves jungle animals so much.  The night before the party Alan and I stayed up late to decorate our front room to look like a jungle.  Some of the stuffed animals we own, and some we borrowed.

Thank you, Little People, for letting me use your figurines for this cake. The cake wasn't too fancy, but it worked.  

This is a better picture of our jungle, taken in daylight.  Jared put his two favorite snakes on the back of the couch, but my favorite is the monkey hanging from the ceiling fan.

Maggie wanted to play the games, too.  She is in front in pink.  This was the ostrich egg relay.

Each guest got a safari hat, and we played lots of jungle games: tiger tiger lion (duck duck goose), animal charades, ostrich egg (balloon) relay, and "don't let the spider bite you" (hot potato with a toy spider--the music we listened to was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"). We cleared a big space in one of our basement rooms to play games since it was much too hot to do them outside.

Alan played some of the games, too.  :)  This was tiger tiger lion.

After the games and an animal cracker snack, the kids went on a "safari" around our yard to look for mini jungle animals that Alan had hidden.  Each child used their binoculars we made earlier (out of toilet paper rolls and jungle-printed felt), and had stickers of each animal they were looking for to put in their photo albums.  There was a clue taped to each animal to help them find the next animal on the safari.  The kids LOVED this!

This lion was hiding in one of our tomato plants.  :)  I bought most of the animals for $1 each at Walmart.

After cake and ice cream we opened up presents.  I think Jared really loved his party and playing with his friends.  Whew!

Jared's Birthday!

Of course, the most exciting part of July was Jared's birthday.  Jared requested a green octopus/snake cake, but after looking up ideas on the internet, I convinced him to just have an octopus cake.  I made the cake in an oven-safe bowl, and the tentacles are Twinkies with smarties for the suction cups.  Jared was thrilled with how it turned out, despite the frosting dripping down it from my kitchen being too warm.

 We had Jared's favorite dinner: rigatoni noodles.

Jared and his loot: new backpack, books, movies, new lunchbox, basketball hoop, and a much-wanted megaphone.  He also got some books and a picture of Papa from Grandma C. and some new clothes and a squirt gun (!) from Grandma and Grandpa S.

July Pictures

 Alan's little sister Rachel works in a darling children's clothing store.  She picked out this DARLING dress for Maggie.  She looks so cute in it and has gotten so many compliments at church!

Evelyn!  She is so cute!  She was kind of fussy a lot from about 5 weeks until about 10 weeks old, but she has grown out of it and is now such a happy baby!  She smiles so easily and now laughs, too!  (I still haven't gotten good giggles on camera yet.)

Maggie often asks to "hold" Evelyn on our Boppy pillow, and then she wants me to take a picture of her.  P.S. I love Maggie's hair in pigtails!

Happy at bathtime

Could this picture be any cuter???!!

 Alan's grandma came out to Utah to visit and loved holding Evelyn.  As you can see, Evelyn loved being held, too.

A 4-generation picture!  Alan's grandma is the only great-grandma for our kids that is still alive.  We love her.

A Billy Visit

 At the beginning of July my former roommate of 3 years, Ashley, came to town and stayed with us for a day.  I love her and miss her so much!  I only get to see her about once every 2 years.  We took our kids to the local splash pad and had fun catching up.

Right now all of my "Billies" live out of state (one even lives out of the country!) so I really miss them.

Our cute kids (minus baby Evelyn).  Jared's snake Slither had to be in the picture, of course

T Ball

First, two random pictures:

Evelyn wearing a vintage dress of mine.  She's just adorable!

Maggie is in to lining things up around the house.  I love the decapitated Papa Bear.

 I signed Jared up for T Ball this summer.  He seemed to like it a lot.  It was fun to watch him improve over the course of the eight games. I've signed him up for soccer for the fall again, so hopefully he's up for that!

Maggie was a good cheerleader.  Even when it was windy!

This is the Place

 A few Saturdays ago we attended a (big) family reunion at a Pioneer Park.  We got to go free, which was really nice.  There were pony rides:

 Jared got a shave at the barber shop:

 The kids loved playing on a boat modeled after a boat (The Brooklyn) pioneers took all the way around the tip of South America to California:

Panning for "gold"

 We rode a mini train, too, although we had to stop and wait for a family of geese to cross the tracks.

Jared and Maggie loved the waterfall that was part of the landscape

 We look forward to the reunion next summer so we can go again!

Water Fun

In addition to have a pass to the local waterslide park, we've been having lots of fun in swimsuits close to home.  Alan's aunt and uncle gave us a fun hose-hookup that the kids have loved running around in in the backyard.

We also have two splash pads close to our house.  If we get there right when it opens, sometimes we get the place to ourselves!

I love this smile!  It is usually quite hard to get her to smile and look at the camera at the same time!