Time out for Women

For the last few years, my mom has sponsored conference tickets for her girls if they wanted to attend Time Out for Women.  It is a conference for women that is run by Deseret News and I believe all the speakers/musicians are members of our church.  For lots of different reasons, I have never been able to attend. This year, however, it finally worked out for me to go.  It was a super quick trip, but I had a great time. Mostly I enjoyed seeing my mom, sisters and sister-in-law again.  We got to chat, laugh together, and get to know each other a little better.  I stayed at my parents, and loved seeing my dad too.  Then as an added bonus my mom had all the local family over for dinner one night so I was able to see most of my extended family as well, and even met a niece that joined the family after my last visit.  Thanks mom for the great time!

Cutie Pie

This little girl has stolen all of our hearts.  We all love to play with her.  We want to make her smile, but best of all, to giggle.  And she seems to like, or at least put up with, all of us.

 Future tennis pro?

Maryland Renaissance Festival

Late summer brings with it one of our favorite events, the Maryland Renaissance Festival.  There is something about the ability to dress up and have fun surrounded by other like minded individuals.  Adults and kids alike come attired in all sorts of fun garb.  Or, like me, come in normal attire with a camera in hand to take pictures of their cute family.  I especially love that is one of the few places where Dave can where his awesome kilt and completely fit in.  And for the first time in 8 years, we went to the festival without the stroller.  Yes, we left it in the car, and it was very freeing.

 I love it when Hilde still wants to dress up, she is so cute.

 Enoch was a knight and Phinn was a pirate.

 Freya wore an old Cinderella dress-up, although she had no idea what it was.  She just thought it was pretty.

 Dave and his sis planning our next stop.

Happy Birthday Daddy

Daddy's birthday ends our summer birthday season.  He is so much fun to give presents to and we all like celebrating with him.  This year he asked for a Freddie's Frozen custard cake.  I called and ordered it a few days in advance.  When I went to go pick it up they didn't have the cake ready, so I got another cake of my choosing, free.  Even mom gets presents on dad's birthday!

Daddy time

 Everything seems like so much more fun when daddy is around.

Service with a Smile

For the last couple of years, the kids and I have helped support a charity even that our church organizes.  We bring in specific food donations and then put together gallon sized ziploc packages with specific items in it.  Then those packages eventually make their way to kids that don't have any food to eat over the weekend when they are not at school.  A great cause, and one that my kids really want to support.  So I took Hilde and Enoch over to the church one Saturday morning.  We dropped off the food donations and then had to come back an hour later to help assemble everything.  The church is next door to a McDonalds.  This meant that I took Hilde and Enoch to McDonald's for the very first time.  They were so excited to go.  What kid hasn't been to McD's?  Maybe only mine.  They were feeling pretty left out from popular culture.  The main reason we didn't go to McDonalds was because when we lived overseas we made a commitment to eat English food and not to stop at an American food place when traveling in Europe.  On the base there was a Burger King which we did eat at occasionally, options were very limited on base.  And we do eat Fast Food occasionally, but we normally pick Chipotle, Wendy's, Potbelly, Subway, Noodles, things like that.  And what was the verdict?  They had fun, but were a little underwhelmed.  They would, however, like to go there for lunch sometime.

Fort Making

The boys room is the perfect set up for some fort making.  Hilde and Enoch make a great team building it together.  Phinn and Freya are mostly part of the demolition crew.