John and Kylee: July and August 2022

After we got home from Canada and celebrated Miriam's birthday, the rest of the summer was a blur of yard work. I will do a different post about the monumental effort we put into our yard, but suffice it to say, my body hurts just thinking about it.

Thankfully we can't really work in the yard 24/7 (even if we did try as much as we could to do that), so we had to fit in some other things here and there. Mainly this is just going to be a lot of photos of my girls because they are so dang cute.

I can't imagine a better oldest sister than Eliza. Seriously.

My little one trying to take over our bed.

We did fit in some swim lessons over the summer. It turns out that you have to register your kids for summer swim in February, so we missed the window for the ideal situation. Holland ended up doing expensive private lessons at a woman's home. Honestly I thought she did pretty well there and seemed to make a little progress. My main issue was that the instructor really didn't seem to happy to see Holland, like ever. I couldn't handle her grumpy attitude, so when (much more affordable) lessons opened up at the beginning of August at the rec center, I signed Holland up. I didn't want to miss Holland taking lessons this summer though. She is kind of right at the point of having swimming click for her, and she needs the practice and instruction. I really hope it helped.

My older girls took lessons at the rec center. I guess swim lessons are a lot more popular for the medium sized kids (like 7 years old) because all of Holland's age classes were sold out for the summer, but the older girls had openings for the swim team prep class. They did that class all summer (swim team was sold out except for the 6am slot, no thank you). I really do think they improve their strokes and endurance in the class. I call that experience a win.

John had to tour Bingham Copper Mine as part of some kind of safety certification.

The girls made this cute sign for Eliza when she got back from Young Women Camp. She ran to me across the parking lot looking like the perfect little teen getting home from girls' camp with her choker, painted nails, and embroidery floss braided in her hair. She jumped up into my arms and gave me the tightest squeeze! I sure missed my girl, but she had a great time!

I missed her so much!

We still love nursing.

We went to Bill and Sheila's community production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was a lot of fun! I was surprised that Darcy seemed interested and happy to just watch it most of the play.

The actor that played Willy Wonka really made the production. He was great. The very best part though was when Holland told him (when we met him after the show) "I have read your book. It's really good." Honestly, could she be cuter??

This plumeria has kind of gone through the ringer since we brought it to Utah. First there were white flies. It was an infestation. I tried so, so many things to get rid of them, but eventually I just took it outside and doused it in pesiticide. That took care of them Unfortunately while it was outside the wind bent on of the branches really bad. We braced it with two stakes, but just looks like it has a cast on now. Later Darcy just reached up and yanked the other branch right over. It was a pretty bad bend so we decided to chop the branch to see if with could get the cutting to root and see if the cut branch would branch more. Neither of those things worked out to our disappointment.

We eventually got the bikes down from the garage ceiling eventually. The little helmet on Darcy, kind of kills me. I love it so much.

We have another little chocolate lover in the house.

Homemade blueberry cheesecake ice cream with graham cracker stir ins.

Darcy got her new glasses! She is SO cute in them. I have been so surprised how well she wears them. She actually wears them most of the time. For a while, our biggest issue was that she would randomly drop them places but have no idea where she left them. It definitely created a whole new thing for our family (I call it my new 'hobby') of finding her glasses. These glasses are weirdly expensive, so we just can't keep buying her new pairs all the time. After searching the house for hours one day, I told the girls that I would give whoever found her glasses $10. Within 5 minutes, Holland had the glasses in hand. Turns out they were behind some things in her closet where Darcy likes to play. I didn't even know that Darcy liked to play there. The other time that Darcy's glasses were really and truly lost they were under some things in the older girls' closet. I really did look in these closets while I was hunting for hours, but it was hidden more deeply than I would have thought.
Our other issue with these glasses is that Darcy is so rough with the lens. She literally rubbed them, lens side down, on the concrete. They are scratch resistant, but there is no resisting scratches if she is going to treat them like that. The first set of lens lasted about 5 months. We are on set two and hoping they last longer because, shoot, those are expensive.

I don't know who made this, but I have a lot of pictures of it on my camera roll.

Also, pictures of Miriam's friend Nina are on my camera roll from her FaceTimes with her friend.

One day we had a CRAZY morning: John throwing out his back by sneezing; Miriam losing her Primary talk; Darcy pouring a half gallon of milk out; trying to pop popcorn bags for the activity after church. It as so insane it was funny.

We got some hand me down swings from John's parents. Since we don't have any real trees in our yard, we hung them up in the basement. This where we had the climbing dome before. It has been fun to see this space go through several iterations of what kind of play it is has. It started with a four square court. Then we put up the climbing dome last Christmas. Six months later we hung these swings and got out this area rug (the one that was in our front room in Phoenix). Shortly after this we got some nice toy bins to make the space more organized. Just recently we zip tied some lamps to cross pieces of wood on the support wall and added a couple of floor lamps to improve the lighting in this area. We also just got a space heater. I would like to think that we are doing our best to make the space useful and lived in despite it being unfinished for now.

Time to retire the cool chandelier from Ellie's 3D art class.

We got the pool set up. It was so fun to have the Davises come visit and swim.

These babies playing together kind of kills me.

All tuckered out after a long day of playing.

Dirty face. We just take a lot of pictures of our baby.

We also went up the Davis's house. I love that we are within driving distance of them.

This reminded me of when Eliza was about this age and loved my "beeg boots."

"It's my beard!"

Trying out new hairstyles

Enjoying Miriam's birthday present.

Holding hands walking into swim

This sunset was incredible. I wish the picture did it justice.

Our sweetheart made us breakfast in bed.

There were 5 in the bed and the little one said... This was our back to school read a thon where we aren't allowed to get out of pjs before noon on the day before school starts.

This set of pictures melted my heart. What a cutie!

20 years since John went to the temple for the first time.

Chocolately snuggles

Holland started second grade. She is such a cutie. I wrote about her teacher already in her birthday post, but suffice it to say that we love her teacher, who is also named Kylee. Good name. When we met Ms. Jackson on Meet the Teacher night, I just got a good feeling from her. She seemed so happy to meet Holland. She is said it was awesome that they shared a name. She just seemed delighted at the cute things that Holland said. The first thing that Holland said to her was "I am a genius at math!" There is nothing that will endear someone to me faster than when someone notices how amazing and adorable my girls are.

Such a cute little room. Ms. Jackson made such a difference in Holland's whole outlook in life. I sure wish I knew what the secret sauce was that she was dishing out, but it was amazing. Surprisingly, she is also the only teacher that has contacted me about my child's behavior at school. Apparently Holland got sassy during math one day, but having this boundary of what is and isn't okay at school really makes all the difference.

First day of 8th grade for Eliza!

First day of second grade and sixth grade. Fortunately Darcy is still home with Mama. After the end of the first day of school it was so sweet that everyone clustered around the island wanting to tell me every detail about their first day.

Darcy loves nursery. It is so fun that John can be in there with her as a nursery leader. She loves Brother Charles too. One thing that nursery introduced her to is raisins. She loves raisins. So when we had raisin bread one day, all she wanted to do was pick out the raisins.

I love seeing her discover pretend play.

I love how Darcy misprounces words sometimes. When she was "woves" for "loves." "Can't meech it" for "Can't reach it." "Only eat tood" (food). She said her very first prayer at about 26 months old, and it was bring a tear to your eye cute. She also, loves, loves the home grown corn. It isn't unusual for her to eat two entire cobs of corn for dinner.

The Primary kids put together a display of their testimonies.

For the main Sunday session of stake conference, John and the girls sat on the stand that big stake center to sing. Holland, Darcy, and I watched the broadcast from home so we didn't have to wrangle a toddler for two hours. Darcy saw them on the TV and and it kind of blew her mind! "Daddy TV. Ellie TV! Can't see Miriam!" (She was a little bit behind the choir director.)

We had dinner at the Gotberg's house. It is fun that they have a daughter that is friends with Eliza at Centennial and a daughter in Miriam's class also.

Summer goal wall! I am proud of all the things that the girls worked on this summer. They are amazing.

Darcy wants a picture on the stairs too. I love talking to her about my daily task lists. She likes to add tasks like cuddling, and "how about nursing?" She also loves saying "Actually mine." about literally anything, like the rice at dinner. "Ice, actually mine."

This was our end of summer tea party. Caprese bites, cucumber and tomato salad, and chicken salad sandwiches on croissants. Our girls get so giddy about using the fancy china, and they spent the entire meal thinking up fancy names and titles for each of us.

Cookies and cupcakes for dessert.

We have been trying to pick up our Sunday evening board game tradition again. This is one way we have been trying to keep Darcy happy while we play.

Daddy daughter date to North Park

Someone's been stealing my shoes. Actually Eliza and I can share shoes now, so that's weird.

Devotional of drawing different proverbs.

One day John told Darcy he tooted. Darcy said to him, "Change Daddy's bum!"

Good thing she didn't have her glasses on when she got a face full of milk. She shouldn't squeeze when she should be nursing.

A good thought at a thought provoking fireside with Ben Schilaty. It made me want to be better at showing others I care. Also, Ellie was so cute and wanted to full on cuddle the entire meeting.

In the Fall we started ice skating lessons. They were a hit! The girls loved them so much and don't want to stop taking lessons. They raved and raved about them so much that Holland decided to switch to doing ice skating lessons rather than dance lessons.

One day Darcy was fixated on picking tomatoes and kept trying to pick green and orange tomatoes, even though we told her to just pick, the red ones. She told John, "Pick orange one, eat it." But claimed greens ones were yucky when she tried one. Also, she saw an airplane and reached up and said, "Touch it. No, too high."