Sweltering

I am just updating my week. Things have been going well so far. We are now in sort of a routine and though it is still hectic it isn't total chaos. But the intensity level is once again lifted. Tonight my central air conditioner went out. So we will just say that the fact that my house is 85 degrees still at 10:00pm at night has add an additon stress on everyone. This has seemed to up the contention in the house and a little of the homesickness. Luckily Craig's friend who does heat and air conditioning is willing to come up from Ephraim tomorrow morning and fix it for us!!! So hopefully we will only have one really hot night.

Things you forget

It is after 11:00 pm and my house is quiet. The last couple of weeks have been crazy at my house. Craig is taking 12 credits at USU. We had our famiy reunion over the 4th of July. I have had my sisters here for the last couple of weeks so we have been doing lots of family activities together. Kayla was just baptized last weekend. We are moving in a week and a half and I am in charge of my Dad's family reunion in about three weeks. So I will be updating July in pieces and it may take me most of August to get caught up. But right now I just want to blog about the present situation. As of last Friday I have an addition 5 children staying with us ranging in age of 10 down to 1 years of age. My sister Kerry and her husband went to Europe with our parents for 10 days. The kids have had a great time together. They only get to see each other about once a year because Kerry lives in Spokane Washington. I will say that I have forgotten what it is like to have a baby. Now my youngest is 4 which you would think that I would have remembered but you forget how intense life is with a 1 year old. I thought about the obvious stuff like falling down the stairs and keeping cleaning solution, knives anything dangerous our of reach....it is the more suttle things that had slipped my mind. So things that I have been reminded of.....you can't leave the bathroom door open or you will find your 1 year old smiling and laughing as he is playing in the toliet. Now the trick isn't for you to remember to shut the bathroom door but to get the other kids to remember to shut the bathroon door. We have lost a couple of hair accessories down the toilet because I refuse to fish them out. The other thing is how quickly things can go from good to meltdown. One minute they are all happy the next .....well you know. This was well evident in Sacrament meeting today and of course the meeting went over about 15 minutes. Luckily all the other kids did really well and Ben was the only one that had to be taken out. I did have to laugh at when my neice Elsa ( who will be eight tomorrow) said that our sacrament meeting was really noisy....oblivious to the fact the we were a great contributor to the noise. The last thing is that you know longer need a vacuum because they are more than happy to pick up and eat everything they find on the floor. I would not consider my floor dirty but you think about it a little differently when you know any little piece of anything is going into his mouth. We did get some funny looks with nine kids at church today and someone did ask Craig if they were all his. I remember the days when nine kids wasn't that unusual and our family of 6 kids seemed on the small side. The other thing I forgot is how fun it is to make them laugh. That makes all the other stuff worth it. Well I guess I need to sign off and get some sleep.

How to Clear a Pool

The place that we stayed for our reunion was completely filled. But somehow when we all showed up to swim everyone would leave. With only 4 people from our family missing we were a big group. 11 adults and 20 kids.

Maybe it was the fact that all of the little kids and the adults like to hangout in the hot tub.

Or maybe it was Uncle Mike Ellsworth (I have two sisters that married Mikes) launching kids across the pool. I have to say that Zach managed to get the most height. Whatever it was it was fun having the pool to ourselves.

Hanson Reunion "Alpine Slide"

We had our annual Family Reunion over the 4th of July. We had a great turn out this year. Everyone was there except Jarom and Liina. Jarom just started his residency on July 1st and for some reason he couldn't get the time off. We usually stay at the Silver King up in Park City and we always hit the Alpine Slide. This is a picture of Parker, Kayla and Elsa waiting in line to get on the lift for the slide.

Aunt Kathryn and some of the girls on the lift ahead of us.
Anna and Hunter ready to race down the hill.
This just made us laugh. Mike was riding with Hayley and was almost down when it stopped so he got off and just pulled Hayley the rest of the way.

My Photoshoot

I try to make the getting baptized a big deal for the kids. I took Kayla shopping to pickout her scriptures. We looked for a new dress but couldn't find one we liked more than the one Anna had so we bought her some new shoes to match. To finish it off I took her to get her hair cut. I also promise her we would do a photo shoot in her dress. So this afternoon I set up black sheets in my garage and did my first official photo shoot. I loved how the picuture turned out for the msot part. The close ups turned out the best. I think that I need to use my flash for the full body picture. These are a few of my favorites.

Anna decided that she also wanted to have a few pictures of her taken. This one was my favorite.
After doing pictures of Anna all of the kids wanted to join in. So here are a couple I took of them.

My kids don't think that it is a real photoshoot if you don't have the funny face picture.

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of my kids and I can't wait to try new things next time. After my move is over and life has settled down a little at least into some sort of normal.

Bonzai Surfer

Last Saturday was really hot and I didn't want to fight the crowds and the rec center so we decided to pull out the bonzai surfer to see what the kids could do. The had a ball. Some were able to stay on it better than others but everyone had a good time.

Mandy only managed to stay up for a few seconds...but thought it was hilarious when she fell.

Anna managed to have some very graceful or not so graceful falls.

Zach seem to do the best. It only took him a couple of runs before he had it down.


Kayla's main goal was to not fall into the cold water.

Kayla's Birthday

My little Kayla is now eight. I can't believe how fast the time has gone by.

For her birthday she wanted to invite a couple of friends to go with us to the Mayan for dinner. So Emilee and Rachel came along for all of the fun. We had a great time and the kids loved the diving.


After we were all done I had the kids get all together for a group picture outside the Mayan.

Happy Birhtday Kayla. We love you are so glad you are part of our family!!