Rainbow Falls....

After we all slept in from our long day in San Francisco, we went with Mike's family to Rainbow Falls near Groveland. The water was really cold. Again, it was water from the snow melt. But the kids braved it out and had fun. The adults mainly stayed out of the water.

Katelyn "posed" for her picture.

Megan and cousin, Taylor.

Mike with Mikayla. She loved the cold water and was mad when it was time to go.

Mon-ka sportin' the cool goggles.

Mikayla having a lot of fun. :)

The adults watching the 2-year olds and Katelyn play in the water.

Karly got cold. Of course, the child has no fat on her so she gets cold easy. She decided to warm up by laying on a rock.

Night Swimming....

To top it all off, we would take the kids swimming at the resort pool after dinner. We were really good at tiring them out so they would sleep in some. :)

Here is Monica and Karly (under water).

Baby Girl was tired and wanted Daddy.

Megan doing a cannonball.

Katelyn never lasted long in the pool. She was content to sit in a chair with a couple of towels wrapped around her.

Mike, Mikayla, and Megan.

Have a safe one....

I just wanted to wish everyone a safe and happy 4th of July!!! Keep a water bucket nearby when doing fireworks. When doing sparklers with the kids, make sure everyone has their own "square" of the sidewalk. And do most of the holding if a preschooler or toddler wants a sparkler too, just like their big sisters! And you can get a pretty bad burn from a sparkler (I know this from personal experience)! Just some words of wisdom from me!! :)

2 1/2 week summer vacation...

My kids are finally done with school!!! They finished yesterday and as of today, I am already ready to send them back. The fighting between all of them today was driving me insane. Out of school for less than 24 hours and already I wanted to lock them out of the house!! But as soon as I kicked the twins (Karly and Monica) out of the house and told them to go find some friends to play with it has been more peaceful. Now I am running around trying to get 7 people packed for Mike's side of the family vacation. We are going to Groveland, California for a week. Mike's mom reserved 4 cabins so we can all go there for our summer's vacation. We are only staying for part of the week. We go home 3 days before everyone else because Mike has to get back to work. We are going to Yosemite National Park one of the days and another day we are going into San Francisco. It should be fun.

The kids only get 2 1/2 weeks off for "summer vacation." Oh, the joys of year-round school. They got out July 2nd and they start the new school year July 20th. Megan will be in 6th, Karly in 4th and Monica in 1st. That's right, another one in full day school!! Yay!!! There are times I don't know if I like year-round but there are times I do. For one, I don't know what I would do with the kids for 3 months during the summer. And just when the kids are getting close to getting tired of school, they go off track for 3 weeks. Just the elementary school have the year-round schedule. The junior high and high school do not. From what I understand that it is a pain having kids in traditional and year-round but I will find that out next year....

Fearless....

Megan loves the singer Taylor Swift. I mean, every time Megan is in her room, she is listening to her Taylor Swift CDs. So when we found out that she was coming to ESA (EnergySolutions Arena- the old Delta Center) in Salt lake, we decided to try to get tickets to the concert. The day before tickets went on sale to the general public, I joined the Kellie Pickler fan club (the opening act for Taylor Swift) in order to get tickets earlier. I know, I know, the things we do for our kids. So on May 26, a school night none the less, Mike, Megan, Karly, and I went to the concert. My dear sister-in-law, Nikki, was kind enough to watch the youngest 3 for us. We went to Cafe Rio for dinner and off to the show we went.

Here is Megan and Karly and a view of the stage from our seats. They were in the upper bowl, but 3rd row upper bowl so not too bad. And they got T-shirts, too.

Some of the pictures aren't the greatest quality but you get the general idea. I thought her guitar was cool.

She is quite a good performer. Mike was even impressed and he's been to a lot of concerts.

There were also huge screens so you could get better close-up views.

This was the costume for the one song Karly wanted to see "Love Song." Taylor came out in this cool red dress and...

....this beautiful white dress was underneath. She changed near the end of the song. The really cool thing is that Taylor designed the set and made all the decisions about this tour and she is only 19!

It was a great concert and it was a lot of fun. Spending time with just Megan and Karly was great. It doesn't happen very much. The crazy thing is that this was Megan and Karly's third concert. Their first one was the Hannah Montana/Jonas Brothers concert back in October 2007. I had just had Mikayla 2 months before so Mike, being the great dad that he is, took Megan and Karly himself. Mike also took me to my first concert. I never thought about going to concerts as a teenager, so my first concert I was 21 and it was Alanis Morrisette (Jagged Little Pill tour) back in 1996. That is more my type of music but I have to admit I like Taylor Swift. She seems to to a nice girl. I would rather have Megan like her than Miley Cyrus or other females singers right now. I am not much for country music. It has moved into the acceptable category since I married Mike. Mike likes rap and country the most. The 2 types I did not like when we were dating. Country has somewhat redeemed itself and rap, not so much. I still don't like it.

Finally....

I know that y'all have been waiting on pins and needles to see what my "theme" was for the girls' Easter dresses this year! ;) So I won't keep you waiting any longer. It was rainbow pastels. Each girl had their own color. Megan had blue, Karly had pink, Monica had yellow, Katelyn had purple and Mikayla had green.

Here is the group after church because there just wasn't time before 9 am church on Easter morning to get a picture in. Mikayla apparently was done with pictures at this point.

I took a separate picture of Mikayla before Megan's but she decided she needed to be in this one also. So I did not post a separate one of her because she is in this one with Megan....

....and this one with Monica. But she is that cute so we decided to let her stay in both. :)

Here is Karly. Very cute!

Here is my Katelyn. She likes to pose for pictures now, obviously. :)

I know that my themes for the girls dresses may seem a little crazy. And it is. But I enjoy knowing that my girls look cute and go together in some way. Even if it is just in my mind! :)

That can't taste good...

Woo hoo! I finally got the pictures from our other camera downloaded. So we are going to do a little bit of a rewind here. These pictures are from the night before Easter. The traditional dyeing of the Easter eggs. Sorry that there are no pictures of the older kids. It was the usual dyeing session with them. Mikayla was the fun one that night. I don't mean any offense to the older kids....but it's true!!! Mike was helping Mikayla dye her eggs. Then she started to use the fork (ran out of plastic spoons) to eat the dye! Mike thought it was hilarious. Okay, I thought it was funny, too. :)

Here's Mikayla staring at Dad and laughing at his feeble attempts at trying to get her to stop.

Yep, I got a shot of the "meal" she was having. There is also an egg in that cup.

The after effects. She dyed a blue, a green, and a yellow egg. Mike kept giving her the darker colors because he thought it was funny. Needless to say, Mike and Mikayla have the same sense of humor. I just tell him she is more his than mine.