Our recent accomplishements

I've really been wanting to blog more lately, but life seems to "get in the way!" :) So here is a pictorial look at our recent accomplishments, with commentary provided by yours truly.

SOCCER: Well, mostly it's hard for US to believe, but we survived another soccer season! It sure is crazy with two girls on different teams with two practices and two games a week! It made for a busy night 4 nights a week!! Emily surprised us and LOVED playing soccer!!!! She never wanted to be out and loved to chase after the ball. She kicked the ball about 500% more times than her last two seasons combined! She also loved to be goalie and jump on the ball! She sure was a star!!
Ella also surprised us. We thought she would LOVE soccer since she's the one who begged to sign up! She tired out easily and always wanted to be out!! But she LOVED being the goalie and did a great job pouncing on the ball! (She also liked hanging on the goal!)
And here's the supportive family...through rain, heat, cold, sun and hunger!
BASEBALL: Lucky for us, we don't have any children participating in baseball. But thanks to Ty's birthday, we got to watch the Orem Owlz at their last home baseball game. We sure felt all-American rootin' for the home team. (Unfortunately, they lost.) But the girls had fun waiting in a SUPER long line to get balloons. And Emily was amazing and caught a T-shirt from the T-shirt cannon!! She proudly wears it as a night shirt now. (And last year she got a foul ball, remember!) It was also fun to see Ty's name in lights on the scoreboard, wishing him a happy birthday!!!
Probably our (ok, Steve's) biggest accomplishment recently is FINALLY finishing the downstairs bathroom. All in all he tore out the linoleum, placed tile, re-painted the floor boards, sanded and painted the cupboards, replaced the missing ceiling, replaced the toilet, and probably more. He did have a little helper, though. Ella proudly ran to the bathroom everytime she saw daddy put on his work clothes.
(How Steve's looked most evenings and Saturdays.)
Our ducky wall of fame. Can you figure out which child is in which picture???
RANDOM: Here we celebrate each girl's random summer accomplishments!

Eden really sprouted up this summer!!

I mean really sprouted...just check out that bum! (Ok, that's mean...just her lazy mommy not putting a swim diaper on her!!)

Emily learned how to tie a shoe!!

Eden learned how to read!! (Actually she does love reading. Whenever we read to the kids for homework or before bedtime she races to the bookshelf, grabs a book and runs back to us and climbs on our lap...too cute!)

Ella's a super-genius as usual!

Farmer Emily riding a tractor!

Ella riding a cow!

Emily's quite the monkey on the swingset!

Here's Emily making her dad SUPER PROUD!!! She loves these comic books he bought the girls in Omaha!

Ella pilfered all this loot on our trip to Pirate Island!

Eden just charmed this off the pirates!

Eden and Karyssa became Swan Princesses!

Eden is quite the artist...she loves to draw...on ANYTHING!

We always knew Emily was a ham!

Eden was slightly less than thrilled about her clown.

Emily proving she's a monkey once again.

Emily, a mommy, at the church's children museum.

The girls each learned how to drive at Trafalga! (And Eden successfully learned to drop our camera enough to completely break it. Luckily we still have our old camera and we purchased the extended warranty on our new camera!)

The girls successfully begged their mom enough to buy them the garage sale find of the season. Two giant boxes FILLED with nice barbies and accessories and a GIANT barbie house (not pictured). And what did mom pay for a this find...$10! I'm awesome!

Mom successfully attended all the Young Women activities for the summer. (Believe me, that's an accomplishment!!) Our last activity was a face painting booth at the neighborhood party. We painted every child's face in the neighborhood (and most of the teens.) And most children asked for 3-5 pictures to cover their face!! The kids LOVED it!!!

And we were pretty naughty sometimes this summer!!

It took us 7 years, but we finally planted a tree in our backyard. If I'd only known you can get trees for about $30, I would have done this years ago!! Steve successfully planted the tree despite all his "helpers."

Emily found some cool Styrofoam buried in the yard.

We found a piece of metal buried deep in the ground. They all tried unsuccessfully to get the "Sword in the Stone" out.

Eden was anxious to help.

We got it out!!! Turns out it was the axle to a pioneer wagon. And I'm pretty sure I can see the word "Young" inscribed on it. :)

The real heir to the kingdom!

Here's the handsome man after yet another completed project! We're excited to watch this tree grow!

And here are two of the finds we found buried in a such a small area. The "wagon axle" and a "dinosaur bone"! Who knew we had such an interesting backyard?
And my latest accomplishment is actually finishing this blog. Only accomplished by sneaking downstairs several times, taking breaks to find the kids snacks, appeasing Eden by letting her bang on the keyboard (then reposting all the pictures she deleted), and finally putting Eden down for a nap. Phew. Come to think of it, every day is an accomplishment for a busy mom!!