Last Day of School!

Sadie & Halen had a fun year in Mrs. Hales and Mrs. Brindleys class this year. They were lucky to have had two great teachers. The year went by so fast and they are off to 3rd grade next year.

Aubrie loved her teacher Mrs. Perkins. I can't believe she is going on to 5th grade next year.

Favorite Food from Kauai

We never realized that the hot dog stand that was recommended to us by some locals we met on the beach would turn out to be one of the best meals we had during our trip.These hotdogs are called Puka Dogs. (Named one of the top ten on the Travel channel by Anothony Bourdain) They are so yummy, they are polish sausage and homemade buns filled with a Hawaiin mustard called lilikoi and a garlic lemon sauce. You then get to pick your flavor of relish, they had mango, pineapple, papaya, coconut and banana. The relish really was amazing it was made from fresh fruit made at the hotdog stand. I tried the pineapple and Ty had the cocounut relish, yum!!



Some of the other yummy foods were Mai Mai fresh fish and cocunut shrimp. We also loved the coconut syrup on french toast for breakfast and cheese cake made with coconut milk topped with passion fruit. Pretty much everywhere we went we had really good food at a suprising good price. I am missing Kauai. Can't imagine why!

First Camping Trip of Season

Our first camping trip of the season was over Memorial weekend. It rained most of the time mostly just a constant drizzle during the day but it poured on Saturday night leaving a lot of mud. Of course Monday the day we are supposed to leave turned out to be beautiful.

Here is Sadie with snails crawling all over her, she loves bugs and things. I bet this brings back memories for my mom. (When I was small I had collected snails on a camping trip and my mom woke to find them crawling all over our camper walls)

Halen and Kaiden

Austin, Jayden, Dakota

Sadie, Skyler, Lexie posing in front of the castle. I love to tease Mark about rolling out the huge green carpet he keeps in front of his trailer to keep the dirt out and bringing a castle. The girls love to play in it.

Little Snail Lady

Lexie and Sadie are best buddies.

Jayden

Kristen and Mike

Kristen is an awesome friend that has known me for a long time, she is such a patient person and looks past any flaws not just in me but all people. She has the highest level of tolerance I have ever seen. Thank goodness she puts up with me.

Mark and Angie

I am really guilty of not taking many pictures this trip. The place was beautiful and green with types of wild flowers that I have never seen before. We had a blast hanging out with friends as always. Ty and I have really come to appreciate some of our close friends these last couple of years and we have realized that good friends are not that easy to come by. I am talking about friends that have stuck with us through the years and know that we are not perfect but still want to hang out, we are lucky. What would we do without them?

Baptism

Sadie and Halen were baptized on Saturday, May 2nd. Grandparents came from all around and even a few good friends were there to share the special occasion with us.

Jayden & Dallin

My smart kids just keep suprising me. Jayden and Dallin got 4.0 's again for the 3rd semester in Junior High. They just keep outdoing my expectations. They make Ty and I so happy, they are such big helpers around the house and yard. Way to go boys! ( I totally had to talk them into this picture)

Sorry Peoples!

My good neighbor informed me a long time ago that she couldn't get my recipe for countertop cleaner to work. I haven't made my own batch because I was still using up the supply of store bought that I had. I finally checked to see if I had messed when posting it. Sure enough, what do you know! Here is a better recipe. I hope everyone is enjoying saving money and putting these ingredients into their food storage so that they can have their cleaning supplies built up.

Kitchen Countertop cleaner

2 tsp. borax
1 tsp. liquid dish soap
1 quart of warm water

Mix and put in spray bottle


Here is another one to try also- this is one of Sarah Snow's recipe, you may have seen her on John and Kate plus eight

1 cup vinegar and 1 cup water. This works on almost anything especially ward water build up.

Sadie and Halen

I can't believe they turned 8 years old yesterday! It seems impossible. We celebrated with about 25 friends on Friday afternoon, barbequeing hotdogs and making ice cream sundays. They had fun playing freeze tag, doing relay races and anything else they could think of. I think that even the neighbors were happy when the party ended, they were so loud! It was fun choas and Sadie and Halen loved it, they are used to chaos I am pretty sure. Sadie and Halen are best of friends and they are pretty special in our family. It seems like yesterday they were 2 and talking to each other a language only they understood and for Halen it was silent language. They kept me running like crazy. Some of the fun memories that we have of them when they were small was when Halen let Sadie climb on his back so she could reach the door knob. Sadie and Halen purposely hiding from Grandma Taylor while she was babysitting, made her panic when she couldn't find the pair of 2 year olds. They happened to be spotted by the neighbor just hanging out on the side of the house. Another fun memory was watching Halen drive the Barbie jeep with Sadie right beside him telling him how he should be doing it at age of 3. They were arguing as if they were a mini married couple. Life would not be the same without them, they were a suprise in the beginning and they continue to suprise us still.