The difference between boys and girls

OK, so for those of you who don't know, boys and girls, they are totally different. (Totally) A few days ago (Maybe a week?) I pulled out the catapult that the scouts were building and KT took some pictures. My dad had mentioned that he wanted to see what the catapult looked like, so I asked KT to post some pictures of the catapult. So what does she do? She showcases the kids. Seriously, there is a catapult here, the childrens are cool and all, but we've seen them before. So unless the catapult is firing childrens (Which it could have done with enough bungees, by the way) they were totally not the focus I had in mind. So, in the interest of doing things right, Imma post some about the catapult.

So we met tonight and made a few last minute modifications on the catapult and spent about 40-45 minutes firing it off. The more we fired it though, the further we wanted it to fire things, so we put more and more bungee cords on it. It got to where it took a goodly amount of effort to simply push the lever arm back. Finally we got so many bungees on there that when we fired the catapult, the lever arm exploded when it hit the backstop. (Which was totally awesome) Also, as an added benefit to the explosion, the rock we were firing went further than any of the previous shots, going approximately 20 yards. It was pretty awesome.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures until after the arm blew up, but that's cool. Anyway, here are the post explosion pictures (Which are pretty similar to previous, sans the arm of course).



So these are my teachers (Minus one, plus a deacon) sitting around the broken remains. I'd name them for you, but if you know them there's no point in me doing that, and if you don't know them, you probably don't care what their names are.



I have pictures at other angles, but really this one says what needs to be said. All in all it was pretty easy to build too. It took us about 3 weeks to build and, well, break it, but if we had been more on our game we could have built it in 2. (Assuming you only work about 1 hour per week. And you aren't allowed to use power tools. The no power tools hurt.) I got the instructions from a website. Although, quite frankly you don't need them really. Just looking at a picture of it would probably be enough.

What Dad does for Fun....

My kids think I am pretty great, but when they want to have fun they want to play with their Dad. I guess if I horsed around more or built catapults, or climbed trees I would be considered more fun, but I don't, and Dad does.

Jared had the great idea to build a catapult with his Young Men. He got it out yesterday to show the kids and they loved it! I am so grateful that Jared is such a fun Dad and that our kids love playing with him so much.

Silver Beach

Landon, Tori, and Ella had their very first trip to the beach today. We headed over to Silver Beach on Lake Michigan with some other families in our ward. We had a blast!! I have never been to a Lake Beach like this before, I felt like I was at the ocean.
I was worried about how the kids would react to the beach. Landon and Ella abhor swimming and yesterday Landon had told me he did not want to go to the beach because he was scared. I figured we'd give it a try and leave if the kids hated it. I was shocked to find that my kids love the beach. It was so nice to get to know some of the ladies in my ward a little better, and it was great to have their older children play with and help watch my kids for me.
At first Landon only wanted to play in the sand and wanted nothing to do with the water. I was OK with this because he was happy and having fun. Tori got right in the water though. She is my brave child.


After Landon had played in the sand for a bit I decided to get him in the water. I told him he had to give it a try and if he didn't like it he could go back and play in the sand. He was really mad at me when I took him into the Lake but after about a minute of being sad he loved it! The rest of the day I had a hard time getting him out of the water.Tori and Landon had a great time sitting on the shore waiting for the water to pass over their legs.

I told you that originally Landon didn't even want to come to the beach. I was able to change his mind by telling him that we would build a sand castle. Here is Landon showing off our sand castle. He even brought a little American flag from home to put on top of it, unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the castle with the flag on top.
Tori let me bury her in the sand.

This is as far as Landon would let me bury him.

This is how we all felt after 5 hours at the beach, so I decided it was time to head home. Landon didn't want to leave but once I promised him we'd come back again (and a cheeseburger) he agreed to leave.

4th of July

We had a fun low key 4th of July this year. We started the day off by going to our ward's 4th of July breakfast. The breakfast was yummy and it was nice to visit with friends in the ward. After the breakfast the kids had a little bike "parade." Landon had a great time riding his bike around with all the other kids in the ward.I had planned on making the girls 4th of July skirts months ago but I put of making them until the night before. I was up way too late making them but I think they turned out really cute. You can't really tell in the pictures but the red layer has little white polka dots.

Landon refused to be in the picture with Jared and the girls.

We decided to forgo the firework shows this year. Nothing started until after 10 PM and I figured a fun night of fire works would not be worth grumpy kids in the morning. So instead we lit some sparklers and morning glories. Landon and Tori loved playing with the sparklers and Ella loved watching.

While Ella sat on the grass watching the older kids, she decided to stand herself up from the middle of the ground for the first time! Every time she would fall down she would just stand right back up and start walking around. She isn't full on walking yet but she is getting closer everyday. My baby is growing up.