Bella turns 3

We were actually driving home for Bella's bday, so we didn't even tell her it was her birthday until the 12th. She's been so anxious for her birthday since everyone, except for Charlotte, has been before her birthday. She told me she wanted a Dora cake for her birthday, but when it came down to it, with all the unpacking, laundry and "back to life" stuff I had, I told her I'd let her pick out some cupcakes. I love making the cakes, but 1- they take a lot of time and 2- my kids don't eat a lot of cake anyway, so I end up feeling like I need to eat it so it doesn't go to waste. She was happy enough with picking out her cupcakes so I was good with that.

She's such a sweet girl and we love her so much. I can't believe she's 3. I remember Elizabeth at this age so well. They remind me a lot of each other. I think all in all she had a pretty good day.

Cross country trip- Part 3 (and final)

The rest of the trip we basically just hung around and played games, talked and just had a good time. For Suzanne's birthday we went mini golfing with the fam and then out for pizza.

There was playing in the pool

Charlotte hit 9 months

Playing with the animals

Picking blueberries 

 Brian's bday

 And then the glorious drive home. Actually, not so glorious. The last day, Brian got sick and I had to drive 13 hours with a 1 hour break that he suffered through. I was praying like crazy that I'd have the strength to stay awake. So the blessing of that combined with constant eating and we made it home. I wanted to take more pictures on the way back, but like I said, I was driving. I did stop a get a few in Wyoming though. I thought it was just beautiful through there. Well, so we made it home and are back to normal life.

Cross country trip- Part 2

The first few days of our visit we just hung out and played with all the cousins and such. I think our kids like their freedom a little too much. It's hard to balance their attitudes with it, but they actually handled it pretty well. There were lots of sleepovers, swimming, playing with toys, playing in the sandbox, etc. Then on July 1st we headed to Lake Seneca to a house with everyone for 5 days. It was a great house and it was big enough that we didn't feel like we were all on top of each other. 

The very first few minutes in there I noticed a tick on Elizabeth. That created a little drama and some "operating" from uncle Randy with unconventional tick removing tools. By the next day we had it all out though.

We had a big room with a bathroom  and it fit all of our family with extra space. The first day we just hung around and had a good time. I'm having a hard time remembering if the adults (minus me) went to the temple on Friday night or Saturday. I think it was Friday night. I volunteered to stay behind so that all the original Chudleighs could go together. They had a nice time and I had a fun time with the kiddos. We played games like duck duck goose, and the "eating" game. Then we watched a movie with some popcorn and I had 11 of the 13 kids all asleep before the parents returned. They were nice and brought me back some ice cream. Yum.

Sunday we went to church in Fayette and then went to the Sacred Grove. We had talked a little bit with the kids about why it was so special and GranChud gave a little lesson on it. At one point while we were there Cooper was  down on his knees. He said he wanted to say a prayer. I took pictures of it , of course , and he did it several other times. Such a cutie.

Oh, and it was my birthday, so Brian and the rest did a really good job at helping with the kids and making all the meals so I could relax for the day. They even put me at a table by myself for a bit which was a very calm and uncommon experience!


We had lots of good times at the lake. Charlotte only made 1 or 2 appearances at the lake. This was one of my favorite shots of her.

Elizabeth was a pro at the kayak.She and Sydney would go out on the water all day in either the paddle boat, kayak or canoe. She loved it!

Isabelle was hard to get a picture of. She was mostly a water watcher. She'd climb on the rocks and hop in a boat every once in a while. She mostly walked along the boardwalk and watch everyone.

Kiki was a real water girl. She did the boats but she also swam in the water a lot. She and Emma had a great time looking for rocks and shells.

 

One morning everyone volunteered to clean up the kelp or sea weed stuff that had floated onto the banks of the lake. Caroline was a good helper with that.

 

She was loving it all and was so cute!

Cooper and Jacob were little water buddies and just played played played all day. They didn't do a whole lot in the boats, but they were sure busy finding things to throw and swimming in the lake.

 Brian was enjoying himself as well. It's not often he gets to do this stuff and he loves it, so it was fun to watch him enjoying himself so much.

 

He was also a great kelp remover and helped roast marshmallows for the smores.

 

 

 Elizabeth really enjoyed those!

The Fourth of July was a beautiful day. We had a great sunset and enjoyed some sparklers. The "fireworks", however, well, let's just say we were disappointed. Apparently the big ones were done the night before. The kids were way bummed. Okay, me too. At least we have Pioneer Day fireworks to look forward to. 

 I could go on and on and share several hundred pictures, but I'll just wrap it up here saying we had a wonderful time at the lake house and there wasn't any fighting and hardly any drama with the kids, so it was a perfect get away!

Cross country trip- Part 1

Oh where to begin? Well, I supposed we'll begin at the beginning of our trip, but beware.... this will be a very long post! So it all started, for me, on Tuesday, June 21st. We had our family pictures taken and then my Mom, every so saint like, offered to take our kids until we left for our trip to PA. This was going to allow me to do oh so much, and pack too. :) Actually, I probably could have used at least another 2 days, but there was no way I could have gotten all done that I did without her (and my Dad) taking them for those 2 days. I got us all packed, cleaned most the house, got all the laundry done ( a feat for sure!) finally painted Cooper's bed, made bread to bring with us, and oat bars, had a dental cleaning plus 4 fillings filled, went to 2 exercise (the highlight), bought and planted 6 veggie plants, mowed the lawn, went to the library, grocery store, got the brakes fixed, did returns to 5 stores and got to sleep through the night. I'm tired just thinking of all I did, but mainly amazed that I could get all of that done in under 48 hours. Thank you thank you Mom and Dad!

So we began our trip around 4:00 on June 23rd and made it as far as Laramie Wyoming. Not too bad. It was a rough night though because we tried to find a hotel and stopped at like 7 places. It took us over an hour to find a hotel and one of the bad things was we were on our last day of our weight loss competition and because we couldn't find a hotel we missed our 100% on points for getting to bed too late. On a side note though, we did take 1st place in both points and weight loss. Brian was amazing. Here are our before and afters:

  So the next morning I couldn't go back to sleep. I was hoping to so I could get those last 10 points for sleep, but it wasn't going to happen, so I got up and went for a walk around the golf course and then tried to find a Wal-mart. Couldn't find one, so I went back to the hotel and was getting ready to go up to our room and Brian had come down. I realized that I left my phone cord in the car and needed it so I could upload our weight loss results and somehow when I grabbed the cord out, I dropped the keys in the car and locked them in. Funny thing, or not so funny, is that both Brian and I brought a spare key and they were both in the car. Arg! Brian handled it very well. I tried to find a wire hanger with no success, long story short, I married an amazing man. Just look how we got into our car!

 

I took these from our window and could hear him to explaining to people that no, he was not breaking into some one's car, simply his wife locked the keys in there.  It only took him about 20 minutes and he was able to pry the door open with some wood he found in the trees just by the parking lot. Amazing!

So as you can see, not a great start to the day, but not too awful, compared to what happened next. Yep.... next. I was driving and it was about 4:00 and all the sudden I couldn't move the steering wheel. It was mainly locked up and I was going like 75 in the fast lane. I looked and saw the check engine light, check gauges and that it was totally over heated. 

We pulled over and long story short, the serpentine belt had fallen off which ended up being a blessing since it was an easy repair and luckily the car shop was still open and we were able to get towed there and out in 2 hours. Since we had a car full with 5 kids they told us to just stay in the car and they'd tow us on top.  At least our view while we waited was pretty!

 Here we are still on top of the tow truck in front of the place that saved our day!

 It was kind of crazy. I truly thought we were going to tip over when they went through the ditch diving the 2 highways. The kids thought it was fun and seemed to stay in good spirits.

So we continued on our way, took about 1 1/2 hours to find a hotel and got a pretty good nights sleep just to do it all over again the next day 2 days. It was pretty uneventful, although the last night we could find a hotel and gave up to just take a little rest at a rest stop and continue on through the night. We made it in at 5:00 in the morning and were back out the door for church at 9:00. Brian was ever so sweet and let me sleep. He, however, was running on fumes for the rest of the day. So, note to everyone... book your hotels! Don't know what goes on in these cities, but for our trip back we made reservations. It's hard when you don't want to have to stop if you can keep going, but it sure beats trying to stay awake while you search for a hotel!

So sad

What's so sad? What's so sad is that I only did one post in June. What the heck?! I'm sure there's a lot I could post on, but I'm on vacation without my pictures and what is a post without pictures? Boring. But yeah. We're out in here in PA, actually, right now we're in NY. Everyone is at the lake and I'm on kid duty. I'm really only watching Andrew (my nephew). Bella and Charlotte are sleeping. Andrew is being really good so it's no big deal, matter of fact, it's very relaxing. I painted my toe nails, which I never do, browsed around the internet and then am going to read my book in a minute. We're having a great time and the kids love all the freedom and fun. It's hard to break them of it so I'm not looking forward to it in the near future. Well, like I said, posts are boring without pics, so here are a few. I took pictures of all the grand kids for Bri's Mom for her bday. We did it super fast and got a pretty good pic with all of them. Won't be trying that again anytime soon!

Uh-maz-ing!

 

If you've driven past our house in the last few weeks you would have seen this hottie outside working, but probably only for a split second 'cause he moves like lightening! That's right, this man is amazing! I used to wonder if it was bad that he always had to be busy doing something, but I've quickly come to realize how blessed I am that he works so hard and has to be doing something. Last week he built me 2 DVD shelves because I couldn't find what I wanted online, so I told him what I wanted, he bought the wood, built it, sanded it, painted it and hung them in 1 day. Along with that,  our yard is coming to life and he's put so much time into making it look so great. Sometimes I get jealous that he can gets to  go outside and work in the garden, plant seeds and watch the fruits of his labor while I sometimes gripe in my head that I'm doing all the things the kids need . As I was thinking about this the other day, I was inside with my kiddos and realize that I too have have a wonderful garden that I tend to and try and nurture and watch grow. Isn't it a beautiful garden?!!!

Love her!

So my Mom gave this hair towel to Liz and she was so excited to use it. After she washed her hair and I put it on, her eyes just grabbed me and I said, " I have to get a picture.... get in my room". I don't know what it was, but her eyes just stood out to me and they were so beautiful. There were a few shots where I couldn't decide if the B&W or color was better. I love that I can see her freckles better in the color ones, but I think the B&W bring some magic to them. Love this girl!