New Arrivals!

We had two new arrivals in our extended family over the summer!  

On July 10th, her big brother's birthday, Camilla Jane arrived.

She is my brother's second kid and we love her to pieces.

 The proud papa...

 Big brother loves her too!

In August, my sister had her first baby.  He arrived before his due date like a good little boy!  Lots of dark hair and looks just like his dad.  I had the privilege of being in town when he was born.  It's so much fun to love on a newborn.  Babies just don't stay little for very long!

 Jonathan Ezekiel Victor Sebastien 

Anya was in town with me, so she got to meet her new cousin too.

Yellowstone!!

Our summer trip this year was to Yellowstone National Park. 

It was fabulous.  We ended up renting a big cabin with Matt's sister's family in Island Park, ID.  It was so fun to spend that time with them enjoying the awesome sights of Yellowstone.

The whole gaggle of us waiting for Old Faithful

Who needs to see it when you have the book mark of it!

There she blows!

The Grand Prismatic Pool

Gibson Falls

Norris Basin

I think this is all of us!

Mammoth Hot Springs

Upper Falls at Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.

Yellowstone's Grand Canyon

What?

Love these two!

Norris Basin again!

Swimming in the Firehole swimming hole.

Bison traffic jam.

We saw a Grizzly!

This was taken from our car with my normal camera lense.

We saw another Grizzly eating it's kill.  I think it is or was an Elk.  This was taken with my "spy" lense.  He was actually just a brown dot to the naked eye, very hard to see.

The Saphire pool

The loft in our cabin rental!

It was a great cabin.  It inspired us to look for a cabin to buy that we could rent out, but also use for family events.  It may never happen, but it sure is a nice dream!

Passing time while dad is away...

Matt went away for about a month, the month of June.  While he was away we decided to pass the time.  We ended up going on a girls night to Wicked.  We left the boys home with a babysitter. It was awesome.  Still one of my favorite musicals!

Bonus, the Turners (and about half our ward. Hi Brother Rich!!) was there that night too!

We also went to the Circus.  Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey of course!  We realized that the last time we took the kids to the circus was before Matt was deployed.  The boys had never been.  So We decided to go, with our good friends the Turners again!

It was a blast!

The Girls Birthdays!

Our May birthday girls have birthdays 2 weeks apart.  So they often get lumped together, this post is no exception!

Hannah turned 13 this year, our second child to become a teenager!  Yikes!

For her birthday this year, we ended up going to Elitch Gardens.  It is an amusement park in Denver.  Hannah's school orchestra happened to be competing in the Denver Music in the Parks series.  So all her Orchestra friends, which happens to include her besties, were there too.  As a bonus, her orchestra did great and took 3rd place.  Not bad.

Hannah's Besties....

I love that she has such a great group of friends in Middle school!

This picture makes me laugh.  Hanna's cake, looks like some one is punching it into Anya.

We spoiled Hannah and got her, her very own violin.  She is a full size now, so we thought it was time.  She is in love with it, and we pulled off the surprise!

We bought it from a Luther her in Colorado Springs named Juan.  He owns Muejers. This is his violin shop where makes his own violins.  We didn't buy one of his, they are a fortune, but we did buy one that he hand selected and bought to sell in his shop.  It has a beautiful tone quality.  As we started talking to him we discovered that he is a BYU graduate, LDS (same religion as we are).  It was meant to be!

We found Hannah's violin on this rack.

Our youngest girl also had a birthday in May.

She is now in the double digits!

I love that she still makes wishes.

She got her flute...do you think she likes it?

oops!

So, I noticed that I haven't posted since Easter!  I guess that is what a going back to college at my age with 5 kiddos gets you.  I have a lot of catching up to do.  Unfortunately it won't be a lot of the little fun things I like to add for our family records.  It will just be the big stuff.  I will try not to neglect our family journal so badly again, but still in school so no guarantees!