Long-hair beauty to short-hair cutie

Abby has begged me to let her cut her hair for years. I finally told her when she turned 8, she could decide if she wanted it cut. Well, we were at the salon at 10:00 a.m. for her haircut.

This is her picture from last summer. Now I know every mom says this, but my daughter is SOOO beautiful!

 But this summer her bangs were always hanging in her eyes, and she would throw her hair into a ponytail. (Here she is modeling a shirt Grandma Johnson sent for her birthday).

This morning we cut a 10-inch length and saved it in a braid so we could donate it to Locks of Love. They make wigs for children who can't grow hair or who have lost their hair. Her hair was down to her waist before. And now...

 Here is the view from the back. She wanted the "flip" look. It is adorable (but I still cried at the salon when she cut it).

This shows how long her hair would have been. This braid will be donated.

 She is cute! She looks older. She is wearing a new outfit I made her for her birthday.

 That's my girl! I will post more about her birthday after she opens presents and we have cake, etc. tonight. Love you Abby!

Visit from friends and April Fool's day

 Our wonderful friends (who used to be neighbors, but are now our neighbors up north in Canada), the Deans, came for a visit. They were on their way down to Utah for spring break. We had a wonderful, happy Sunday evening visit. We had dinner and a lot of laughing, talking and games. It was so great to see that the kids picked right where they left off and were instant friends once again.

 Here are the "girls" and Augie... he's the only boy in this age group. Emma and her mom Heather came to visit the Deans as well. So from left, Emma, Abby, Emily, Shelby, and Augie.

 Playing games on the floor. Jimmy, Sammy, Chad and Riley (Emma in background).

 So sweet! I love this picture. Such good friends still! They played dress up and watched a movie.

 The moms: Me, Jessica holding Hailey, and Heather. We had a good chat... just what moms  need!

 Shelby looking like a rock star!

 More talking and having fun.

I miss you! Thanks for the visit, Jessica, and all your family. We'll meet again....sometime!

For April Fool's Day I had this "great" idea. I was looking up St. Patrick's day dinners (we had corned beef and cabbage and irish soda bread) when I saw this "cake." It's two meatloaves, cooked in layer cake pans, and frosted with mashed potatoes. I had leftover potatoes so I added them as scoops of "ice cream". So we had dessert for dinner...the potatoes look slightly purple because my comedic kids decided to color the milk blue, then another one decided to color it red. So we had purple milk that day.

Our "layer cake" from the side. It tasted okay, but the potatoes got cold quickly and needed some gravy.

And then we had dinner for dessert. I made a "pizza" out of a sugar cookie, some cream cheese frosting, and strawberries. My kids thought this was quite the treat. I hardly ever make homemade cookies, so they thought this was out of the norm. And to turn a cookie into their favorite food, pizza, well that was the bomb. I had lots of leftover dough so we cutout the letters of their names with alphabet cookie cutters. 

The next day the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile came to town. Abby and Augie went to see it. It is about 11 feet high. The people who drive it work for a year taking it all across the country. The next Monday we saw it pulling up to a red light, just like a normal car... hilarious looking car, of course.

Another look at the weinermobile. The sign in front shows there are several still in service.

 

I haven't posted a blog update for a very long time... so I apologize to the one person who actually checks my blog... anyway, here are a few pictures from March. We had a Mardi Gras party where Grammy made a cajun meal, a king cake, and provided masks and beads. It was a lot of fun! I have never celebrated Mardi Gras before, so this was a new tradition for us.

The bottom 3 pictures are from our "anniversary" weekend, or couples trip, whatever you want to call it since our anniversary isn't till June. We went down to Salt Lake, got a hotel, visited a zoo, went to a comedy show, then visited my parents. We forgot to take the camera to the zoo, so we had to buy a disposable camera and have yet to develop the pictures.... got to admit, I like digital cameras! Then a picture of me in our hotel (I hardly even include pictures of me, and I don't really like these, but thought I'd put them in anyway). Then the bottom picture is me and my parents and two brothers. We got to meet my brother Ammon's girlfriend, Jackie, and we really liked her. She was a lot of fun. We highly recommend keeping her, Ammon. She took this picture for us. Then we hopped in our van and went back to Idaho. It was a short trip but provided well-needed respite from the daily grind. Wish we could do it more often!

Autumn in Idaho

I have loved the weather this fall! We have had a good 3 week stretch of warm, sunny, Indian summer weather. It makes it worth getting up for the day! We've been busy with school, church, scouts, Augie's preschool, etc. but we've also had fun.

A couple of highlights from the past month were visiting my folks in Utah and a quick trip for Daddy, Augie, and Grammy to Yellowstone. Then we went to Boise to see my sister during the kids' fall break, and then Grandpa and Grandma Droegemueller came to visit us--yay! First time we've seen them in almost seven years. I'll blog about that later... still haven't gotten the pictures off the camera.

Anyway, here's a few pics from visiting my parents:

Abby has lost her front teeth... she has a lot of gaps in her smile!

My parents have built two greenhouses in their yard and sell the produce at the farmer's market. The greenhouse is 7 feet tall in the center... and yes, those tomato plants are about 6 feet tall!

It was almost 90 degrees there so we went to a park called Jensen's Grove to play and stayed near the water. This is a duck/fish pond.

Jimmy and Augie

They have this huge carousel swing. It was supposed to have 12 swings but only had 3 left. Originally it was made by a ingenious pioneer who had a pony to pull it around... thus it was tough for one mom to spin this rebuilt-of-steel model.

Two fountains offered cooling relief!

Abby in front of the beautiful flower gardens.

At the playground.

Grandma Jane had an old friend who's daughter got married, thus the reason for the timing of the trip on Labor Day weekend. The Kellys are a nice family... I last met Marissa when she was 10! (She's the bride)

One Monday that Daddy had off, he and his mom and Augie went to Yellowstone. Here are a few highlights.

Augie sees a buffalo! It's his first trip to Yellowstone.

A hot spring.

A hot pool that's a pretty shade of blue.

Daddy and Augie by Old Faithful.

Augie with Grammy.

This elk was right off the road, maybe 10 feet away. Augie was a very good wildlife spotter and he had a little sheet to track his animals. He also saw a fox, crow, squirrel, deer, but no moose, bear or eagle.

That's all for now... till I get more pictures and will tell about Boise trip and our visit from Grandma and Grandpa.

Looking Back at Summer

Oh, how I hate to think that summer is coming to an end! Already the nights are in the 30's and the leaves are coming off the trees. So I have to look back and remember that yes, we DID have a summer, and it was a rather good one (aside from our best friends moving out the day after the 4th of July, but we'll eventually forgive them for that...). We have about 11 weeks of summer between when one school starts and another begins, so we tried to do something every week that was "summer" fun and special. I've already blogged two birthdays and the air show, so now I'll add some more things we did. Winter is so long in Idaho that summer has to be special!

We celebrated the Fourth of July, of course. We had a barbecue, some sparklers, and glow sticks while we watched the city-wide fireworks from our yard.

Augie playing in the back yard. All the kids got matching t-shirts from Grammy.

Abby flinging her sparkler.

Jimmy's imitation of an alien. How funny!

We went to a Johnson family reunion. We hiked to a cave, went down the homemade waterslide, and had a talent show.

playing my violin (sorry the picture is sideways)

Abby and Jim coming down the waterslide.

Group picture after we made it up to 40 Horse Cave.

We also did some fun things just as a family. We went to Rigby Lake and enjoyed burying Abby in the sand and going down their new water slide... well, it's a slide that ends in the water. It was fun to see the different reactions on the children's faces as they went down the slide. Sam loved it and wouldn't quit; Augie loved it the first time till he hit the water, then wasn't so sure. Abby's face was comical. She was like, "This is fun... wait I'm nervous.. now I'm scared... now I'm terrified! How do I stop?" She cried after hitting the water. I guess she didn't understand that she'd go underwater.

The blue slide attaches to a floating dock, in about 12 feet of water. It's farther out than it looks. Sam is playing football with some college kids.

Augie in his life jacket.

Abby's quite the diva in her sunglasses.

Her cute little toes in the sand!

Jimmy digging his toes into the wet sand.

We went ice blocking one Monday evening for fun. Some people call it ice sledding. We bought two blocks of ice and since it was a spontaneous decision and we didn't bring towels, we just put pieces of cardboard on the ice then slid down the hill at Community Park. There was a baptist group there doing the same thing, and they gave us a pizza they had leftover. It was quite fun!

Abby on the way down.

Sam and Jim cheering after their run down the hill.

Jimmy sledding. It makes your seat a little wet...

Jimmy is in the center. Napolean Dynamite dance.

Jimmy was also in a dance festival. He'd been working since May on learning a few dances. He did the Napolean Dynamite dance, the Bollywood, Verse, Rock, and Hero, and participated in the finale which was Circle of Life. It was a new experience for him to learn to dance. Our stake in the church worked really hard, and had the costumes and choreography all figured out. We were very glad he decided to participate and it was fun to watch.

The grand finale, "Circle of Life."

Jimmy in the yellow shirt doing the Bollywood.

Jimmy in yellow and his friend Robert in blue during the Bollywood.

picture courtesy of lavahotsprings.com

We also went to Lava Hot Springs, which is a fun water park about 90 minutes from here. Jimmy's school offered a discount day. We played all day in the pool! Because I was in the water with the kids the whole time and Daddy was working (as he was during most of these activities) we didn't get any pictures. Here's a picture from the internet:
We got very sunburned that day, although we'd applied lots of sunscreen. We got back home around 8 in the evening and Daddy had dinner ready for us. It was a blast and worth the trip to spend a day in the sun and water. We did NOT go off the 10, 20, and 30 foot olympic dive towers, but Sam and I did go off the regular high dive and climbed the rock wall in the deep end of the indoor pool. All of us went down those red and green curly slides you see in the picture, and I forced Sam to go with me down the white slide (it was one of those free fall, "my butt did not touch slide" slides).

And the rest of the summer was full of lazy days where you can kick back and watch a million cartoons until you're bored and go outside and play. That's what summer's all about, right? We had lots of things keeping us busy and were so sad to bid summer goodbye on August 18th when Sam and Abby headed back to school.