14!

We love this girl and enjoyed celebrating her birthday!  She has wanted a long board, and that evening we went to Community Park so that she could have more space to learn to use it.  She is already getting good! She is an amazingly talented cake baker and decorator, with her own little business, but wanted me to make her birthday cake, so I felt pretty special.

Isabelle has a really great sense of humor and keeps us laughing with her perspective on things and her utilization of movie lines at just the right moments.
As an example of her unique humor:
Whenever Anni's hair is looking particularly thin and straggly, Isabelle gets laughing and says that she looks like a "homeless Prince".  It's very descriptive of how it looks in a really funny way. She always has lines like that.

Another thing that I particularly appreciate and admire about Isabelle or "Izzy" as her friends call her, is that she always accepts correction with complete humility.  She can laugh at herself and admit when she's in the wrong. She has a strong testimony and shares it with others.  She expresses herself really well and has such a sweet spirit about her.

Isabelle has great taste and is talented in so many ways. She's growing into a  great musician with piano and violin and is a good singer. She's a great athlete and has mental strength and stamina.  She is incredible at knowing how to entertain little kids and at helping people feel at ease and good about themselves.  She is also really good at teasing and exasperating her siblings when she is bored, but is learning to temper that impulse😃

Approaching the end of July

We read a lot of books out loud this summer (Shawn does the reading - I choose the books).  This is one of our favorite things to do in the evenings! Notice Abram taking a breathing treatment😄

If the opportunity ever presents itsself - as in I forget to close certain doors that have child proof locks on them - Anni is sure to take the opportunity to get all glammed up.  She's actually really good at getting things in the general area that they should go!

Our house goes three stories down, and the lowest level is an unfinished ginormous storage room.  The boys "cleaned" it all up, as in - rearranged things out of their way- so that they could make their own work stations.  Then they built all sorts of things.  It was fun to hear them pounding away downstairs at all hours:)

One morning Pace was pleased because he "looked just like dad". It was because he tucked in his shirt🤣

photo shoot

One evening, Maddie wanted to see if we could get a good senior picture, so Kami and I went with her to do our best! We ended up hiring someone to do her pictures later, but I had a great time with two of my beautiful girls:

oooooh frustrating that the best picture turned sideways:

camping out

We camped out as a family several times this summer.  The boys also camped out with cousins on the Kerns side for about a week, as well.  This was our first camp out of the summer and Anni's first camp out:

cooking foil dinners:

We camped at Umatilla Forks campground.
LOTS of crawdads in this river, which everyone was looking at:

The second day, Nolan decided he wanted to try out his new mess kit, so he set out to catch some crawdads.  He was more cautious about this than he has been in the past, since the last time he caught one, he got pinched pretty good.  

The whole process was pretty entertaining to us all.  The crawdads started out as a dark creepy black....

And as they were cooked they turned into a nice crimson color!:

Nolan buttered them and cut into them and everyone was a good sport and ate a *very tiny* piece.  There wasn't much to them!  Later I was telling Caden about it and he said that in Texas, everyone calls them Crawfish and cook up buckets of them and eat them.

Anni and I sampling Nolan's hammock:

Shawn standing beside us to give perspective about how high up Nolan put this thing.  He even slept here and said it was pretty comfortable:

Abram started making a fairy garden around an old stump and he and I really got into that for awhile:

idyllic summer days

I stayed at mom and dads for a couple of days and a night to pick strawberries.  I had that done in a couple of hours and then enjoyed weeding a hill and talking with mom for the rest of the time.  Anni thought it was pretty great to have an at-demand independent food source:

Meanwhile, Nolan worked on building a raft - one to float on it's own, not to hold anyone up:

And he and Abram and Pace also canoed with cousins:

We got busy making strawberry jam as soon as we got home:

Nolan teaching Anni to climb the rope:

Nolan helping me show off the size of my hydrangeas:

A day playing in the sprinklers:

meditating "ninja":

WHY are all the pictures turning side-ways?!??:

Walking to church:

We buy swimming passes every year and go swimming A LOT.  Well I should say that Nolan, Isabelle and Abram go a lot.  I take Pace and Anni at least once a week -because I have to keep a close eye on them, and Shawn only goes a few times:

One of many Sunday walks:

This particular walk was to the water tower, which the boys always beat us to and climb up and race all over it:

my girls:

A walk to a park:

The kids try to save 30% of what they earn, and Nolan had been saving everything  for a long time but suddenly had some things he really wanted. He bought a tent and a hammock and a mess kit:

Lots of trips to the library!  After this trip, I had to start dinner, but had to sneak a picture of these kids devouring their new books: