Thankful Thursday!

OK, Jodie, I am following your example and I'm going to give this a try! :) Today I am thankful for:

1. My family---each and every one of you!
2. Sleepy kids after a very. long. day.
3. My dear husband, who so willingly serves his community.
4. A certain grandmother who lets her rather fiesty two-year-old granddaughter lead her by the hand all over Costco and Ross without complaint. Oh yes, and who takes her five year old grandson to the elevator (which is actually the escalator) clear across the mall.
5. The Gospel, without which I don't know where I'd be.

Seven months!

Our little ray of sunshine turned 7 months almost two weeks ago, and as usual, I'm a little late getting around to blogging about it. Ella continues to be such a sweet and loving little girl. Such the happy baby, she puts up with her older siblings without too much complaint, and even treats them to a giggle every so often. I love, LOVE her expressions. Just a hint of mischief and so much joy. She's working very hard on learning to crawl. She wants to take off so she can keep up with everyone else. It won't be long now, and I'm SO not looking forward to trying to keep her out of everything. We love this girl and are grateful for the joy and laughter she brings to our home.

First Haircut (Times two!)

After going to the pool the last few weeks I noticed more and more that Garrett needed a haircut. Once he got out of the pool he looked like a bird that had just dried it's feathers after being wet. I guess you'd have to see it. I took a picture a while back, but it just doesn't do it justice. Anyway, tonight I finally talked (ahem...threatened) him into letting me cut it. After I was done with him I got to thinking that Lauren could use a little trim too. I've never taken her in for a cut and figured I could just do a little trim, I think I have trimmed her bangs once or twice. What I wasn't thinking was that the sides were quite a bit shorter than the back. So when I started on the side I was only cutting off and inch or so, but when I got around to the back it was closer to three. Yikes! I'm definitely not a pro, but I thought it turned out pretty cute and I know it will be much easier to comb through! While all this cutting was going on, there was Ella, gnawing away on her biter biscuit. I looked over and saw something similar to this:
I did stand it up a bit more to show the full effect for the picture (sorry, it was a horrible shot of her face so I cropped it). You see, it either stood up like that, or if it was down it bore a striking resemblance to a comb-over. It's pretty entertaining while blowing in the wind. Poor thing. When it was shorter I could put it in a pony tail and could curl the end with a little gel, but it had gotten way too long and even the ponytail wasn't remotely cute anymore. I have talked myself out of cutting it a hundred times over, but tonight I just couldn't take it anymore! I decided to trim it a bit. I took off a good two inches. It thought it would be a quick snip and we'd be done, but she's a squirmy little sweetheart so it took me a few tries. Again, not perfect, but much more manageable!
She looks scared stiff in that last picture, I promise she could have cared less what I was doing. Oh and forgive the remnants of the biter biscuit on her face. :) She got a nice warm bath before bedtime!

4th of July

Here I am, behind again! We haven't been home much, we've been out enjoying all the beautiful weather! We had a great 4th of July this year. That afternoon we headed to Todd's parents for some yummy food and water fun for the kids.

Todd and Ella, notice Ella's pager, he's starting her off early! ;)
Water balloons with Grandma. I think 99% of them hit the ground before reaching thier intended target.

Slip n' Slide!

Watching the fireworks. This was right after we got there. I think that was the only time we had all the kids actually sitting down!