Grandma's Visit

Grandma Puffer came to visit us these past 2 weeks and it was so GREAT!!! I haven't done any laundry, folding or dishes since she came (it was heaven). I was able to get so much ready for the baby and now I think I'm almost ready (but not quite - I'm still enjoying a full night's sleep). While she was here we all got sick so she also took care of us. Thank you so much Grandma. We miss you already!

Grandma had a birthday while she was here. She celebrated by going to Sam's soccer practice (what a trouper). Lexi and I stayed home and frosted cupcakes and got things ready for her "surprise" party. When she walked in the door she was greeted by silly string.

Grandma blowing out her candles with a little "help."

Ben took Grandma to the Syrup Sop in the nearby town of Loachapoka. Doesn't get anymore Southern authentic than this! =)

Of course we took her to a volleyball game. The game was against Alabama and we WON!!!!

Just had to put in a picture of Ben to show you how crazy he gets at the games. Don't you just love his hair?

Grandma made Dayne a quilt for his bed. He LOVES it so much - he calls it his Auburn Tigers blanket.

Who do you think is going to miss Grandma the most?

Volleyball

Last night we went to the college volleyball game. We've been trying to go to as many games as we can. There is a girl in our church congregation that is on the volleyball team so a lot of the members of the church try to go and support her. It's tons of fun and the kids LOVE it! They love doing all of the cheers (especially the war eagle cheer) and Ben of course has a lot of school spirit. Last night he was stomping on the bleachers so hard that his stomping could be distinguished on the other side of the auditorium. One of these days we're hoping to snag a free t-shirt for all of his efforts!

This is the mascot, Aubie. Dayne LOVES Aubie, but everytime he gets close, he get star-struck.

Lauren (the girl in our congregation) is the one blocking the ball. We found out a couple of months ago that her sister is married to my cousin. Small world!

The kids love this cheer because they like to sing along with it. It's the song "Battle Hymn of the Republic," but at the end where it supposed to say "our God is marching on" we sing "A-U-B-U-R-N." This was at the end of the game so a lot of the people there had left.

Soccer Season

Sam has just started up soccer and he had his first game the other night. It sure was fun to watch him 'play' soccer. It was interesting for the whole team actually because we'd only had 1 practice before the game (because the weather had been bad, his other 2 practices had been canceled). Despite his daydreaming on the field, he really does love the idea of playing soccer. He does a great job dribbling the ball and making goals and there are a lot of fun kids on his team. I love little kid soccer!!!

Sam is #12.

College Football

It's been such a long time since I've posted anything and it hasn't been because there was nothing to post. We've been really busy with school and soccer starting, but the real reason is that we got a new computer and it's taken forever to set everything up. What's really nice is that this new computer is WAY faster. I swear that computers age in dog years - how can something that is only 3 or 4 years old be so out-of-date? The problem with getting new things is that then you have to get other new things to keep up with them. That's one of the reasons that we got this new computer - our old computer couldn't handle the photos from Ben's new (amazing) camera. Oh well. I won't complain because I like both of them - the new camera and the computer!

Now - getting back to the important things in life - college football has started up. Not that this would normally be in the forefront of my brain come fall time, but when you live in a college town - a southern college town - the world revolves around the pigskin. Especially when we've been winning!!! Auburn played West Virginia last Saturday and it was a crazy. They had to delay the game an hour because of the lightening storm. Ben said that it was raining so hard that it looked like a river coming down the stadium stairs. They must have super good drainage on the field because the field was completely flooded, but as soon as it stopped raining the field cleared up. Ben was the only one in the family at the game, but the rest of us did enjoy the tailgating before the game.

Lexi and Sam had their faces painted at the tail gate party. Our church congregation puts on a tailgating party for 3 or 4 of the games during the season. It's so much fun and gets people into the spirit of the football games.

This is called the Tiger Walk. The football players walk from the athletic facility to the football stadium before the game to the tune of adoring football fans.

Toomer's Corner - whenever Auburn wins a football game the oak trees at Toomer's Corner get blasted with toilet paper. It looks pretty cool!

D.C. Family Vacation

At the beginning of August the kids' school and Ben's school had vacation time that coincided. It was only for a week, but we really wanted take advantage of the time together. We decided to go to Washington D.C. for our vacation and visit some of our friends that live in North Carolina. It was a whirlwind trip, but it was definitely worth it. The kids absolutely LOVED it!!!

Saturday morning we headed out of Auburn to Wake Forest, NC to visit the Henry's, friends from college. That was one of the highlights of the trip for our kids. They loved playing with the Henry's and an added perk was that they had a super cute dog!


Sunday afternoon we left NC and went straight to the Washington D.C. temple. We didn't get there before the sun went down so we didn't get a whole lot of family pictures here. However, the temple was beautiful at night.




We stayed in Alexandria, so we took the Metro into D.C. on Monday morning and checked out the Mall. On this first day we hit the Capital (couldn't go inside because we had food with us), the US Botanical Gardens, Air and Space Museum, Natural History Museum, and the American History Museum. Dayne was in heaven because he got to go on a train (the Metro) and go inside a building filled with airplanes (2 of his 3 obsessions at the moment).






On our 2nd day we went to Christ Church in Alexandria (which is where George Washington went to church) then drove to Arlington Cemetery. We went on a bus tour, which I would highly recommend unless you like hiking up and down hills for fun. After that we took the Metro back to the Mall so we could go to the top of the Washington Monument. We had tickets for 3pm, but we were 15 minutes late and missed it - one of our regrets! Next we saw the WWII, Vietnam, Lincoln and Korean War Memorials. I was really tired by the end of the day, but I'm glad we got through it all.





On the 3rd day we went to the University of Virginia to check out the Academic Village (if you want to know more about it click the link because I don't think I'll explain it correctly). It was designed by Thomas Jefferson and it was amazing. The University of Virginia's campus was one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen. I'm glad we checked it out (thanks to Butch). After U.Va. we went to Monticello, Jefferson's estate, which was pretty close by. The grounds around the house were awesome as well as the view from the house and gardens. (I did have to laugh when the tour guide refered to us being in the mountains - they were glorified hills!) After Monticello we headed back home by way of Tennessee - just to say we had been there. All in all, our trek covered 5 days and 6 states plus the District of Columbia. Can't wait to do something like that again!

Baby Blanket

Lexi has really been itching to try her hand at sewing for a while. A friend of hers has done a few sewing projects and Lexi decided that it looked like fun. She wanted to make a baby blanket for the baby, but I made her wait until after we got back from Utah to do it (and we wanted to know the sex of the baby first as well). A few weeks ago we finally went to the store to pick out the fabric and got down to it. Luckily baby blankets don't require too much skill to put together (at least the one's that I supervise). She did a great job with it and is already looking for the next project. The only hang up we had was she wasn't tall enough to reach the pedal and hold the fabric so we switched back and forth with that - she would guide the fabric while I did the pedal and vice versa. She's really excited now that it's done and can't wait for the baby to see it!

Doesn't she look like such a big girl!!?!

The finished product.

Utah with the Family

So, the week after we went to California I tried to just hang out at my parent's house because the kids were traveled out and a little cantankerous (to put it mildly). Other than the crankiness we did have a lot of fun while we were there. However, I will no longer be taking any vacations without Ben. I really missed him and it just wasn't worth it doing things by my-pregnant-self and 3 kids. Here are some of the things we managed to do without Dad.



Jill and Troy got us tickets to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. It was a beautiful temple and the kids liked being able to go through it with the Parkers.

The next day we went to the Orem City pool. I wish we had city pools like this is Alabama. I would be much more motivated to take the kids. I love that they have such a huge area for little kids to play.

We also got to celebrate Brooklyn's 3rd birthday. It was a girlie party - pink and "princess"y.

On the morning of the 4th of July my brother Dayne took me and the kids fishing up on the Provo river. I actually forgot how much fun it is to fish. The kids would like Ben and I to get a fishing license and poles so we can go fishing here in Alabama. And no, we didn't catch anything.

California Trip

I realize that it's been a WAY long time since posting, but it's been an extremely busy summer. And when it hasn't been busy, I've just been lazy! At the end of June the kids and I flew to Utah to visit my family. We got in at 10pm that night and left to drive to Oceanside, California the next morning at 7am for a family reunion. The kids did really great considering they had been traveling so much. I was really proud of them on that leg of the journey.


1st Day in San Diego:

We checked out the San Diego Temple. . .


. . . went to old town San Diego. . .

. . .and drove around Lakeside and El Cajon (our old stomping grounds). This is the house where Kerri (I think), me, Dayne and Jonathon were born.

The next 2 days at the hotel we hung out at the family reunion. Here are some of the things we did -

-swam in the pool
-hung out in the hot tub
-went to the beach in Oceanside
-watched Uncle Dayne catch (and pretend to eat) a crab
-caught up with family
-enjoyed ourselves as much as possible (which was a little hard because our sliding glass door was 15 feet from the marina. . . and no fence!)

On the way home we stopped to eat lunch next to the St. George Temple. It's a beautiful temple, but it was insanely hot in St. George. Thank goodness it was a dry heat! =)

Signs of Summer

We've been having a great summer. It's been incredibly hot and humid here which makes for some fun water activities. The kids just finished up their swim lessons and recently we've been playing on our homemade water slide. We have a great hill in our backyard that makes it really fast.






Along with summer also comes fruit. . . and lots of it. My friend recently returned from her parent's home in Northern Alabama. Her parents have some awesome peach connections so she brought me millions of peaches (well- just a lot, but we've been singing that song a lot lately). They are so amazing I don't think I'll ever be able to buy them at the store anymore. We couldn't eat all of them this week so we cut a bunch of them up and froze them for smoothies. You can see how enthused Ben has been with this project.

Homemade Laundry Soap

About a month ago I decided that I was going to try out cloth diapers for the next child. I ended up buying a few diapers to use while I was potty training Dayne to see if I wanted to invest more into it. I figured that it would cost us quite a bit less for diapers if I only had to buy them once and be done with it. I figure that the initial investment will be about $300, but then I won't have to buy anymore after that (I calculated that if the baby were potty trained by 2 1/2 years old then we would have spent approximately $1,000 for diapers).



After I had put the diapers through a few loads of laundry Ben did some calculations of his own. He figured that the cost is actually about the same because water is so expensive here (he calculated how much it cost per diaper/per load - for those of you who know Ben, that is soooo typical). Anyway, he also thought that it wasn't that much different for the environment. Anyway, to make a long story shorter, I decided to make my own laundry soap that was environmentally friendly and incredibly cost effective. I was really surprised with how easy it was and Ben was really happy that I'm going to be saving TONS of money (we go through a lot of laundry detergent). Oh and by the way, it actually works.

Next week I'm going to tackle making my own household cleaning products. . .

Here are the kids helping me to
make the laundry detergent.
They were calling it"magic potion."

Family Photos

A friend of mine came over with her super cool camera and shot some photos of our family. It was pretty informal and I thought it was pretty funny that the only thing we really had that "matched" was Auburn University apparel. Ya, we're dorks!