Our Week

These first two pictures are from 2 or 3 weeks ago (can't remember now) Tyler earned his bobcat! Way to go Ty. As part of the "ceremony" I got to paint his face, though I can't remember what it all represented. Either way, he had fun and continues to love scouts.

I taught the kids how to sew buttons and Ty and Bryn really enjoyed it. Madison got frustrated because she kept messing up.

 Last weekend dad was throwing them all up in the air. Bryn and Kels are a bit more natural "flyers" than the others. They love it.

Bryn

Madison

Kelsey

Now that Brigham is crawling he follows me all over the house and is into everything, of course. So this is how I get dinner done. I hand him a spoon and taught him how to bang on the pans. Plus he loves the reflections!

 This weekend we took on a big project. We have a 1/2 acre of land, but a lot of our backyard is not used because it's just overgrown weeds, rotting leaves and debris. So we raked up a lot of the junk and bagged some, burned some, and left the rest of the big logs in a pile. We bought two big truck loads of dirt and had it dumped down there in the back. Then spread it all out one shovel-full and one wheel-barrow full at a time. Kenny and I were sore, and the kids were in dirt heaven. Sounds about right doesn't it? ;) no, but really they did help off and on and we had them working hard. Honestly we couldn't have done it without Kenny's brother Andy. He and Kenny have the same work schedule, and they both have every other Friday off, and their off-days happen to match up perfectly. So on Friday he came out with Sky and Jeremy. Then on Saturday we were all out there in the morning and all of the sudden their whole family pulled up and honked. It was a total surprise to me but we were SO grateful they came. Seriously it saved us. Kenny loves working alongside his brother and I think they help keep each other motivated and working hard. After a full day of working, we went and grabbed some dinner and headed to Beach Lake. The Westons have a fun inflatable raft that they can take the kids out on the lake and they love it. The boys even saw a few beavers in the water while they were out on the lake. It was a beautiful (dare I say, perfect!) weekend of weather and we were outside pretty much the whole time. It feels so good to do work outside on our land and see such progress. No better feeling. I'll have to get an "after" picture of the dirt all spread around. They planted some grass seed also, hopefully that will take well and we will have a much larger usable yard in a couple months!

We are sure spoiled with this beautiful Alaskan summer!! It's just so gorgeous everywhere we look!

**Edited to add pics from Sunday: After a nice google hangout with my family we roasted some marshmallows and ate s'mores for dessert.