Zachreson Family Reunion

Sorry that I'm a day late this week. We had a family reunion for my side of the family this weekend, and we were still driving home yesterday.

We left on my birthday (Thurs June 25) and drove all the way to Oakley, CA. It took us 15 hours! We made quite a few stops and some of them were at least an hour. Clara actually did pretty good too. She only got fussy a few times as we were driving all weekend!

The first thing we did was went canoeing. The kids were so excited to go. My mom watched the 3 youngest kids (including Clara) while the older kids got to go. We had so much fun. This is on the Sacramento River, but right where it enters the Bay. It was so pretty!Next we wend to a place called Pump It Up. We had the whole place reserved for just our family. The kids loved it. I've never seen Jed so happy. I could hardly get any good pictures of the kids. They were running around all over the place and never wanted to stay in once place long enough to get a picture. In this picture, the kids were on top of a big ball. Jeremy would run and jump on the ball and see how many kids he could knock off. The kids LOVED this game and it wore Jeremy out. Clara didn't really like it though. She was scared of how big everything was. She just sat and played with the door stop and loved every minute of that. By the end, she would crawl up on the blue mats at the bottom of the slides and "jump." She thought she was so big and having so much fun just like the other kids. It made me laugh.We also made it to go see some Redwood Trees. I loved hearing the kids talk about our little walk. They would say things like, "Hey, were in nature!" Growing up in Montana, I was too used to "being in nature" to really think things like that were cool. It made me giggle how excited the kids were to see a "wild animal squirrel" and other amazing things like that. We ended the reunion by having a BBQ with some extended family. My Aunt and Uncle (who would come visit us every year in MT) came with 3 of their 4 kids. I loved getting to visit with my cousins and Aunt and Uncle. Now that my immediate family is grown and lives so far away from each other, all our vacations are spent visiting with them. I never get to see my cousins and things, so it was great to have those few hours with them.

On our way back from California, we stopped in Reno to visit with one of Jeremy's cousins. It was the happiest I had seen Ken. I'm so glad he likes Reno. It was so fun to see him too. He has an extremely old dog that is so relaxed and pretty much just laid around. Clara loved seeing the dog, but anytime it would meander close by, she got pretty scared. It made me laugh. I was really scared of dogs at her age too. Like Mother like Daughter I guess.

Get Together

We were talking with Bishop and Sister Hawkes recently about how fun it would be to get all our friends from the ward together. The Hawkes decided to have a get together at their house. They want to get the word out to as many people as possible, so I decided to post it on my blog.

Come one come all, and tell as many people as you can!
It will be held at the Hawkes' house Friday Aug 8 at 7:00 pm. If you need their address, post a comment with your email address on it and I will send it to you.
Bring a treat to share!
Hopefully we'll see you there!

Happy Father's Day

First, I want to tribute Jeremy. He is such a great father. I love watching him with Clara. He will do anything just to get her to laugh. I love that he has no inhibitions when it comes to her.
Jeremy gets to put Clara to bed every night. That is their special time together. I love listening to them in Clara's room. He always plays with her for a little bit before she goes to bed. I love to hear the growling from Jeremy and the laughter from Clara. It sounds like a carnival is going on and it makes me wish I could be there too.Next, I have to tell my own father how much I love and appreciate him. It will be 7 years this week since he passed away of a heart attack. He taught me so much during his short time on earth. My dad wasn't much of a talker, so what I did learn from him, I learned by example. I learned the importance of putting off your desires to serve those around you. I learned the importance of putting your family first no matter what. I learned the best thing you can do to help others is listen and not preach.Last, I would like to tell my father-in-law how much I admire him. I also enjoy watching him with Clara. He lights up when she smiles at him. He always makes sure things run smoothly and on time, which I appreciate more than he will ever know. I am also grateful for the good example he is to Jeremy. Jeremy does things his father did because Jeremy knows if he does those things he will be a great father.

New Day

So I've decided to start posting on Mondays instead of Fridays. It seemed like my weekend adventures happened long before I actually wrote about them. So here's to my new day to post!

Jeremy has had some exciting things happen this last week. He went in for his 90 day review and his boss decided to give him a $1.50/hour raise! That definitely has allowed us to feel like we can breathe again. Jeremy also finished his summer class this week. Yeah for 1 1/2 months of no homework! He can work 8 - 4 and be home the rest of the evening without having to do homework! We sure will enjoy the extra time with him. The last day of class, Jeremy's teacher pulled him aside. He told Jeremy that he has a real talent for advertising design (the topic of the class.) Jeremy came home beaming with pride. Jeremy loves this teacher, so he was thrilled that someone he admires told him that he is really good at something. Since he loved the class, he is rethinking the kind of graphic design work he wants to do when he graduates. This teacher also gave Jeremy some contact information about an internship at an advertising agency. Jeremy will look into it and see what kind of experience he can get from this opportunity. So we might not have him home so early in the evening after all. But we'll keep you posted on how this opportunity goes. He hasn't even called the guy yet (he's supposed to do that today.) But I am so proud of Jeremy with how good he is at what he does. I love seeing his self esteem rise and how he can see that his work is good too.

On Saturday, June 13, we had a Beck Family race. All of Clara's cousins were there. Clara loves to run, especially with other kids, so I thought she would enjoy the race. She really wasn't sure what was going on, but loved running with the other kids. When it came time for her to cross the finish line, she got scared and didn't ever break the tape. Oh well. Silly girl. She did love her prize though. She got a cool new necklace, and a ball that lights up when you throw it. Clara hasn't put her ball down since she got it. It was raining before the race began and Clara got to hold Grandma's umbrella. It made us laugh that you could only see her little legs.She also got a pretty big bump this last week. I'm not ever sure what happened. We were playing outside and Clara was sitting at the top of some cement steps. She started crying and when I looked, she had bent over, but was still sitting. So I came to check her out and found this: Within half an hour or so you couldn't even see the bump anymore. The bruise is still there though.

Busy Week

This week has been another crazy busy week. We had my sister and her husband come down for a few days. Their little guy needed minor surgery at Primary Children's. So they stayed with me during that little ordeal. Here's a picture of their little guy right before they took him into surgery.My little brother also moved down this week. He'll live in the area for 2 months doing an internship at BYU. I'm so excited to have my family actually living so close to us!
On Tuesday this week, my friend took Clara and I to the zoo. Clara and Jared had a blast. Clara mostly loved watching Jared (my friend's little guy) run all over. She also liked seeing all the different kinds of animals. We watched an elephant show and a bird show. Clara LOVED the bird show. She was mesmerized the whole time. It was fun to see her be so fascinated with the birds.This was also a week of more projects! Here is the final framed cross-stitch that I talked about a few weeks ago. Jeremy's sister's birthday is today. I made it for her and it was done just in time to give it to her last night.The Young Women asked me to sew their girls camp bags for them. They leave for camp on Tuesday, so I needed to get those done. It was a little tricky as some steps were missing from the directions. But luckily I figured everything out and got them done in a relatively short amount of time. Each bag ended up taking an average of 2 hours each. They turned out so cute though. They are denim bags with fun fabric as lining. I kept the instructions and wrote down the pattern measurements so that I can make one for myself someday.I also made more overalls. Sorry the picture is a little blurry. For some reason, I couldn't ever get a focused picture.And the cute picture of the week is this one. Clara loves to help with the dishes, especially when Daddy is doing them.

A weekend in Fillmore

We finally got to go to Fillmore, UT after months of planning. The guys in our Elder's Quorum Presidency wanted a retreat with their families. The guys were so excited to go. They had ATV rides, fishing, swimming, and shooting planned. Doesn't that sound like family fun to you? Why is it when guys plan things, it's not really thought through? Despite the only half planned weekend, everyone had a blast!

The first thing we wanted to do was take the ATV's out for a ride. As the guys were getting them out of storage, the girls wandered around the property finding fun things to do. Clara was first shown the "swing" and was in heaven. She LOVES swings. The rest of the weekend, all I had to do to distract her from playing in the dirt was say, "Do you want to go swing?" She would run right over to the hammock and climb right in.Clara's almost twin, Brooke, came too. Brooke is a mere 2 weeks older than Clara and they act and look a lot alike. Brooke doesn't like swings so they found a trampoline. I took Clara over to jump on it. She was unsure of herself at first, but when she saw how much fun her twin was having, she forgot all fears and had a blast.Next came the ATV rides. We decided to all go and just go slow enough that Brooke and Clara could come along. Clara LOVED it. The whole rest of the weekend, she kept asking to be put on the ATV. Once on it, she wanted us to make it "go" for her. Her favorite part of the ride was seeing a horse up close and personal. I figured she would get scared, but she giggled with sheer delight when she finally saw it.The guys decided to go shooting when we got back from the ATV rides (and while dinner was cooking.) Jeremy was a little nervous to shoot a gun since he hadn't done it since he was a boy scout at age 12. However, his nerves soon left him. The highlight of the weekend for him was the fact that he shot a clay pigeon. (And yes, it was flying through the air.)The next morning, all the guys headed out on a long and faster ATV ride while the moms packed up the belongings and cleaned. The twins watched the movie "Curious George" while we waited for everyone to get back.We then headed into Fillmore to visit the old Territorial Capitol of Utah. It was a pretty interesting museum. Clara loved being able to run from one room to the next!
The last thing we did before we came home was head to the city pool for some swimming. We had to laugh that our little twins even had the same bathing suit. Both suits were bought on clearance at the end of last summer too. :)It really was a great weekend.

As a side note, this is a picture of the jumper I made my downstairs neighbor. I mentioned it in last week's post.