Fun Week

A colony of ants have decided to take over our side walk. Clara loves going outside and just watching them. I think it's gross!

I met a girl named Danielle my freshman year of college. Her and I became fast friends and stayed close friends for many years. I've met her family on several occasions, and have fallen in love with them. I love all the Hinsdales and consider them my own family. I'm not sure if they feel the same way about me though. They all live out East though, and so I haven't seen them in years. I was so excited to learn that one of the Hinsdale girls now lives in Salt Lake. As soon as I found that out, I invited her over for dinner. When you haven't seen a friend in years, you always worry if visiting with them will be awkward. I was so glad to have Erin over and talk just like old times. I had a blast. Jeremy ended up having to work late, so she didn't get to meet him. But having her meet Clara and getting to visit with her was the highlight of my week! Thanks for coming Erin!

The day after she left, I headed out to a family reunion on Jeremy's side of the family. Jeremy couldn't come because he couldn't take time off with his job being so new. But Clara had a blast playing with her cousins.

Because I don't want to have to retype things again, here is what I wrote as a post on a different blog about 0ur family reunion:

Clara loved getting to play in our tent. That first day there, she kept asking me to come with her to go "sleep" in the tent.

Soon after arriving, Camille got out her finger nail polish and painted all the girls' fingernails. Clara LOVED her sparkly nails and they were one of the first things she showed Jeremy when we got home.Once the finger painting was done, Clara, Bradley, and Caden played in the water. This was the first of many activities these three did together. They were the best of friends all weekend.Clara brought out her "house" with some people to play in the house. As soon as Caden and Bradley saw that, they wanted to play too. Clara was so good about sharing!We had a campfire program that night. For some reason, every time John does the actions to our silly songs, I have to get a picture. Clara had a blast singing songs and being with her "friends." (All weekend long she kept calling our family members friends. Each time we got separated from the group, she would ask, "Where are our friends?")Clara slept very soundly both nights. That first night, she slept longer than I did. I was awake about 45 minutes before Clara woke up. I was a little bored, so I decided to get out the camera. Here's a picture of my sleeping beauty at 8 in the morning.After breakfast came a game of horse shoes. Clara was one of the best spectators there. She would say, "ahhh" every time the horse shoe landed. Clara also learned how to blow bubbles for the first time this weekend. She's been trying to do it herself all summer. I think she needed to see Caden and Bradley blow them to understand that someone her size really could do it. She was so proud of herself.As soon as the adult game of horse shoes was over, Caden, Bradley, and Clara took their chance at getting to play horse shoes.It soon turned into "raining" dirt. Those three made it rain dirt on each other and had a blast doing it. There was a tepee already built when we arrived. The kids spent a lot of time all weekend trying to build tepees of their own. This is Clara mimicking the bigger kids by "pounding" a stick into the ground.Clara's older boy cousins decided to build a bow and arrow. Clara would watch them and when she found it laying on the ground, picked it up. She then slung rocks and sticks with the best of them. I was pretty impressed with how quickly she got that thing to work.Melissa was playing the doubles game with the older cousins. This is where you all take turns rolling dice. As soon as you get doubles, you have to put on a few articles of clothing and then attempt to eat a candy bar with 2 knives before the next person rolls their doubles and you have to pass everything to them so that they can have their chance to eat chocolate. Clara watched that game intently and kept wanting to wear the hat and gloves. When that game was over, she got to wear them, and was so excited to show them to me.During the "doubles" games, play-dough was out for the 3 youngest kids to play with. Clara didn't want to do it while she could watch the silly hat game. But when that was over, she happily played with the play-dough for about 20 minutes.Clara had fun playing ring around the rosies with Alyssa. They were doing it backwards. They would walk in a circle crouched like that and then say, "all fall up," and stood up. We played a family version of fear factor. Here is a picture of Ashlyn and Tanner after they had to eat a plate full of whip cream. (By the way - Ashlyn beat the pants off Tanner.)After Fear Factor, we did our nightly campfire program. Clara was so tired that she fell asleep in her chair in about 5 minutes.We ended the night playing games. Melissa had brought glow sticks for the kids. They all wore them as we played. I couldn't get a non blurry picture because the kids couldn't keep the sticks still long enough, but the blurry ones were pretty cool too.The next morning we broke camp right after breakfast. We were all ready to go home and get cleaned up!

After we were all cleaned up, all the adults went to Texas Roadhouse to eat dinner. Camille watched Clara for us so that Jeremy and I could go. Thanks again Camille, we really appreciated it!

As soon as the dinner was over, we helped my little brother move in to his new apartment. He gets married on Thursday this week. I can't wait for Kamee and him to live near me. I haven't lived in the same area as one of my siblings since I left home to go to school 15 years ago. I'm so excited to have family that close! Needless to say, it was a very long weekend for me.