I guess she's ready for breakfast

Some one packed a purse full of play food,

and Naomi loved it.

She was so cute sitting on the dining room floor,

pulling stuff out of the purse

item by item.

Then she all of a sudden dumped it out.

Fortunately, I was able to work with her to get them all back in.

She thought it was just as fun to put it in the purse

as it was to dump it out.

Maybe she was still hungry.

While the big guys are away!

We will play! I will be a single mother of six girls for the rest of the week. It should be interesting. They still had some school work to do but Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were more relaxed with working around the house and playing at the playground.

Domonique taking time to swing with a chicken.

Xiomara playing with dominoes.

Just thought I would show our aquariums!

The medium sized one with our original fish.

The original big tank with our friends fish.

Ben's new small tank with Hunter, the amazing gold fish.

We moved them out of the sun so we have had less green issues.

Little buddies coloring together.

She has the reading bug/disease/addiction.

Funny little girl.

Our trip to the Price Nature Center.

We didn't walk through the woods on the trails,

because they wanted to play at the playground.

That was fine with me,

except there are no benches to sit on near the playground.

Oh well.

Two going to Girls Camp

Emily was excited for her first year of girls camp. She could have gone last year but figured since she was the only one (and it happened at the same time as our Payne Family reunion) she could wait a year. She was so excited to go and see what it was like and meet new people. She was a little nervous but I reminded her about the singing camp where she didn't know anyone but made lots of friends. At least she has girls from her ward and she has met some of the girls in the stake at Primary activities so she would be fine. She felt much better and was ready to go.

Marissa was excited to go again, since she chose to miss out on last year's camp. She was going to do both 2nd and 3rd year but decided to just do 3rd year so she would have a bit more free time to do whatever she wanted (crafts and so forth). She was looking forward to seeing friends from the stake and was just ready to be out and away!

High Adventure at last!

The group has been planning this trip for a while and it was finally here. Both Kevin and Ben were very excited for this trip and it was fun to watch the preparations. They had to bring their own food this year. They met at the church, packed up and headed up north. We are all hoping for better weather than last year's high adventure trip. It will certainly be an adventure.

Had to make it weird.

Ready to go back-packing!

Benjamin's activities

Ben got some military cards from Gaffa.

He was separating them out into different groups.

It was fun to see his excitement.

For dinner we had won tons, egg rolls and catfish and crappie.

Ben battered and fried the fish all by himself.

It was really good!

Choral Palooza - singing camp for Emily

A friend of ours at church introduced us to an opportunity that I knew Emily would love. She is musically inclined so I knew she would love the opportunity to learn more and strengthen her talent. It was a week long program, from 9-1 each day, with a performance on Friday after the camp. She was nervous the first day but climbed the stairs without me. When I picked her up after that first day she was all smiles. Each day was just as much fun and she really enjoyed it. On Friday, I packed up all the kids and we headed over for the performance.

She learned how to play the guitar.

Emily and Lily were chosen to sing the solo part for one of the songs together.

Usually they pick one person, but this year the teacher thought they sounded so good together.

She asked the conductor if it was okay to pick two, and he said okay.

He agreed that they sounded great together.

Then they realized that Emily and Lily are friends so it made everyone happy to have them sing together.

What a great opportunity!

 Great group of kids and leaders!

It was fun and I was glad she had the chance to do it.

For the first three days, Ben and Marissa were at Youth Conference. I felt bad the first day because I didn't wake up to say good-bye to them. They had to leave the house really early to meet at the church by 5 so they could ride up to their destination. They had lots of fun canoeing and camping with the youth from our stake. They had EFY type classes as well and had a really good time. They returned home Wednesday evening very tired.