August 2015

Ready or not here comes... the end of summer and back to school!

Our friends Codie and Rachel got sealed in the Payson temple the 1st of August.  Their daughter Sadie was also sealed to them, but they weren't able to seal Codie's son Payton to them yet, they didn't get permission from his mom in time and still haven't gotten it.  They are hoping to eventually get to also seal him to them.  This was also the weekend that Kira and Jordan were blessing Harper, unfortunately for us they chose to bless her in Kanab so that it would be easier for the families to not all have to travel up to them.  So Brandi took our kids to Kanab with her Friday evening so that Ben and I would be kid free to go to the temple on Saturday.  Their sealing wasn't until 5 so right after the sealing we headed back down to Kanab instead of going to dinner with them and their family so that we wouldn't get back to Kanab too late.  It seems like every event we have had lately has been back to back with another event so that we haven't been able to fully enjoy any of the events lately.  We are definitely glad that we were able to go to both the sealing and then the blessing, just a bummer that we didn't get to spend as much time with either of the family or friends involved.

 Hunter and Aspen love to build things, well mostly Hunter and Aspen is his assistant.  They built an even bigger giraffe than this one but knocked it over before I got a picture of it.

Timber is starting to really pick up on the signs we have been teaching her. This is how she signs for "done."

We had quite the collection of weeds coming up where our grass used to be. We fried it with fertilizer (we've never had a yard before so didn't know you have to flood it after you put fertilizer down!). So in trying to save our lawn we ended up killing it.  So anyways since it was a rainy day we went and pulled a bunch of the weeds out.  When we got started on it it was very lightly sprinkling but shortly after started raining pretty hard. We don't have gutters so the rain will run pretty heavily off the roof. Well the older kids thought this was great fun to play in... So Timber followed. But then didn't know how to get out of the huge flow of water!  She got drenched!!  And as you can see she wasn't very happy about it!  That ended out weed pulling very quickly and we hurried in to get dry and get her warmed up!

Got to love those random moments when your kids are all laying on the kitchen floor with their feet in the air!

The elderly man that I had to convince to be the Grand Marshall for the Pioneer Day parade had a surprise 90th birthday party that we were invited to (I think most of the town was.)  Ben was gone scouting for deer the day of his party, so me and the kids went to it.  I even got a kiss from the birthday boy!!  Haha!!  He seemed pretty excited to see me there and when I went to tell him goodbye he gave me a kiss... on the lips!  Ah!  When I told Ben about it he just laughed and told me that's what I get for flirting with old men!  Ben's grandpa kissed me once too, so I'm thinking it's just that generation, but I'm even an awkward hugger, so a kiss definitely caught me by surprise and I'm sure I was bright red!  He is such a sweet man though and yes I still go visit with him in the library most weeks, and yes he does hold my hand for a bit after he's done shaking it, but his wife always smiles and chats with me anytime she sees me, so she doesn't think much of our apparent "flirting" as Ben calls it!  Ha!  I would definitely not call it flirting!  Visiting with a sweet elderly man is all it really is.

Surprise!!  This is our kids looking at the ultrasound pictures after we announced to them that we were pregnant with baby #4!  We have video of me actually telling them.  They were all sitting on the couch together and I showed them the ultrasound picture and asked them if they knew what the pictures were.  Hunter mumbled "I don't know" at the same time Aspen started poking each individual picture while saying baby each time.  I told Aspen she was right then said that these were pictures that the doctor took of my belly when they had been getting babysat by Karston's mom.  I asked them what they think that means, Aspen said that there was a baby in the belly, I asked her whose belly, she said Karston's moms.  Haha, I guess I threw them off when I said the pictures were taken when they had been at Karston's house, and probably made more sense for them to think that considering Karston's mom was 6 months pregnant at the time!  After Aspen said Karston's mom and said no... it's a baby in my belly.  Aspen said, "Right now?"  I told them yep!  There's a baby in mom's belly, what do you think of that?  Hunter said awesome and Aspen said cool.  Timber got excited with them, but I'm sure had no idea what she was getting excited about!  They were pretty cute about it!  We had found out we were pregnant right before our 4th of July trip to Delta, which is also why July is when we planned on weening Timber from nursing.  Maybe she sensed the other baby and that's why she weened herself??  Babies due date is February 29th, yes it's a leap year!  So Timber will be 2 months shy of turning 2 when baby comes, these two are our closest together, and yes I still feel a bit crazy about it.  But both of our parents had babies even closer than that, so we should be able to handle it right??  I just feel bad for Timber really, I feel like we are stealing her baby-hood.  We manged to get pregnant the first month of trying this time, it took a few months with Timber so we decided to start trying a month earlier than when we really wanted to have baby thinking that it would probably take at least a month of trying... but nope!  So we were wanting March, but got February instead.

Funny story about our trip to Codie and Rachel's sealing, when we left the temple we stopped at a gas station to go to the bathroom before our drive to Kanab.  There was a line in the girls bathroom, when one of the stalls became available, the lady in front of me looked at me and asked if I needed to go first, glanced down at my belly and said "I know sometimes you need to."  What?!  When I got back in the car I asked Ben if I looked pregnant in my clothes and told him what had happened.  I was very nervous to go to Kanab after that, we hadn't even had our first doctor appointment yet!  The day that I turned 8 weeks my brothers wife sent a text out to let us know she had just had a miscarriage and that she had been about 8 weeks.  I felt horrible!  How was I going to face my whole family knowing that she had just lost a baby and I was pregnant and due within days of when she would have been!  I always wait to tell people I'm pregnant until usually about 12 weeks, at least after the first doc appointment, but if a random lady in the gas station could tell I was pregnant how was my family going to miss it?!  Well I'm guessing that since my baby was only a little more than 1, none of them even thought to look at my chubby belly, they probably just thought it was still baby chubs from Timber, which I know part of it was.

After we told the kids we were pregnant we had them facetime my parents and tell them, then we took the ultrasound pictures over to Ben's parents and let the kids tell them.  And that was the extent of our telling people.  All the rest either our parents told them, or it just kind of randomly came out in conversation.  I was still feeling crazy at how close this baby would be to Timber and also felt awkward because of my sister in laws miscarriage.  I didn't want to make her hurt anymore than I figured she probably was.  I left it up to my mom to tell them, cuz she usually tells people pretty fast, well... she felt the same awkwardness about it as I did and didn't tell them!  I finally ended up texting them and letting them know after they were the last ones in the family left and it would have just been rude for them to find out any other way.  I talked with Brandi a lot about it, she had a couple of miscarriages, one of which happened when someone else was pregnant as well, and she said it didn't really bother her.  I still felt bad, but once I did tell them it was a relief and they didn't seem bothered by it, they were very sweet and just congratulated me.

This cute girl loves corn!  The whole family does really, but she is just so cute eating it I had to get a picture!

I wanted to do something fun with the kids before school started up again, so we headed to the Children's Museum.  We had heard from several people that it was way fun, so we decided it was time to try it out.  It was a blast!  The kids had a great time!  The only thing that wasn't great was that right when you walk in there are stairs, no ramp.  I took the kids by myself so I thought it would be smart to take a stroller for Timber.  Ya... luckily there was another dad there that saw my need and came and helped me carry the stroller up the stairs, luckily I had at least brought a small stroller not our usual huge double stroller!  When I got home and told Ben about it, he asked why I didn't just take Timber out, have her walk up the steps and fold the stroller up to carry it up the stairs then put her back in... Thanks honey... I already felt pretty stupid about it without you pointing out a very obvious easier solution.  With how small Timber is though I don't think the dad or any other witnesses of my stroller struggles would have guessed for me to do that, even the person that gives out the wrist bands didn't give Timber one thinking she was too young and would just eat it.

The girls loved dancing on the stage, while Hunter thoroughly enjoyed picking the music for them.

This thing was just amazing to me.  It's an interactive game on the floor!  It had different games that it would change from every few minutes, there was one that there were bubbles that you had to stomp on to pop and another where you have to jump on frogs on lily pads to get points, etc.  It was pretty cool!  Even Timber enjoyed stomping on the ground, although she didn't really understand why she was doing it or where to stomp, but the other kids were doing it so she joined in.

I really wanted a picture of my Anna and Elsa, but Timber was a bit too heavy for Hunter to hold her up there for very long, and of course my camera took a few seconds too long to get open and focused so this was the best picture I got of them.  They really had so much fun and were so good at the museum!  Any time they see the pictures from there they always ask when we are going to go again!

The day after we went to the Children's Museum was the opening day of the county fair.  The first night they do all the rides for 1 ticket so Ben's parents take us and pay for the kids to ride all the rides.  We always go right when it opens and eat dinner, ride the rides then get a snow cone as we leave.  The back cart that you can fully see has Hunter and Aspen Smith, then two carts up is my Aspen in pink and in front of her is Tayten.  Joslyn's boys were with their dad, also at the fair but not riding rides with us, so Joslyn and Tyson just had his kids this year.

The 2 Aspen's are in the middle cart on this one.

Tayten and Hunter bringing up the rear.

I'm pretty sure Tayten was bored with this ride, haha!

And cute Timber got to go on the merry go round!  She didn't have much of a reaction to it, but Aspen enjoyed it!

The fair opened the night before school started, so as soon as the tickets were gone we left so that Hunter wouldn't be exhausted for his first day of school!  We did still get snow cones on the way out and we were excited on our timing, they had just started the show with elephants on the lawn, so we sat there and ate our snow cones while watching the elephants and mini ponies, it was just the perfect length for us to finish our snow cones and then we headed home.

Here's our handsome Hunter ready for his first day of 1st grade!  He started the dual immersion program this year and will be learning Spanish.  Both his English and Spanish teachers are in our ward, I was pretty excited about this since I know them both pretty well.

Timber has found Aspen's old hat and loves to wear it all the time!

The Saturday after school started is the opening of the archery hunt, so while Ben was gone for that me and the kids had a pizza movie night.  We have those quite often on the weekends, we will lay a blanket out on the living room floor and have a pizza picnic while we watch a movie.  I must say I enjoy pizza with the kids, especially when it's just me to get all their pepperonis!  I would say I scored, they used to eat their pepperonis but more often lately they will take them off, I'm totally fine with that.

See what I mean?  She doesn't even need clothes but still needs the hat!

I painted Timber's fingernails for the first time.  Normally I just do her toes, but when Aspen was getting her fingers painted she thought she needed hers too.  Since she sucks on her fingers so much I only painted the non-finger sucking hand.  She thought it was great!

We love every minute of daddy time we get during hunting season!  And for me it's very entertaining to watch all 4 of my favorite people battling bad guys with guns and swords!

I must say though, this particular time Aspen was my favorite!  Look at that concentrated glare, and what other person do you know that can pull the trigger with their pinky!?!?

Hunter getting them with double swords!

Hunter asked if he could get him some more rice at dinner, I told yes but be careful since it's hot.  A few moments later Ben caught my attention and motioned for me to turn around.  Hunter had gotten out an oven mitt to get him some more rice!  Haha, I don't think it's that hot!

What a sweet brother to help get his sister some more too.

The second weekend of the archery hunt Ben decided to take Hunter with him.  I asked my parents what they were doing, thinking that me and the girls might head to Kanab.  They happened to be taking their new trailer out camping, and they just so happened to be camping about 20 minutes away from where Ben and Hunter were hunting.  So me and the girls decided to go camping with my parents.  And it worked out perfect for Ben and Hunter to come sleep there too, and then Ben was able to leave Hunter with us for the morning so that him and Cason could hike in a bit further looking for the deer.

The lady on the right is my mom's aunt, her and her sister and their hubby's go camping in their trailers all the time, so since my parents have gotten their trailer they have gone camping with them a whole bunch of times.

I have met my great aunts a few times, but it's been many years since I have seen them.  They were so sweet to my kiddos!  They brought them over a bottle of chocolate milk and some mini muffins in the morning.

Can you believe this cute girl can still where this shirt??  This was her Halloween costume shirt from last year!

Timber hanging out with daddy during church.

Look how long Aspen's hair is!!  I don't straighten it very often, so I had to get a picture of how long it is when it's straightened before she got in the shower!

The very next day after I took the picture of her long hair I took this picture.  The poor girl was so sick that she fell asleep on the toilet with her head in her throw up bowl.  It was a very rough day for miss Aspen!

This easel has probably been the best $10 I've spent!  I got it on clearance right before conference and thought it would be great for that and we have never put it up!  They color on it almost every day!  We have had to put the chalk and markers in baggies clipped to the top so that Timber can't get them and color on everything though.

Timber has discovered bracelets!  She loves them and will quite often have a whole arms length of them on!

This is Aspen's preschool playground equipment!  Luckily she got over her sickness fast because she had her preschool assessment 2 days later and then the next day her orientation where they showed us where everything in the classroom was and what she would do each day.  We had applied to be in Head Start with Dixie's class like Hunter did, but we were over income so didn't end up getting in.  So we signed up for preschool through the elementary school instead.  It also goes by income and we had no probably getting into it, so who knows why they were that different!?  By the time we figured that we probably weren't going to get into Head Start and signed up for the other preschool we only had the option of the afternoon time.   Luckily Timber is more flexible with her nap times than Hunter and Aspen were!  Most days we nap her in the morning so that she can get a full nap, but if we have things going on in the morning she does fine to wait until we take Aspen to school for her nap.  Aspen's school is only 2 hours long and because of drive time Timber only ends up getting about an hour and a half nap on those days.  On Fridays and weekends we do Timber's naps after lunch, which really works best for her and then she can get the 2-3 hours that she normally takes.  Thank goodness she is flexible with it though, otherwise weekdays would be a nightmare!

Timber has decided she needs Aspen's bike.  It's pretty scary watching her try to get on it, she's too short to put her leg over it by herself, so instead she climbs on the back basket thing and climbs over the top!  I'm amazed she hasn't gotten hurt from doing that yet!

Aspen had her first day of preschool on the last day of August.  She loves it!  And she has made several good friends in her class too!

Timber got a pony tail for the first time!

We made popsicles out of kool-aid.

I couldn't get these two to look at me at the same time, but I thought it was so cute that they were sitting on Hunter's bike together!

Popsicles and tramps go together... or at least this cute girl thinks so!

July 2015

We had our annual trip to Delta for the 4th of July, and as always we had a blast!

We were there from Thursday to Sunday this year.

I don't think Hunter would ever get out of the water if we didn't make him at least to eat!

And this cute girl loves shallow water!  She's not afraid of it as long as she can touch!

And this cute little one loved it as well!  We had to keep a close eye on her though or she would be in too deep before we even knew she had moved!

Luckily Dwayne and Dixie were there to help keep her where she should be too!

The sun is setting and they are still in it!

Aspen and Brylee snacking on some cookies.

After Timber's nap we just didn't want to take the time to change her back into her swimsuit, so we just kept her out of the water for a while, but that only lasted a little bit before she found her way back to the water!

We also decided to never put Aspen in this swimsuit again!  You can barely tell she is wearing one!  And in person when it was wet it was a bit see through, yikes!

Got to love family time hanging out on the dock!

I loved Gavin and Megan's bed for Brodey!

Day number two Aspen barely made it through dinner!

And Hunter looks pretty sun-burnt already!

Timber has discovered a love of hot dogs.

Love these cute kiddos!  They were patiently waiting for the parade to start.

Timber thought it was great getting candy thrown to her!!

Can you tell it was hot even though it was still morning!?

She would only put candy in the bag if she still had some in the other hand!  She had to make sure she always had at least one piece on hand to eat!

Hunter and Aspen had a blast!  They love parades!

I love that they are both eyeing the same tootsie roll!

As long as there was candy Timber was going to get!  She didn't care if there was another float coming straight at her!

We finally got Hunter to hold his own bag most of the time this year, but then Aspen forgot how to hold a bag and pick up candy!

So excited to see the fire truck...

until it turned on it's sirens!!

After the parade we went to the park for the festivities there and ate lunch.  There's a booth that does tri-tip sandwiches every year and the last couple years Ben and his brothers have bought a roast from them, why waste your time on bread when you can have just the meat!  Crazy boys!

Proud daddy moment when Timber wanted in on his roast for lunch.

Look at his big grin!

And of course you have to wash it down with Dr. Pepper!  She is her daddy's daughter!!

They had horse rides at the park, Hunter seemed to really like his ride.

Aspen on the other hand was not so sure about hers, and the second the horse slowed down she was done and off, she didn't even go around as many times as the would have let her!

The park has this splash pad type stream running through it, it felt great to cool off a little bit!

Hunter of course couldn't contain himself from climbing the waterfall part of it!  Even though I had told them to try their best to not get their clothes wet!

Some kid gave Aspen this rubber duck that she kept sending down the river.

And Timber just wanted to walk the whole thing, sitting splashing her toes was only fun if she was getting pretty wet... so I did a combination of the two hoping that she wouldn't get too wet!  We were going to the matinee movie after this so I didn't want them soaked!  She did get a bit wetter than I would have liked especially since she took a nap on my chest during the movie!  Between her wet clothes from the splash pad and sweating a little being snuggled into me through the movie, we were both a bit damp coming out of it!  The movie was Inside Out and the kids loved it!  I had a hard time staying awake with Timber sleeping on me haha!

After the movie we headed back to the cabin for a short break, then had the kids eat an early dinner, packed up snacks and headed to the derby!

This was the only picture we have of people at the derby so I figured I better post it, even though I look pretty goofy in it!  We had a blast as usual, this year was a little harder than most.  Timber was not entertained by the cars much at all, we just kept trying to give her snacks to keep her happy.  Then after the derby we got pizza for all the adults and some of the kids to eat back at the cabin.

During our Delta trip Jenny and her family came out to the cabin for part of a day and hung out with us.  They also brought some of their friends that had waverunners and jet skis too.  Ben had a blast riding those around!  My favorite thing of them being there was when Jenny helped Aspen go potty.  Aspen hasn't had an accident since Christmas Eve, so once she finally decided she was going to be a big girl and go potty on the potty she did amazing!!  Well as we all know, when you play in the water it makes you need to go to the bathroom more often, so several times a day she would come running frantically to the cabin needing to go to the bathroom.  One of the times she made it to the door of the cabin then peed on the deck, luckily it's wood so easy to clean up!  The day Jenny was there she was going almost every hour!  It was getting a bit old, we even let her know that it was a lake and you can go potty in it if you need to because the water is always moving not like a pool that you stay swimming in the same water.  She still wouldn't do it.  So when she started another frantic potty run Jenny grabbed her hand and walked her down into the water, then proceeded to "coach" her on how to pee in a lake haha!!  She literally had to tell her to just release and let her body go potty!  Then when Aspen did, she looked up at Jenny with a big grin and told her she was peeing in the lake!  It was so funny!  Then again later when Jenny wasn't there and Aspen was having another frantic run, I could tell there was no way she was going to make it into the cabin so I sent her back to the lake.  She looked at me like I was crazy but slowly sauntered back into the water.... a few feet from the other kids.  She was ankle deep when I could tell she was trying to go!  So I told she needed her bum in the water, so she sat down, then went.  Well the other kids started coming closer so I of course told them to stay back for a minute, then they noticed something was going on and it's kind of hard to just convince 6 year olds that it doesn't matter, they don't need to know!  Considering how hard it is when you play in water and have to go potty way more often, I still consider Aspen as accident free, she was really really trying to make it to the bathroom, but when you have to unhook a lifejacket and dry off a bit before you go inside that makes it really hard!

Timber thought the sleeping bags that we hadn't put away yet when we got home were great!!  She wrestled with them a lot!

Ben had one day of work after we got back from Delta then headed on the scout camp trip from Tuesday to Saturday.  Brandi's ward had their youth conference that same week, just started on Wednesday instead.  So I watched Talee and Tucker from Wednesday til Saturday.  I had planned on weaning Timber from nursing the following week so that I had Ben's help and no extra kiddos around.  That first night that Ben was gone I went to tuck Hunter and Aspen in bed and had Timber in my arms.  She naps in their room so her porta crib is set up in there and had her blanket in it, she reached out for it, so I was thinking that Ben must put her in their let her get her blanket and then brings her back to me.  Well she snuggled right into her blanket, so I decided to just leave her in there and see what would happen.  She only made a few little noises then was out!  So just like that she weaned herself and started sleeping in the kids room at night too!  The next 3 nights she slept back in our room so that Talee and Tucker had room to sleep in the kids room with them, but ever since that all 3 kids have slept in the bedroom just fine!

Aspen got quite the bug bite right next to her eye!  Poor girl this is what mosquito bites always do to me too!

Ben got some dirt sprayed in his face at work one day and couldn't hardly see!  His co-worker ended up taking him into work med where they had to flush his eye out a bunch of times then because it was so scratched up had him wear this patch!  The night it happened his family had us all over for a family night BBQ and pool party.  The kids had a blast, Ben was not so thrilled that he wasn't allowed to drive to work the next day.  A co-worker had to pick him up, then in the afternoon I picked him up and took him back to work med so they could check his eye again.  Luckily it had healed up well enough that they released him to drive again!  It's amazing how fast eyes heal!

All of my kids have loved the dishwasher, but this little lady loves it so much she climbs in it not just on it like the others have!  It has got to hurt her feet, but she doesn't care at all!!

I cut off enough hair to donate!  I love how nice your hair feels right after you chop a bunch off!!  And it had been driving me crazy how long it was, but I didn't really want short hair.  I knew I wanted to cut off around 6 inches but when your cutting that much might as well let it grow a little longer so you can just donate instead!  I think this is either the 2nd or 3rd time I've donated my hair.

Ben keeps telling me Timber isn't a baby anymore, so I had to take this picture of her snuggling with me one morning to prove that she is still a baby!

The kids love when we use our apple peeler/corer!  I was dehydrating a bunch of apples and using this makes it so much faster!  I thought these two were hilarious!  Why they didn't just grab the peels and go eat them elsewhere I don't know, it must taste better if you slurp it like a noodle!

(You can see Aspen towards the left of the picture behind the girl in all red.)

For the Pioneer day the festivities are divided between the 3 wards, one does the parade, one does the breakfast after the parade and the other does the entertainment after the breakfast.  It rotates each year.  This year was our wards turn to do the parade... And apparently the primary presidency is who always does it!  What!?!?  I was a bit stressed out about the fact that I was in charge of the whole parade!  I have never been a fan of being in the parades, my parents always had me be in them when I was in primary but I never liked it.  In high school I was in it one year that we were doing the battle of bunker hill and had a bunk bed on the float and were having a water fight throughout the whole parade and that was ok since I was paying attention to our water fight not to the people watching me.  I also haven't loved having to be in the parade for primary the past several years but at least I only had to worry about our primary not the entire parade!  I also had no clue what being in charge of a parade entailed, they only gave me a little to go by, then it was left to me and I got the thoughts and opinions of my counselors too.  I ended up making flyers that I hung up on all the bulletin boards around town with the info for people to call me to sign up if they wanted to be in the parade.  I also thought it would be fun to have a fire truck in the parade this year, so I called and got that all set up.  I ended up calling a guy that had been in our ward before and he had helped show the fire truck to Hunter's preschool class, so I figured he could help me find the right number to call since I wasn't having any luck with the phone numbers I was finding online, I lucked out and he happened to be at the fire station when I called him so he just passed his phone over to the lady that sets that up!  It was a very short conversation, she asked me what day, time and where to line up, then said ok we'll have one there and hung up!  She did deliver though!  She not only sent a fire truck but also an ambulance!  In years past you would just kind of line up as you got there, but talking with the lady in our ward that does all the parties and stuff like that, we decided to be more organized with it and give people a line up number.  So a few days before the 24th I called all the people that had signed up to do a float and gave them their line up number, then the night before the parade me and Ben and the kids went to where the line up starts and wrote the numbers in chalk along the sidewalk.  Since one of my counselors, Patsi, was going to be out of town I figured I needed to be available to walk with our primary so I also called and asked a guy in our ward to be in charge of directing the parade the morning of so that I was free to be with the primary kids.  Then I needed to get a grand marshal, me and my counselors tossed around a few names and agreed to a man that works in the library in our ward.  I talked with the bishopric and they thought he was a great idea, then came the challenge of getting him to do it!  He is such a sweet guy and I go in and chat with him almost every Sunday!  So every Sunday leading up to the 24th I kept talking to him about it and let him know that we would love his wife to ride in it with him too, but he just didn't think she would do it.  His son is in our ward also and we asked him if he would drive the car, while his parents rode in the back on the convertible.  Even though Patsi wasn't able to be there she was still nice enough to let us borrow their convertible for the grand marshal.  I talked with his son who said he would make sure to get him there, but even knowing that he was hesitating thinking his wife would have a hard time doing that.  So I ended up going over to his house the Sunday before and visiting with him and his wife, turns out he hadn't ever even asked her!  Haha!  She was pretty excited when I told her what I was trying to get him to do, she said it was an honor and of course they would do it!  It was really cute and I'm glad I was able to get him convinced to be the grand marshal, and they were even one of the first ones ready and lined up at the parade!

We also had to pick the theme for the parade, my secretary Val came up with "Walking in Faith."  We loved it and so did the bishopric!  So for our primary we decided to make a banner that said "We are following our ancestors example by Walking in faith" then each kid got a balloon to carry and they were asked to bring a name of a pioneer ancestor that they got to write on their balloon.  It turned out really cute!  My 1st counselor, Pam, and Val picked up the balloons that morning, Patsi provided the sheet and pole for the banner and I painted the banner.  In the picture above Aspen is front and center and Hunter back a row and to the left, and I am in the back towards the right.  I had talked with my family a lot about the parade so I sent this picture to them afterwards.  My mom was with Brandi and her family when she saw it and said to all of Brandi's kids "Look aunt Misty is dressed up as one of the boys."  Thanks mom.  Haha yes all the boys did have plaid shirts on, but I have a skirt!  Not trying to be a boy, my hair is pulled up in a bun because it's fast for early morning craziness like this!!  And it was too early for my eyes and they were killing me, so I had to wear my glasses, which I absolutely hate doing!  But even with all that I didn't think anyone would mistake me as dressing up like a boy!  My own mother especially!  Good thing I still love her!  And best thing of all.... I most likely won't have to be in charge of a parade again!  It was still our small town short and sweet parade, so I think it turned out pretty good, but man was I relieved when it was all done!