Locks of Love

Emily decided she wants to donate 10 inches of her hair to Locks of Love. We told the girls that many people, including kids, get cancer which causes them to lose all their hair and go bald. Madisen said, "Is that what Dad had, cancer?" Gotta love kids! lol 

We were so proud of her and her decision to get her hair chopped. I layered her hair in the back and gave her a cute bob. We told our girls about Locks of Love a few months back and asked them if they wanted to. At that time, Emily didn't want to, so we said ok. But about 2 months later the subject came up again and she said she wanted to cut her hair and give it away now. She was so proud to do it. We love her!

Swimming Lessons

We finally signed up for swimming lessons this summer. We had a girl from our ward that had graduated high school and was looking to make a little bit of money before college. They have a heated pool in their backyard which was perfect for our girls as they will not swim if it's even remotely cold. We tried swimming lessons 2 years before and that was a disaster! The water was cold or not as warm as they would have liked, so my kids either wouldn't get in or if they did, they were shivering the entire time and didn't practice any techniques that the teacher tried to teach them. To their credit though, that week of June we took lessons was the coldest out of the entire summer. But I was pretty frustrated as I spend a lot of money for 2 weeks of lessons and nothing came of it. haha. Such is the life of a parent! ;)

Swimming lessons this year was a complete success! I was so happy! They girls all learned so much and now all of them can swim pretty well. Avery and Madisen now could go off on their own at the City pool and I wasn't worried about them drowning or anything. And Emily finally dunked her head under the water. Well, we could still see the top of her head but she felt to accomplished as she would rise up out of the water and tell me, "I went all the way under mom!" She would then hold her mouth with one hand and hold her nose with the other hand as she would take a deep breath and plunge into the water for 2 seconds and come out victorious! haha. I loved it. It was so funny and cute. We all got a kick out of it.

I didn't get a lot of pictures, mostly videos. But because I started printing out my blog every year into a book, videos obviously don't work. So I stopped posting those.

Driggs/Yellowstone Park

About an hour after Adam and Kari's wedding luncheon (June 14, 2014) and after they drove away with cans and bottles clinging loudly on the streets, we hung around the chapel and waited for grandpa Hodges' flight to get into to Idaho Falls. The chapel was just 5 min from the airport. Once Grandpa's flight got in from Colorado we came back to the chapel and watch a mini movie on Ryan's I-Pod. The girls called it, "The World's Smallest Movie Theatre". We had to wait for Grandma Trudy's flight from California to get in. So once she arrived and we picked her up we headed to Driggs Idaho where we stayed with Wendy and Jerry in their log cabin. 

While we were there we did a lot of fun things...We went exploring, hiking, we played lots of board games together, spent an entire day at Yellowstone Park, saw Old Faithful in all it's glory! The girls' however, thought it was going to be a big playground with slides and swings.  So they were a bit disappointed when, while traveling through Yellowstone with all the endless trees, they asked, "when are we going to get to the park?" We told them that this IS the park. I guess we weren't thinking that their definition of "park" would be different than ours. But they had a good time nonetheless. 

 We went to a play called, "Paint your wagon." We saw a street fight in Jackson Hole Wyoming. We took a tour boat ride along Jenny Lake in Wyoming and that was so fun. It was so beautiful too. And we stuffed ourselves silly by eating out at many fun restaurants and cafes. I think we all gained 5 pounds but the end of the week! But it was worth it! We all had such a great time together! Made a lot of great memories too.