HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY?

I have seen this before, and I thought it was funny! thanks Lindsay for passing it along again!

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY?
(written by children)

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.
-- Kristen , age 10

WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
-- Camille , age 10

HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
-- Derrick , age 8

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
They both don't want anymore kids. - Lori , age 8

WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
-- Lynnette , age 8 (isn't she a treasure)

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that Usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
-- Martin , age 10

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
-- Craig , age 9

WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
When they're rich.
-- Pam , age 7

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that.
- - Curt , age 7

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do.
-- Howard , age 8

IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
-- Anita , age 9 (bless you child)

HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?
There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there?
-- Kelvin, age 8 ( just LOVE this one)

And the #1 Favorite is........
HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.
-- Ricky , age 10

My new Toy :)

Finally, FINALLY I have a piano again. I am surprised at how much I missed playing. Although this piano is painful to play because it needs to be tuned. The guy who sold it to me told me it sounded great to him, he obviously is NOT a musician of ANY sort. Oh well. In all other ways she is wonderful! I got her for less than $300 bucks and you just can't beat that. I love Craigslist!

(by the way, how in the world do you guys make those little hearts? I want to know! I wanted to say I "heart" craigslist) 

Thanks!

Honey

Yesterday I was cleaning my kitchen and this tub of honey was bugging me just sitting on the counter. I didn't really have a place to put it. So I put it in this handy dandy cabinet right by the fridge. Well little did I know that the silverware drawer hits the top of this little shelf I found for my honey. I am fixing lunch for Ethan and I open the drawer to get a fork and out plops my honey bucket. 

And spills EVERYWHERE!

As you can see, right where it spilled is next to the stove and the fridge. So I had to scurry to get to the honey BEFORE it disappears underneath either of these appliances. Out come my handy little Pampered Chef scrapers and I start scooping up the honey. 

This is how much honey is scraped up off my floor. That is the BIGGEST Pampered Chef bowl. It is huge and filled halfway with honey. I couldn't believe it. I have cleaned my floor several times and it is still sticky! What do I do? Any tricks I should know about?

"Pool Time!"-Zack

We are so lucky! In our ward there is this lady who so graciously allows us to use her pool whenever we want! When we have a day off, we go there. Here are a few pictures of a day when I finally remembered my camera. My friend Lindsay came a little later, but it was so hot I had to get in the water, not stay out and take pictures! 

I meant to get a picture of Zack who is now fearless in the water with his life jacket on. He will just get right in and start swimming all over the pool. Makes me a little nervous, but he has been doing great! Until...I took his jacket off so we could leave and Lindsay had to jump in with her shorts on to save his life. NEVER again will that jacket be off in the presence of the pool. I turned around for 2 seconds! (I know Amber, I read your post with a guilty conscience!) Thankfully my worst nightmare did NOT come true and I am now going to teach him to swim. At least in a way where is head will be above water until I can get to him. 

Ethan finally will swim back and forth across the pool. With his jacket too of course. He takes physical milestones very seriously and prefers to wait a really long time before he does anything.  He waited until 14 months to walk, 10 months to crawl, he just prefers to hang out. SO different from my other two! 

Andrew loves the water! He jumps in all the time and he is getting really good at swimming underwater. My boys are turning so dark it's hard to believe they are related to me at all. I am starting to get a little color finally. A week in Hawaii with no sunscreen got me nothing. 5 times out in the sun here in Texas gets me color, go figure. :) 

Grandparents are the BEST

The boys got a fun gift in the mail from Mema and Papa Boyes! They were so excited with everything inside. They even brush their teeth now without fighting me thanks to the cool new toothbrushes! They are writing thank you notes here. I still haven't sent them, sorry! I promise to get on that! I keep hoping I will print off some pictures so that I can send them along as well. They have used every single thing in this treasure box! 

THANK YOU!!!

The grass is always greener...or so that's what they say

We bugged and bugged our landlord for them to FINALLY cover up that dirt/sand patch in our backyard. FINALLY they did it last Saturday. Then, when it was done, I wish I had just left it alone. He didn't move any of the sand, or the rocks.He just laid that half dead grass right on top. And where did he get that grass? Did he steal it from someone else's yard? There is no way that is brand new grass.

Jeff has been faithfully watering that grass and the water just seeps down and floods on top of the sand. What a waste of money. It kills me everytime he goes out there to water the grass. I just see $$ going down the drain. Anyway. That is just another lesson that the grass isn't always greener. 

Literally.

Interested?

Both for $40 bucks. :) 

*Zack*

This last picture, he was trying to lick me. That is his new thing. Must be the one trait he got from the Boyes side of the family. :) 

So I guess it's Zack's turn for a tribute. He is my little monkey. He has his own personality, but he really is a cross between Andrew's aggressiveness and athleticism and Ethan's cuddly, sensitive personality. He is so small still that when he does something so big it shocks me. He will be three in 3 weeks! The other day we were doing some school stuff and he wanted to practice cutting with scissors. I thought, surely he isn't big enough for this, but no, I then remembered I had kids in my preschool who were just a couple months older then he is! CRAZY! He did really well too! He also traced the letter D all by himself. This kid knows what he wants too. He gets away with more because sometimes it is just easier to say yes than no. I try to control that though. I know that will only lead to trouble! :) But how do you say no to that face? He has the lip quiver down pretty good too. Its so cute!
 I have lots of pictures of him because he still likes being in front of one! 

Kid Country in Coppell

I'm so bummed, these pictures don't show the coolness that is this park. It is HUGE! I mean like, in 2 seconds you are lost from your children huge. Luckily it has a fence ALL the way around and there is no way out but the front gate. It was awesome! The kids had so much fun. And thank goodness for all the trees, it wasn't nearly as hot as it should have been. 

If you guys know Jeff, you know that he can't just watch the fun, he has to join it! Well here he is trying to stay on the tire swing. It was pretty funny. Anyone who lives around here in TX has to check out this park. We will probably do this park once a month, only because its kind of a drive. Worth it though!

*Andrew*

This isn't the best picture of Andrew, its just the most recent. :)

You can tell Andrew is my first born. He is stubbornly independent, which will be great when he is older, but right now that just drives me crazy. He likes all the same things I like and expects to be included in all that I do. Until he was 8 months old, he was always with me. He hasn't been on any formal sports teams but he is one of the most athletic kid's I have ever met. He is going to a golf camp in 2 weeks with his friend Parker and I am interested to see how he does. Then at the end of August he starts on a soccer team, and I know he is already good at that. When he was at Vail he was always playing soccer or basketball with the 5th graders. He picks on his little brothers all the time. To the point where when one of them starts crying, he is automatically blamed. I'm trying to change that, but hey, he EARNED that reputation! He is getting so big and I can't believe he is getting baptized in February. He reminds me to read scriptures and say family prayer and even though he is a tough kid who plays rough, he is really sensitive and loving. 

39 days left until school. We are BOTH counting. He loves school!

Flash vs Natural Light

I got my camera back in January and I am a wanna-be photographer, but mostly it is nice to take good pictures of my handsome boys. Anyway, this may come as no surprise to those of you who are photographers, but I was shocked at the difference! It's the same picture of Zack, but one had a flash and the other didn't. Very cool. :)

Dangers of being the Third

On Sunday morning I took Zack into the shower with me and he started screaming, I didn't know why or what was going on until I looked at his neck. There was this huge welt that looked like it was growing as I was watching. We tried to figure out what happened and all I got out of my non-talker was "Andrew hit me". I had no idea how Andrew could have done that until later on during Sacrament meeting when Andrew told me they were playing with a long string and it got caught on Zack's neck and he pulled really hard to get it off. I was so caught off guard I didn't know what to say. Then I got mad. What the heck is my 7 year old doing with a string around his brother's neck!? Needless to say he got in trouble for not coming out with the truth all morning. It looked worse the next few days and now its in the scar stage. He has more scars than my other 2. Hazards of trying to keep up with the big kids I guess. He didn't want me to take the picture, so it doesn't show how yucky it looked. 

*Ethan*

This little man right here is the sweetest kid around. I love all my children, and each one have their personalities, and Ethan's personality is sweetness. He prefers to sit on top of you than beside you. And if you make him sit beside you, he is as close as can get. There is no personal space with him. He will twirl your hair, or rub your arm. He is always spontaneously saying "I love you Mommy"at just the right moment when you want to pull your hair out and walk out the front door. Up until he went to preschool he was the kid in Primary who would misbehave JUST to sit on the teachers lap. Thankfully he has learned that in class that isn't gonna work. He starts kindergarten in 41 days (YES I am counting :)) and he could not be more excited about it. He is already a little heart breaker. I love this kid!

4th of July

We spent the 3rd of July with our great new friends the Walden's. Andrew and Parker are already the best of friends. They go nuts not seeing each other everyday, which is fine with me and Lindsay! We get lots of girl talk and scrapbooking in while they play! Anyway, the guys devised this water slide into the baby pool and the kids had a blast! 

This happened a lot. The combination of Zack not moving fast enough because he didn't want to get out of the pool, and Ethan and Andrew not being patient enough to wait. No one cried about it though, so I guess they were having too much fun to care. :)

This is Andrew and Parker. They were busy discussing the different way the fireworks were lighting up, arguing their sides of the discussion. It is hilarious listening to these two talk to each other. They act like such little old men sometimes. 

This is how Zack enjoyed the fireworks. :) It had been a long and fun day and he just didn't make it. I don't think he even woke up when we took him out and back in to the car. 

And below is how Ethan enjoyed the fireworks. They weren't even loud but he was scared as usual. Not sure what to do about that. I thought this year he would have been over it, but apparently not. 

Me and my hunny. <3

I hope you guys all had a wonderful 4th of July. I am so grateful to live in a country where we can be free to make our own decisions. Even though right now it seems everything is going down hill, we DO have the power to change it! When we were singing the Star Spangled Banner at church I was so filled with the Spirit for what those men did for us. I remember has a senior in High School taking a trip with the Madrigals to D.C and singing that song where it was written and at the Lincoln Memorial. It was awesome! Anyway, God Bless America! :)