Girls Day Out/Farewell Callister Family

One of the members of our primary presidency, and best friends Shera Callister, moved this last weekend. Before she left town we were able to arrange an amazing day out on the town (Spokane, WA) without children!! We got up bright and early, all piled into a mini van and headed to Spokane. Once there we went shopping at the mall, at Target, ate out of The Olive Garden and the went to a session at the temple together. It was a very tearful temple trip as we all sat there truly appreciating the amazing women we were surrounded by. What a blessing to have such great friends.

(Baby Easton, Michele Applehans, Shera Callister, Halli Hemingway, Tera Stoner, Me, Debbie Blazzard)(Tear, Me, Debbie) (Michele, Shera, Halli)

(us 6 at the Spokane Temple, just after a session!)(A nice man helped us take a photo so we could get Moroni and the whole temple in the shot!)A week before she moved, we threw her family a farewell bbq. We all met at Tera's house, ate delicious food, had great company (the Stoner's, Callister's, Applehans', Leman's, Scott's, and Blazzard's), and after we ate we got to watch a beautiful slide show that Shera made for Neal (her husband) as a graduation gift. It was a beautiful insight to their life for the last 4 years of living in Troy, Idaho. I dont think any one of us girls made it through it without tears in our eyes. Afterwards, blankets and chairs were set up outside to watch "Napoleon Dynamite" in honor of the fact that they are moving to Preston, ID (where the movie was filmed). The movie was played on a projection tv outside!! It was a pretty cool set up! As I said our goodbyes, I hugged Shera in tears. Its hard to say goodbye to someone you cherish and love, but it does make it a little easier to let go when you know that they will be loved and cherished anywhere they go. We will miss you Shera!

(our outside tables to eat at!!)

(all the kids playing around the house!)

(Shera Callister + baby Madison Blazzard!!)

(some of the kids eating their food)

(Tera Stoner)

Time for FISHING!!!

Now that the weather has gotten so much better, we find ourselves fishing A LOT!! We have been going out to Spring Valley almost every weekend. We have caught all four of our limits everytime and our freezer is looking beautiful with our fish supply! We are saving up to have a big fish fry with family and friends soon! What a blast it has been though - Joe and I have been catching fish left and right, the kids cant seem to stay out of the water and end up waist high every time! Grizzly has been loving it too, we throw the stick out and he plays and plays and plays in the water! AND THE BEST PART: We got to watch a bald eagle on several different occassions swoop down into the water so close to us and grab a fish! I'm assuming it is the same eagle everytime, and he is HUGE!! His wingspan has to be 6 feet or more! Its amazing, I keep telling myself to get a picture of it, but everytime he comes around I just stand there staring! I will do better to try to get a picture! But, I do get pictures of the kids and fish, here are just a few:

Cameron's....um...haircut...

I have a ton of things to blog about that should come before this, but I wanted to share this sad story first. Then tomorrow or Sunday I will get to the good stuff!

Cameron was cutting some paper at the table, being a good little girl. All of the sudden, I got distracted for all of 10 seconds and she disappeared. I look up and shout "Cameron, where are you?" and a little voice from behind the couch says "I'm cutting my hair mom"! I fly over the couch, almost landing on her. She is sitting there with her little red scissors, just hacking away! There was little red hair EVERYWHERE. I stood there for a moment not knowing whether to laugh or cry. She was so proud of it, "look at my pretty hair mommy". I cleaned her up and put the scissors up.

Not more than an hour later, all of the sudden she's like "mama, I gotta go potty" and runs to the bathroom, shutting the door. I give her a few minutes, but after being too quiet I check on her. The little twirp had found my bigger black scissors and went to town AGAIN. This time much worse. I immediately called the salon and asked to get her in. We went in at 6:00 pm, she got her first unofficial and official hair cuts today, June 3rd 2011. The stylist was Darryl Murphy - and she did VERY good. She sat still while he bobbed her hair. I wanted to cry as it got shorter and shorter. My poor little boy...er...i mean, girl!
After her hair cut I took her to Claire's and let her pick out lots of little pretty bows for her hair. Hopefully that and the pretty dresses she wears will deter people from looking at her hair! I just have to keep telling myself, "it grows back, its grows back....it really will grow back!" Oh the joys of parenting!! (below is her new hair cut:)

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend couldn't have been better!! The weather was AMAZING ans the sunshine was out!! We got up Saturday morning and went fishing out at Spring Valley for a while. Came home, went to Walmart, and then went BACK OUT to go fishing!! Sunday morning we woke up, checked out the Easter Bunny brought us, had an Easter egg hunt, wore our pretty clothes - then went fishing again out at Spring Valley. When we came home from fishing we had an excellent fish fry with fish, baby red potatoes, some chips and BOY WAS IT GOOD!

I should do some bragging for Kaleb really quickly - HE CAUGHT THE MOST FISH!! Of the 16 we caught, Kaleb caught 9!!! Mom/Cameron caught 2 and dad caught 5 - Go Kaleb! BUT - a not so highlighted moment - Kaleb was standing next to me, I had a pole in one hand and Cameron in the other. All the sudden I see Kaleb slowly bend forward over the dock to see something saying "hey mom look at that" and "PLOP" he went right over the edge of the dock! I threw my pole in the hand with Cameron and managed to grab Kaleb by one foot and pull him back up to the dock! He managed to get his entire head and shoulders under water when he fell. He cried at first because it scared him, then he goes "man mom, it was DARK down there!" haha...Dad did good to strip him down out of his wet clothes, wrap him in a warm coat and sat him in the car under the heater! Before too long he was begging to fish again - thats our boy!!

Grizzly Got A Bath!!

Grizzly got his very first bath!! It was messy and wet mingled with hair and soap! haha...the kids LOVED IT! Afterwards though, I made the decision NOT to wash him in my master bath again. Next time he gets the good old fashioned hose! I used half a bottle of drano to get my drain unclogged - YUCK!!