JULY 6, 2012 -- RANDOM PICTURES

RANDOM PICTURES FROM MOM'S PHONE

 Today I learned how to get the pictures off of my phone!  Yahoo!!!

Here are pictures from the past year:

JANUARY 2012:  
VISIT TO  GRANDPA AND GRANDMA BEACH'S HOME

Mason

Rachel in our sleeper PJ's

Yes, Louie got to go with us to Arizona!

Rebecca LOVES Louie

FEBRUARY 2012:

 HOCKEY

Rachel, Daniel, David & Matthew in front

Rachel

It finally snowed a bit in Arkansas

 HYRUM IN THE ALL-STATE CHOIR!!!  GO HYRUM!!

BEEHIVES IN OUR WARD

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR -- 2 YEARS AND STILL IN PROGRESS

APRIL 2012
 GENERAL CONFERENCE

Melissa, Robert & Alison

We sat near friends from Arkansas -- Kevin Renfroe with his fiance' and Braden and Pres. Mark Wagstaff

Robert, Alison, Connie, and Melissa

Our Conference BINGO game

It snowed in April in Provo, UT!

Mason loves to eat a "crisp"

MAY 2012
DAVID'S 2nd GRADE MUSICAL PROGRAM

David makes a cute cowboy!

 HONK JR

 PICNIC ON THE SQUARE

David and Mason

A lady was taking her little parrots for a walk!

Mason

Our new landscaping project!

Mason helps mom work in the garden!!!

Vernon and Connie visit a local Asian market and have fun remembering China

Hyrum leaves for his drive to Ohio!!

Rachel at Red Robin -- we had a fun lunch outing!

JUNE 2012

THE IMPRESSIVE WALL CLOUD THAT I SAW IN JUNE 2012!!! 

JULY 6, 2012 -- VERNON MEETS THE VOORHIES BABIES!!

JULY 6, 2012 -- VOORHIES BABIES ARE GROWING!

As was mentioned previously, we have some new wonderful members of our family!!! Nate and Amber Voorhies are staying with us while they are caring for their " premie" twin girls that they are adopting!  Aryiah and Lilly are almost 2 weeks old and are growing.  This afternoon, they were finally able to get Vernon on the visitor list and Vernon went and helped Nate give the girls blessings.  I am so jealous that he got to see the babies!!!  I am also so excited that they were finally able to give them a blessing!  We are so excited for Nate and Amber!!!!

Amber is pumping to help feed the babies and they have also started "non-nutritional feedings" to help the little girls learn to nurse.  They have to be able nurse, maintain body heat independently, and eat more calories than they burn in a feeding session.  The girls are progressing quite well!  It is truly a blessing and a miracle.

 Here is Nate holding one of his little sweeties!!!

JULY 5, 2012 -- RODEO OF THE OZARKS

FAMILY EVENING AT THE RODEO

We had a really productive day and a really fun evening!!  It was a good day!

We slept in a bit since we were up so late last night.  After lunch, we had "Mom's School" and the kids worked on their summer books.  Benjamin and Joseph finished off their "Family Life" merit badge and then Joseph finished off the DVD portion of his eagle project!  Benjamin also started working on his "Theater" merit badge.  

This evening at 5:30pm, we headed off to the rodeo.  The owner of AERT, where Vernon is on the Board of Directors, gave us tickets to the rodeo and it included dinner before.  We had "priority parking" as part of the "Buckle Club!"  We were wishing we all had big belt buckles to wear as we rubbed shoulders with the "buckle club!"  We had "Golden Corral" catered dinner -- delicious chicken, steak, cheesy potatoes and dessert!  One of the best parts is that the room was air conditioned and we sat right by the vent and actually got cold!!!

We told the kids to soak it up!!!  Rachel was all "google eyed" at the girls in their fancy riding shirts, boots and spurs!"

After we ate, we headed over to the rodeo arena.  They were just starting the first event -- sheep riding with kids ages 4-7.  Rachel and David were begging to do it -- but you had to pre-register or I would have!  We went in the arena to look for our seats and to our happy surprise, our tickets were for the fancy seat back section that was covered!!  Go Dad!  We had sun for about 1 hour as it went down and then it was quite nice!

We watched kids ride or rather fall off sheep, we watched teams of 3 kids wrestle a sheep and put a pair of boxers on it!  We then watched the bareback riding, barrel racing, steer wrestling, roping, bronco riding with a saddle, and bull riding.  It was a good rodeo.  Other than the "trash talk" from the announcer and the clown dude it was a really fun evening!!




One "entertainment" portion they had was a man named "John Payne" who is called "The One Armed Bandit."  He was a cowboy and then lost his right arm/hand to an accident with electricity.  He didn't lose his spirit and now had this rodeo side show he travels with and he performed here in AR.  It was pretty cool to see 2 real buffalo come out into the arena.  They were huge!!!

One of the funnest moments of the whole night was when that first bucking bronco came out of the chute and the cowboy rode for several seconds and then flew off threw the air and landed.  David's face could have exploded with excitement and he burst with energy and cheered and hollered "That was so cool!!!!  That was so cool!!!"  It was great!!!!  It was fun to see the kids enjoy the evening so much!!! 

Rachel would have loved to have been barrel  racing!  She would love to learn to ride!!!

We had a good night!!!!  And even by the end, Benjamin was watching and participating a bit!  That was major progress from the tortured looking young man that sat in his chair with his headphones in looking totally abused.  Earlier when I asked him why he didn't want to go, he said, "This is going to be a place where is will likely be very loud and noise AND it is going to stink.  Why would I want to go there?"

JULY 4, 2012 -- INDEPENDENCE DAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

This morning we worked outside early while it was cool and then enjoyed our air conditioning for the rest of the day!  We made a huge batch of potato salad for our BBQ tonight and enjoyed watching a movie!!
This evening, we had several families over for swimming and a BBQ.  We had a great time!  Sorry, no pictures.  The Harvey, Morris, Waite, and Charlotte Fleming family came.  We didn't get to shoot off any fireworks of our own because of the "burn ban" but we watched several big shows from our deck -- the mall and a couple others we couldn't identify the source.  One of our neighbors shot off a couple of fireworks and the sherriff came pretty quickly!  We had such a nice evening!

JULY 3, 2012 -- SINGIN' THE SCRIPTURES

JULY 3, 2012 -- MUSICAL SCRIPTURE STUDY

Tonight we had a fun, spontaneous scripture study.  We were set to read "Words of Mormon" in the Book of Mormon and we started singing the song that lists the books in the Book of Mormon.  Then Benjamin, started singing the first verse of the chapter and then we decided that we would sing the whole chapter -- all 18 verses!  We used tunes such as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Mary Had a Little Lamb," "Star Spangled Banner," "Jingle Bells," some on the spot improve tunes for some solos by Daniel and David, and Dad even tried Justin Bieber's "Baby" for Rebecca.  The content wasn't necessarily remembered but this will be a memorable scripture study session for years to come!
We had some good laughs at our attempts to make all the syllables fit!
It reminded me of when we were in  China and we sang the entire hymn book!!!  Each morning with scripture study, we would sing a hymn and we started with #1 and sang through every single hymn -- even the ones we didn't know at all or very well!!  Sometimes it sounded pretty sad but we had some good laughs at our attempts!

JULY 2, 2012 -- HYRUM IN THE PAPER

JULY 2, 2012 -- HYRUM'S EAGLE SCOUT ANNOUNCED IN NEWSPAPER

JULY 2, 2012 -- MONDAY

SUMMARY OF THE PAST WEEK

Well, I haven't posted any new entries because I really like posting pictures BUT--- my camera went to Ohio in my new little grey car which we let Hyrum take to Ohio so that we had the brown car (which is an automatic) so that we could help Joseph learn to drive!!!  I am missing  my camera SOOOOOOO much!
Let me tell you what I missed taking photos of the past week:
1.  We harvested our first garden item -- a nice big bell pepper!  It was delicious on our pizza!
2.  Benjamin and Bethany's performance of their theater class that they took last week!  It was called "Arts Live Theater GLEE."  There should be a video of it up soon on youtube.  It was great!!! 
3.  Last Sunday we had Zerak Taylor and the Morris family over for dinner and ended up having a big baseball game outside as the sun went down.  Mom even hit a few good balls!!!
4.  We had a great time at the library one day!
5.  We have had a young couple move in with us who will be here up to 8 weeks.  Nathan and Amber are adopting twin girls that were just born early at Washington Regional Hospital.  They are from Utah and are great!  It is a treat to have them here!  Their little girls weigh in at almost 3 lbs. and 4.5 lbs. TINY!!
6. Yesterday, July 1, we had Seth and Natalie Waite and Nate and Amber here for dinner.  We had a nice long visit with Seth and Natalie that was long overdue.
7.  Great fireside last night about temples and family history!  Bethany is on fire and ready to do family history work!
8.  This morning we weeded around and inside the sandbox!  It is amazing how much better it looks!  We were so thankful for the bits of clouds that gave us breaks from the sun and for the breeze that often blew!!!
9.  We had a fun movie night and watched Journey 2 and it was great!
10.  Dad had board of directors meetings last week for the company that makes decking material.
11.  Daniel and David had Twilight camp last week and Joseph and Benjamin volunteered as helpers and gave 20 hours of service!
12.  Hyrum's Eagle Scout award was in the newspaper this morning.
13.  Dad and Mom both taught lessons on Sunday.
14.  Matthew came home Saturday night, June 30th, 2012.
15.  We caught a huge garden spider that was carrying an even huger egg sack while weeding the sand box.
16.  Tonight Nate and Amber are going to make dinner for us!  I heard something about Curry and Teryaki Chicken!!!
17.  Yesterday we had a "Thanksgiving Dinner" -- turkey, stuffing, potatoes!  Yummy!
18.  Mom cleaned her office and spent HOURS organizing the computer files from the 2 hard drives that we have done back-ups on!
19.  Mason and David went "fishing" with stuffed animals and ropes  -- over the wall and down into the entry way.
20.  The whole family, plus Catherine, went to a free play called "Peggy the Pint-Sized Pirate."  It was cute and FREE is always good!!!
21.  We went to Braum's on a special outing Saturday to give everyone a pep-talk and to make a plan for how we are going to keep peace when Matthew gets home.
22.  We found out that the insurance accepted our appeal -- but only for 30 days -- for Matthew to be admitted to  Shadow Mountain.
23.  Dad took the kids to the Springdale Aquatic Park for the family activity after Twilight Cub Scout Camp and the kids had a BLAST on all the water slides!
24.  We have heard from Michael Bollero, who finishes his mission in July and will come to live with us for a while to help him get back on his feet and help him find a job here in Fayetteville.
25.  We have had very hot weather all last week -- 100 degrees and above -- and no rain.  It is hot and dry!! There is a "burn ban" issued for Washington County and other areas.  All the fireworks tents that are set up are not doing very well.  We really need rain!!!!  We sure love our AC!!!  What a blessing it is!