Almost evened UP!

Here is a picture of my first girl with my last (hopefully not final) girl. OK, I realize you can't see June-Bug very well but can you even believe how gorgeous Nikki looks? Yes we have some amazingly beautiful girls in our family and they are as good as they are beautiful which undoubtedly adds to their beauty. (If you don't believe me you may also want to refer to Lauren sitting on the couch.) We also have some pretty doggone cute little boys...so glad he uses the safety glasses with that scary chain saw!

Miss A, kind of silly in this picture with the end of an ice cream cone sticking out of her mouth. She is going through a funny stage where she looks away when I try to take her picture. We had to just be happy with this one. Yes that girl loves her ice cream and her snacks, and her cookies, and well she loves food.

Here is Luke getting ready to play with some fun toys.

It was the boys turn to do dishes and let me tell you Jacob took that very seriously. He helped until every single dish was done. He's just good that way. Not too sure what Lyvi was doing?

At the beginning of this year our family had Eight Boys and Five Girls BUT thanks to this beautuiful sweet girl

...and this sweet little thing we are up to 7 girls. I feel the winds shifting! The female vote is getting stronger and stronger around here. We are so very glad to have both of these girls in our family.

Cupcakes!

Every September since Dennis has been the Stake President of our Stake instead of meeting with the Bishops for Personal Priesthood Interviews he meets with their wife's. He has always invited me and the wife's of his counselors. The first year he met with them individually and that was awesome but he felt like they might actually need to meet with each other even more than they need to meet with him. It is always a very sweet and spiritual meeting. I love those women. They are all amazing in their own ways. They all have hard things but handle them with so much grace. They are grand examples to me. I love to make them a little something to let them know how much I (we) love and appreciate them. This year they got cupcake oven mitts. Darlene sent me the pattern and I had a fun time making a whole bunch of different ones.I also made cupcakes for a treat. I know that sounds like a really easy thing to make and it should have been but four batches of cupcakes later here is what we ended up with, and yes they were good, red velvet cream filled cream cheese frosting cupcakes, but the others were really bad. It made Dennis so sad to think of throwing all of those cupcakes away. He kept saying things like, "this just isn't like you to not have things turn out." I KNOW!!! (It may be more like me than he knows...he should stick around more.) You are probably wondering what is in the cute little boxes which I also made...
One for the road...or for the Bishop...their choice.

Here is how it looked in the High Council Room before we got started. Now on to next year...got any good ideas? Let me know.

A Very Good Labor Day

I got up this morning thinking I was going to go on a nice little walk around the neighborhood and ended up HERE! This is Camelback Mountain in AZ...not much of a mountain if you are from Utah but no matter where you are from it is a steep and challenging hike. I only made it about one third of the way! Don't know why Tyler closed his eyes! These two guys kept on going and Dennis made it most of the way, Tyler went all the way. Dennis is sure we could have done it if we would have had more time to spend there but we were on somewhat of a schedule. Yup, I'm pretty sure he is right. We totally could have done it with more time. There was a 74 year old man on the trail that walks it THREE times every day. It takes a good hiker at least an hour and a half or two to do that hike. That old guy is amazing!
Below is the view as we were walking up to get on the trail head. And since I got back WAY before Dennis and Tyler I walked up and down this road to make myself feel better about coming back and pooping out. (it has a good incline) Tyler asked me if it was embarrassing walking in front of all those cars (who by the way are waiting for a parking spot so they can go hike, yup they just sit there and wait until someone leaves so they can park and then go up that torturous mountain and have all their limbs burn and feel like you can't breath and they think it's worth waiting for, I digress) anyway, yes it was somewhat humiliating to keep walking up and down the road where those cars could see me. I'm sure I helped amuse them as they were waiting for a spot to park in.

That was fun but the way our day ended was more my style. We got to go to the hospital and hold our little June Bug. Oh it feels so nice to hold a little baby that we have only been able to look at for the past eight days. She is absolutely adorable. As you can see I got to feed her. Justin gave me some great tips on how to feed her and how to burp her. They worked very nicely. Look how great I am suppporting her neck!

Gramps got to hold her for a bit as well. She is all swaddled up and doing so great. You would not even believe all the trauma she has been through in the past week when you look at her now. What a difference a week makes. Look at her perfect little head and her dark hair and her olive'ish skin and her super cute nose and her little mouth is so sweet and her long fingers and toes and her beautiful eyes! She is perfect. Oh we do love our little June Bug. Night Night baby girl, COME HOME SOON!