THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER...

The dog days of summer have come and gone, but they sure were fun!!! Here's some highlights from our summer...

JUNE:

While Bethany was at camp, we went to the Audubon Zoo one night...lots of fun! It was the members only night and they fed the alligators for us...which was the best part of the trip, of course!!!

The trip to the zoo wouldn't be the same without doing our two favorites:

RIDING THE CAROUSEL~

POSING BY THE WILD CREATURES~

Of course when Bethany returned home from GIRLS CAMP, she told us that she'd had a crazy good time! :)

BLUEBERRY PICKING!!!

A couple of weeks later, we joined up with some other families in the ward to do some blueberry picking!

We got there super early so we could beat the heat of the day! Unfortunately, it was already hot and humid when we got started.

At first we had a lot of fun picking!

As the time went by and the buckets filled up it got "DRIPPING HOT!!!" as Thomas called it!!! Even sitting in the shade, it was miserable...

Once everyone had had enough, we turned our buckets in, paid for our blueberries, and headed home.

It's now November...and Summer is LONG GONE. I saw my breath Friday morning while I took the garbage can out to the road and we had frost on the grass Saturday morning...not sure I'm ready for the cold...sometimes I think I'd like to go back to those "DRIPPING HOT" days.

***SORRY FOR THE LACK OF POSTS THE LAST LITTLE WHILE!!!***

Life in our house has been a little busier on Sundays. Tonight, I took advantage of the end of DAY LIGHT SAVINGS!! The kids were so ready for bed before 8!!! I didn't tell them how late it was. Only Aimee figured it out when she looked at her clock and it was only 7:50!! Everyone was sound asleep by 8:45~ a near MIRACLE in our house!! :)

Maybe I can get caught up now! :)

VOLCANO WEEK!!!

Our summer started off with lots of fun!

Here and Mattie, Thomas and Andrew with our volcano!! It was VOLCANO WEEK!! :) One of Thomas' favorite things right now is volcanos!! So we endulged him by making one! The kids had so much fun!!
Working hard to creat the perfect volcano~

Meanwhile, Bethany was off at GIRLS CAMP! She had a great time and was able to make some new friends.

Here are the girls from our ward who went:

Angel, Bethany, Faith, Lexi, Annie, Laura, Aubrey, and Tiffany :)

Lexi and Annie had just barely met everyone!!! Their family moving into the ward!! They'd arrived from Arkansas hours before they were to head off to camp!

Bethany and Annie really hit it off since they are both April girls...Bethany's b-day is on the 18th and Annie's is the 19th!!! :)

Here's Bethany loading up her stuff. She's pretty excited for her adventure! :)

Bethany's violin recital

A few months ago, Bethany's violin teacher, Lauren Miller, held a recital for her students. It was actually way back on June 4th.

This was Bethany's first violin recital! She was a little nervous, but did a great job! This is Bethany warming up with her pianist right before the recital.

Bethany played a Vivaldi concerto. It's been so long now that she can't really remember for sure which one, but she thinks it's the A minor!

The recital was held in a little white church and it had this pretty stain glass window!

Thomas wasn't very excited about getting all dressed up when it wasn't really a church day, but he finally gave in. He started freaking out when I tried to put on of his Sunday shirts on...it was just a polo shirt. He tried to tell me he wasn't going to wear that shirt because it wasn't a church day!!!

We compromised and he got to wear shorts. The other kids weren't that excited about getting dressed up either, but they didin't put up a fight like Thomas. Getting him dressed on Sundays, when he HAS to wear his Sunday clothes is ALWAYS A BATTLE!!! So getting dressed up for the recital was especially hard!

Here is Bethany after she warmed up! :)

Bethany playing the actual recital performance of her piece! She did a great job!!! YEAH!!! :)
After the recital, we got to meet some of Ms Lauren's other students! She has both violin and cello students. Most of them are around Bethany's age, but Ms Lauren does have some really young girls who are around 5 years old! It was really fun to watch them perform their pieces.
I used the video camera to film Bethany performing. I've never put any of our videos on the computer, so I need to read up on that! If I figure it out soon, I will post it!

***ok, it's been almost a month since I started this post. I realized there's more than one way to skin a cat!!! i.e...I haven't located the software disc I need to tranfer files from the camcorder to my computer...the joys of moving...it's somewhere...just got tired of trying to find it so I re-recoreded the recital with my camera!!! :)*** TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES...THE VIDEO WON'T POST SO I'LL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SHARE IT A DIFFERENT WAY! :)

Needless to say Bethany did an awesome job and both her teacher and her parents were very proud of her! :)