“In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.” Hinckley

Daddy worked a couple days with the guys at Regional Eye. He had a fun time catching up with everyone and getting to see patients. He remembered how nice it is to work in AC and part of why he is going to school.

We spent an afternoon at Sis Anderson's swimming. It was so fun and felt wonderful!

I just love this queen of fatness!

Nina & Hannah 8 months & 5 months

When August hit Hannah was getting too big for her 6 month clothes I had brought with us. Rebecca saved the day and gave us some 9 month stuff. This little swim suit was in the bag. As soon as the boys saw it they wanted to put it onto Hannah. They both got so giddy about seeing her in a little suit. It was pretty cute. They sure love her.

We had planned to leave Aug 14th to head home. Close to that date we found out Matt didn't actually have to be back to school until Aug 25th. It worked out super well because the people who had been "buying" our house hadn't been making their payments for a long time, we had been trying to get them out all summer. After talking with a lawyer and thinking that we were going to have to drag it court : ( they finally called and let us know they had moved out!!!! So we ended up staying that extra week to clean out the house. It was quite a mess (it was so surprising to how some people can live.) and we were so grateful to Sam & Luke for all their help! After a week it was back to it's good old condition and is now on the market!

Hannah is 5 months old now. She is getting a lot more social & vocal. She is still super sweet and a super easy baby. She usually takes 3 good naps a day. She usually goes to sleep around 8-9pm gets up about 4am, eats, then sleeps till about 8am. During the day she usually nurses about every 2 hours. I've tried to feed her solids on several occasions, but she is still totally not interested. It's funny how different she is from the boys. She just moved into size 2 diapers and is wearing 9 month size clothes.

Hannah is at that age where EVERYTHING goes into her mouth.

I'm going to miss her grasping her hands like this when she's older.

Matt thinks that picture of Hannah is so funny because of her baldness.

This has become Heath's new pose. I'm glad he says I love you. : )

Photos courtesy of Houston

Houston yelled from their room, "Wait Mom, I'll be right back."
Then came out in Matt's pajamas. He was SO proud of himself!

Playing checkers with their crackers.

I absolutely love it when I find them like this. So sweet!

Little Esau was blessed so we all got together and enjoyed a day together. I just love his hair. It's magical! He's such a good sweet little baby.

These are the crazies I call home.

Grandma and Grandpa had such an amazing garden this year. We are surely going to miss all of the deliciously fresh veggies when we go back home!

One day Heath helped Grandpa pick cantaloupes. When they came inside Heath was telling us when he grows up he wants to be a cantaloupe picker. Then he can pick all the canteloupes and give them to people who don't have money for food, but if people do have money they can give it to him to help him grow more cantaloupes. I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea. I have a feeling he may change his mind someday though.

Houston had been begging for Hannah to ride in this car for weeks. I finally let her and she did so well. I was surprised at how well it held her up and in.

They both just LOVED it!

I love this.

Grandma had planted some milkweed plants out front. The last couple weeks we were there monarchs were a very common sight. We helped her find a few eggs, and a little caterpillar Heath loving named Maxilla. She got nice and fat and is in her cocoon right now at Grandma's house. It has been very exciting to watch. I'm thinking we need to plant some milkweed plants next year.

There is a lot of Matt the Rat in this little boy.

We sure took advantage of the open sunshine and grass while we could.

Heath really is starting to grow up into a boy now. : ( I love the questions he asks and how his mind works. Whenever I ask him for help he almost always jumps at the chance. He speaks often about how he tries to follow Jesus, and wants to always be obedient. He does a good job. He is still a little boys and does squirrely little boy things, but he has a strong desire to be good.

Tonight while I was tucking him into bed he said, "Mom, I need to tell you something. Yesterday while Ava's Mom was out in the hall with Ruby (Ava's little sister), Ava told me to come with her. (under the pew at church) She showed me her Mom's bag and said there were candy canes in it. She said I could have one and gave it to me." "Did you eat it?" "Yes." "Did you feel good about it?" "No. I don't think she was supposed to eat them, but she said it was ok and that I could eat it. Is that ok?" I told him that when I feel like I shouldn't do something it's usually the Holy Ghost warning me not to do it. I asked him if he wanted me to talk to Ava's Mom about it, and he said, "Yes. and tell her I'm sorry."

After talking to Ava's mom, we found out it was Ava's bag and candy and she had brought it to share with Heath, so conscience cleared.

His face says it all. The last few weeks were really rough on Houston. I think he was just way done with inconsistency. He threw many a tantrum and he and I had many a battle. It was hard. One night I was telling Matt my woes about felling like all I did all day was correct Houston. He said, "Well at least you love him enough to help him learn to obey." That helped me. If we can't expect our kids to be obedient to us, how can we expect them to be obedient to God? We worked through it. I tried to spend more time playing with him and praising him when he would do something good. We spent more time reading stories at bedtime and snuggling. It helped us though, but man was he still challenging those last few weeks. When we got back home things smoothed back to normal and he's doing great now. Poor two year old Houston.

Heath figured out how to hula hoop about a week before we left. He just loved it! I think we may have to keep our eyes open for one of these in St Louie.

Houston sure loves his baby.

I call that Houston's "I don't want to really let you know how happy I am right now" smile.

What else do you do with a baby who has just blown out the back of her diaper? You put her in the grass and take pictures, then sweep her off to the bathtub to wash the chiggers and poop off. It worked marvelously. No bug bites here.

Man 8:00 hits and most nights she is out for the count weather I've fed her or not. Such a good little sleeper.

I think this was the night Matt drove up to St Louis for a clinic day at the school.

I just love to peek at our kids when they're sleeping. So sweet and peaceful. It makes up for the crazy days.

Over the summer I got a lot of family history research done. Now that I have an Ancestory.com account life is great! It's amazing all the information you can find on there! Very addicting (that's most of the reason I didn't get any blogging done over the summer) Amongst all of this I stumbled upon this picture. The little boy is my Dad's brother William (Bill) Forsyth, and the older fellow is Bill Hansen (no known relation) from Taber, who was a close family friend of my grandparents. They named my Uncle Bill after him. Anyways, does Houston not look just like my Uncle Bill?

Jousting on the lawn.

Houston what is your name?

Two.

That is how old you are.
Your name is Houston.

What is your name?

Two.... I'm a two Houston.

The boys found a kids baseball glove. It was like they'd struck gold!

We were in Spfld for Sterlings birthday. Grandpa found the perfect way to keep Hannah happy. She loved it!

When Hannah's binkie isn't close by she can usually be seen doing this. I think it's quite hilarious.

Dallin is such a good uncle.

My kids are so blessed to have fun uncles at both Grandparent's houses.

Sterling celebrated his 18th birthday. He added his own name to his cake : )

He is such a fun silly happy kid. I'm so glad we were close while I was home and that we've been able to continue that. He is a great example to my boys and always makes sure everyone around him is enjoying life and being happy. He has a good head on his shoulders and does what he knows is right. We sure love you Sterling!

Leading us in his birthday song.

One afternoon they had snuck away. When I found them they said they were camping, and looking at the stars.

This is Hannah's signature move, she will hold this position for close to 30 seconds at a time. No need to roll over for her yet.

Her head shape seems to be improving a bit, it's still pretty lop sided, but looks better.

She has rolled over a few times. The first time what a few days before we left St Louie for the summer. She just doesn't seem to be motivated to do it though. She's usually happy to just be in what ever position we put her into.

Little Lucy Lou

The last week we were away we worked on a fence at Pete's house. Matt Sam and Luke had started the project the week before, but then the boys started school so they couldn't help any longer, so I got to be Matt's helper.
I don't know who's job was harder, probably Amy's. She had our kids and all of her kids every day, all day for a few days. She fed us all meals and kept the kids entertained like a pro.

Lucy had a fun time swiping Hannah's binkie.

Lily was a super baby holder.

and Maren was sweet Maren.

This was the almost final product. We hadn't hung the gates yet at this point, but you get the picture. It was beautiful!
It was a lot of fun to work together. One day Matt said to me, "You know, you should work with me more often."
(side note: When we were first married I would try to help Matt with projects but would usually not be able to do much helping because he just didn't think it right to make a girl do hard labor. So he would kinda just do it all while I watched and tried to offer help. I had grown up doing just as much as the boys, but figured if I would just be slowing him down I'd stay out of the way. So there things have sat for the last 7 years.) (so his comment kinda surprised me.) "Why do you say that?" "Because this has been fun. You're a decent helper and you're fun to work with."
That made me smile.
It really was fun though, like an all day date, for several days. : )

It was during some of the hottest days of the summer, one day the high was 104*, but with their Awesome huge trees there was only a small window of time each day where we weren't in the shade. We just drank a lot of water and kept out of the sun and we were fine.

Found the other camera, and had to document some of these. : )

Feeding the cows corn husks from delicious Sherwood corn is SO exciting!

This was the first time I tried feeding Hannah something besides rice cereal, which she seems to hate. She didn't really eat these sweet potatoes either. She just isn't interested in food yet like the boys were.

We did a LOT of swimming at Grandma's pool. (Poolow) With is being a milder summer it was quite cold sometimes. They didn't care.

We usually went while Hannah napped. That way I could be in the water with Heath and help him work on swimming w/o his life jacket. He got quite good by the end of the summer, I bet next summer he'll be swimming on his own just fine.

Sterling would join us after school quite often.

The boys love mini golfing and kinda begged Grandpa to take them.

Hannah likes golfing too.

When we were talking about going Sterling was telling the boys that this place has aligators and dinosaurs and towers and windmills. Then he said, "So who wants to go to Fun Acres and go golfing?" Heath yelled, "ME!" Houston said, "NOT ME! I don't want a dinosaur to eat me."

The hole with the dinosaur was pretty entertaining, Houston kept his eyes on that dino the whole time he was putting around it.

After each hole this was his celebration.

Fun Acres also has batting cages. As we were walking out to the van we walked past them. Houston stopped and started yelling at this man. "Hey GUY! ..... HIT THE BALL GUY!....... DONT MISS THE BALL...... HEY GUY HIT IT!..... " The poor man was a good sport and was yelling back to Houston things like, "I'm trying buddy. Oh, look I got one!" What a little rat of a Houston. I pulled him away as quick as I could.