Mia's Top 10

1

A girl and her dog:

2

stopping to "mell" a wildflower while getting sprayed by the "spinker":

3

transcendental creativity:

4

Conducting music with a home-made breadstick 

(Hals, I still use the whole-wheat version of your breadstick recipe from college):

5

This is what really goes on between a girl and her dog:

6

Cousins in grandpa's reclining chair:

7

Cousins in a box:

8

Cousins reenacting a scene from Grease:

9

Whenever we change the sheets on the bed, Mia's thinks it's time for a fashion show.

10

Friend time with Aaliyah.  Check out these girls' growing friendship here and here:

County Fair, 2011 Edition

We do this with the R family every fall.

Although we always go for the food (I had the best gyro of my life this year) and glean our entertainment from the people watching scene, having these guys was entertainment enough!

This cow-ropin', Harley-ridin', all-American grandpa is his granddaughter's favorite friend. She is most content right by his side. Here is Grandpa R taking his best pals to the horse stables:

  Mom loved this sweet and very friendly goat (aren't they all!) even though he isn't a Nubian. I dream about Nubians and their floppy ears.

Encouraging the goat love:

Best part of this particular fair experience... putting our babies on the super over-priced and sketchy rides.

The evolution of Mia's riding confidence is so funny here.  Watch as her expression changes with each round (if you can tell with the crummy video quality):

Back to School for Superman

Wearing his tres chic landscaping uniform for first day of school outfit.  Oh la la!
Maybe it will deter all the female nursing students from noticing him...

This is David's back-to-school photo that I insisted he let me take of him while scrambling out the door at 7:00am yesterday morning.  We have been in career transition mode for the last year, and this week the chaos on top of chaos that we'd been anticipating has finally begun with the start of the quarter.  When he realized that he wanted to spend his working hours doing something more meaningful, it was a difficult decision because he and his dad have built their landscape construction business from scratch.  He's good at it.  He's passionate about it.  He takes pride in it.  But suddenly these rewards did  not out-weigh the stress that was involved for him.  He will be the first to tell you that he is not a business savvy kind of guy. So, now he wants to fix people's bodies instead of their properties.  This year is full of medical school pre-requisites:  chemistry, biology, physics, chemistry, biology, physics, again, and again, etc. In the mean time, he will continue running his business around the clock while attending volunteer firefighter academy on the weeknights (the nights he's not at mutual or on a scout campout) and weekends (plus doing the additional homework that comes with it at 5am and before his daily run), maintaining two callings in our ward & fulfilling all other duties in that department, building us a modest, but dreamy house, and still making sure that we feel loved, cared for, and important. He is our HERO!

The Summertime Adventures of Mia & "T"

Mia is blessed to have a sibling by proxy in her cousin Talan.  

This summer has been especially fun now that they are each old enough to be independent of their parents and depend more on each other for entertainment.  

canoeing...

                                           camp-firing...

huckleberry picking...

bubbling...

flying...

being way less than excited about
tilt-a-whirling...

bike trailering...