Summer lovin'...

Ella found an old pin I bought my first summer in Skagway. Oh, the memories!

We often mind Maiya in odd places for an afternoon nap (in practice she refuses to take a nap, but these things do have a way of happening on rare occasion)...


Ethan in a very typical Mexican high chair. This is pretty much all I've seen around here! It is quite uncommon that they don't have a strap, so we grabbed a bungee cable from the car to keep him tied down. You never know when you might need a bungee cord!!


When in UT, I saw all of my siblings with the exception of Ben, who now lives in Tennessee!

We went hiking to American Fork Falls, if I remember correctly. A simple and beautiful hike!

I know I've mentioned our family's love of Jenga. That love goes well beyond just playing the game...

We celebrated my birthday with store-bought key lime pie :-) Now that is a birthday cake I like!

We decided to let Ella try out a gymnastics class, after about 2 years of her pleading. It is twice the price of ballet, but she is absolutely in love with it. Therefore, we dropped ballet, and now let her go to the gym twice a week. It is exactly 1 1/2 minutes from our house. Can't beat that!

Life is good...

especially when they love each other!

Birthdays

For Ethan's birthday this summer, we went to a friend's house to celebrate the birthday of Ella's classmate and friend who shares the same birthday!

It was a pool party!

It was 4th of July, and "too cold to swim" for half of the Mexican kids there. After all, it wasn't a completely sunny clear day (Ahem. It was probably 75 degrees, still).

Faces were made...

Fun was had by all...

Graduation from Kinder

I recently posted about Ella's graduation from Kindergarten (yeah...I told you I was months and months behind)! You can find the post on my other blog!

Meanwhile, here are a few photos I didn't share there...

Here are the girls sitting on a ledge at the school. That is a gigantic moth on the wall between them!

Here is Ella's Spanish Kinder teacher:

Here are Maiya's teachers for her "Maternal" class (a.k.a. preschool)

And here are the girls with their friend, Pablo. Behind them is a gigantic, AMAZING cake that Pablo's mother made. She is an up-and-coming cake baker, and is quite the artist in soooo many ways (weaving, painting, drawing, etc). Cakes are her new thing, and she made this Alice in Wonderland cake at a special class in Guadalajara with a visiting specialist. Pretty cool cake, huh?

Father's Day

If I'm talking about Father's Day, you can see how behind I am on posting!!

The girls came home from school with adorable gifts for Jared on Father's Day!

They each made a picture that the school then had printed on mugs, along with their photo on the other side.



Ella's picture is of her and her Daddy (I love Ella's red hair photos...they always make me smile!)

And since Maiya's a little young to draw her own pictures, her teachers had her make fingerprints with paint, and then they made the fingerprints into little mini-Daddy's (see Jared working on the computer, working out, listening to music, etc). What a cute idea!

These are definitely a keepsake!

Our serious student...

Ella is a very serious student. She has to have everything PERFECT, which can make for some rough homework sessions, at times. Overall, she's better better at not throwing fits!!

In Mexico, the children write in cursive, not print. I tried to write a note to the teacher in pure cursive (you know, the "correct" way...so I didn't feel dumb), and realized I just couldn't do it very well. I generally use a sloppy mix of print/cursive/whatever.

Ella's cursive is officially better than mine (oh yeah, and 100% better than Jared's...because he doesn't write curisve)!

This is how they sleep...

At our old house, Ella & Maiya shared a queen sized bed. We were a bit fearful Maiya might fall off the side, so we put up a portable bed rail. Maiya used it well (see below).

It was not unusual to sneak a peak at the kids sleeping like this...



And yes, during the hot season it was NOT unusual to find Ella stripping off all of her clothes, and sleeping on top of the sheets.

In our new home, the girls now have bunk beds which they LOVE. Luckly, their sleeping habits seem to be much more normal when they are not side by side!