Lovin' Life

You know, I never thought summer would be nearly as exciting once I was no longer a student or a teacher. I was wrong. We've been having fun the last couple of weeks and are looking forward to quite a few fun things over the next few months.

Here is our first swimming excursion of the year in our friend's backyard. Carli was in heaven. And I have never seen a cuter girl in a swimsuit! I meant to get a picture of her in her swimsuit, but I guess we'll just have to go again.

We got together with Ben and Rachel and the girls and had fun hanging out outside and playing at the park. Our neighbors gave us their "old" porch swing, so the girls had fun swinging together. Haven loved getting Carli to mimic her. My new favorites of Carli's words are "I love you too", "up, up and away" and "bless you". She is getting so good at singing and sings all the words of "Happy Birthday", - we're not really sure where she picked it up, but I guess it's a pretty easy one to remember - "Hello, Hello" and a song called "Bouncy Ball", to which she even adds the "whoa's".


Bedtime has been a little crazy lately. I blame it on summer since Carli doesn't seem to want to sleep when it's still light, even though she's really tired. So, most nights she lays in her crib singing and wiggling until she finally falls asleep. The picture doesn't really capture it all that well, but she's upside down on top of her blankets. Yes, she still needs to be in a fuzzy sleeper with blankets. We still have to heat our house at night, if you can believe it. But, you can't ask for better weather during the day - highs of low 70s and sunny. I love this time of year!Here are the flowers in my front yard. We didn't plant any of these, but we've been happy to see them come up the last couple of years. According to our friend the squiggly looking plant is called a contorted ficus (I think) and could be worth money. It's actually dead, that's a vine growing around it, so I'm pretty sure we couldn't get anything for it. Anyway, I'd love to get into gardening, so give me your suggestions!
Next week Carli has a 2-hour appointment with a pediatric opthamologist. You may have noticed in some of her pictures that her left eye has a "tracking issue". According to the pediatrician it is probably also accompanied by a vision problem. Hopefully they can figure everything out next week and hopefully the solution does not involve a patch because I don't see that working very well.

The next week I'm off to visit my sister and her family for a week. I'm excited for that, especially for Carli to get to play with her cousins. I am sad to leave Logan though - a week is a long time without him.

The week after that is our Stake Youth Conference (for which I finally got the service figured out). So, June is pretty full, and I'm happy about that. After winters full of not much but cold and snow, it's great to fill up the summers with lots of fun activities.