Kaye's home

Our old neighbor (Ms. Kaye) invited us up to her home in the mountains in August. It was just for the afternoon, but Brooks and the boys were SO excited to be on a river that they had to buy fishing poles. (Brooks has been camping with the young men in church....including Bronson.....about twice a month. He has caught fish there with other people's poles and apparently they were delicious yadda yadda. Long story short, he's hooked. Bwhaha. Pun intended)

ALONG with their fishing poles he bought some salmon eggs and some worms for bait.

Fine, whatever. That was all great UNTIL I OPENED MY FRIDGE!!!!!!

I NOW have a problem with fishing when the largest and juicest nightcrawlers you've ever seen are situated next to my butter. Who knew Canadians grew such huge night crawlers?

THANKFULLY, on the day it was time to go, they were removed and the boys were excited to catch their fish. Especially Brooks. In fact he said we were NOT leaving there until he caught something.

Playing in the river always entertains these rascals.

Sweet ol' Iris

Everly even enjoyed the water by Kaye's home. It was pretty cold too.

Kellyn had her usual up-and-down moments.
I have ZERO clue why she is freaking out here, besides it's Kellyn....

The water was super low so tubing was kinda a bust. But it worked out since Iris and Royce couldn't really float anywhere, so I always knew where they were.

All this while Brooks and Bronson are STILL trying to catch fish. Afterall he SAID he wouldn't leave until he caught something.

Aleeya, however DID catch something.....a snail...... which we didn't need juicy bait for AND we won't be eating it.

Ms. Kaye took time to just sit by the side with the kids and listen to the girl's constant chattering.

I tried not to rub it in, but now IRIS is catching stuff before Brooks........

a centipede. 

But he STILL kept trying to catch those fish.

Then Emerson caught some crawdads (yet ANOTHER thing we will not be cooking and eating)

I think they ended up catching 5 total crawdads.

We needed to get back for a church activity that night, but the five hours spent up there were so fun for my kids.

Oh, and Brooks never caught his fish. 

AND we have leftover nightcrawlers.

Great.

School Starts

August 18th school started back again for my older five.

But of COURSE the night before that meant a trip to the car wash. (which actually is REALLY cool in a van that sounds like it's made of tin and really loud)

However THIS little girl didn't seem too thrilled. Actually she was more like terrified.

How NICE to have a husband on a NORMAL schedule to have it easy for him to take the kids to IHOP for breakfast on the 1st day of school. CLEARLY they are pretty excited.

My big ol' king-of-the-school 5th grader!

(which also means he's king of the bus.....a title he takes quite seriously. Don't mess with the skinny white kid)

Emerson, Emerson Emerson. Gotta love that 4th grader

Aleeya, the obviously-shy-in-front-of-a-camera 2nd grader

The sweetest (and loudest) 1st grader, Iris.

(It's not just her voice that's loud, for some silly reason I got her the Frozen shirt she wanted and it SINGS LET IT GO when you hit a button!!!!! The VERY same button her hand is on in the picture. I just kept hoping I wouldn't get a phone call from the school asking to bring another shirt!)

I told Bronson I was MAKING him take a picture for the first day of school and this is what I got. 

Great.

Thankfully, my 7th grader cooperated nicely after he got the desired laugh from his siblings. #hisfatherschild

I week into school Emerson and Camden saw a 4 year old with a buzzed head at church and said they've always wanted hair like that. Since we didn't have a family picture or vacation or cold weather coming up, I thought, "Why not?!"

After the first row. bhahaha

Since everyone gets these two mixed up at school anyway, they thought it would be funny to wear matching outfits with their matching buzz-cuts to school the next day.

Iris is so sweet doing her homework. She uses her eraser a TON and wants it all to be perfect. She just sits so quietly in there working on it. Here she is in her shin guards before soccer doing homework.

Aleeya ALSO takes (SOME OF) her homework seriously. Like the first week when they were asked to send in three pictures of them to school. I asked her what kind of pictures (like vacation pictures? family pictures? etc) and all she said was "Mo-om, we just have to bring in FABULOUS ones".

I wasn't sure what "fabulous" meant and she said that she would tell me when to take a picture. I grabbed my camera, she did THIS and told me to take it. 

(COMPLETELY posing herself, mind you. )

Fabulous picture #1 was done. Then she ran out of the room and came back in ANOTHER outfit and did THIS for Fabulous picture #2

If the mermaid tail skirt isn't "fabulous" I don't know WHAT is!!!!

Then she ran out again to change her clothes, posed like this and told me to take Fabulous picture #3.

WHERE IN THE WORLD DOES SHE GET THIS?!?!?!?

Before you go on pointing fingers I NEVER pose like that at home. So don't even THINK it.

I'm still baffled by this and undoubtedly impressed with my ability to keep a straight face through the whole Fabulous Photoshoot.

Let's just say, Aleeya's teacher was BLOWN OVER with all the fabulous-ness.....then again she has taught Emerson before. So I'm sure she wasn't surprised in the least.

Summer pics

I just decided I would do a post of all the rest of the summer pics of us around the house. Completely random....then again it's basically how we roll during summer.

Parks. We went to the parks A. LOT! (a place that all ages enjoy)

Here is Everly in her SC onesie that I just love.

Snuggling. These faces....... 

I think this picture will always bring an instant smile to my face.

However with 8 kids in close quarters all the time, it's not like it's all snuggles and nice-play all the time. There is teasing, arguing, tattling, etc. 

Even when they START out playing and having fun, it can end like this all too quickly.

Learning life lessons, right? If someone pushes you, make sure you push them harder so they won't think of doing it again...... oh wait.......

We went to a fanTAStic peach-picking orchard that I wish we visited more. We just devoured them pretty quick.

They had jobs everyday (besides cleaning their rooms and kitchen clean-up jobs), and one day Royce was in charge of blowing the leaves/grass off the driveway. He LOVES doing anything with the leaf blower.....and apparently, it's rather entertaining to Brooks too, because I came outside to see him making Royce's belly "fat" move.

He thought it was hilarious

However we thought THIS was even MORE entertaining

Everly is quite.....um.....destructive, I mean "curious". She had climbed up on the fireplace, knocked down the screen and started playing with all the millions of black rocks in the fire place. She's CLEARLY very sorry about it all.

Aleeya, at times has been showing a more sassy side that we are trying to stop permanently. Like the time when she said to Brooks, "Do you even have a brain?!?"

Yea, that didn't go over so well. She didn't like her one-way ticket to her room so much.

There was a lot of noise/wailing for a while. Then silence, then this note slid out from under her door apologizing and asking if Dad wanted to read with her again. 

With some money from his birthday, Camden bought these remote control fighting robots. Which of COURSE gets put into a bracket tournament.

Aleeya won two tournaments in a row. 

The third one the championship round was between Bronson and Aleeya. Bronson's robot actually punched Aleeya's making her robot's head pop off. 

Bronson immediately started celebrating his first win while Aleeya just sat there in disbelief staring at the head rolling around. The fact that I captured this picture perfectly of the emotions is an added bonus.

There are a lot of nature trails close to where we live so we did that quite often. 

One time  the kids were playing in the river right over by this tree. After they got out of the river and we looked over RIGHT by where they were and saw this POISONOUS snake SUPER camoflouged in the sticks. Hol.ee. COW!

Another time we caught a much less harmful animal..... "Doisy"

Camden named him that because he has a "2" on his shell and "2" in portuguese is "dois".

Doisy also had a REALLY elastic-y neck!

We happened to be dog-sitting at the time and the dog LOVED the turtle. We would hide the Doisy for a game and the dog could always sniff him out and find him.

Yet, another normal look for my kitchen during the summer.....when all the kids want to "cook" (with potatoes and cut up styrofoam cups)

The fact that it entertained them so long was worth the disaster to me.....plus, they had to clean it up which took MORE time. :)

Camen is 11

On August 2nd my second born, FIERCELY loyal/protector, imaginative and honest Camden turned 11. Especially lately, I've been so grateful for him and  our honest and private talks when he will come to me and say, "Mom, can you and I just talk in your room for a while?" 

This kid will ALSO not let a bully go un-punished (for better or worse). A kid made the mistake of picking on Iris on the bus. #hisbad 

Another kid mistakenly swore three times in Camden's face....and he learned his lesson. #swearingpolice #wontdoTHATagain

He also will tell EVERYONE that he is a "Mormon" and if they want to know more he has a book to give them. He really is fearless in all aspects of his life. 

The piñata that he wanted me to make him this year was an Enderman.

I know, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!?!?! Apparently it's a thing on Minecraft (the game he plays on his kindle). Anyway, that's what he got......my strongest EVER piñata made!

It took SO long for them to break it was actually funny to watch this tough group of boys trying to crack it with a metal bat even!

He's lucky he has an August birthday because he has the OPTION to do outside/water-y stuff. Once again, he wanted to have a water-sack fight with his friends.

But sometimes it looks like a reason for Brooks and I just to start nailing our kids. I should throw them next time thinking, "THIS is for not cleaning the toilet right. and THIS is for giving me that face when I cooked the 'wrong' breakfast!"

WHO doesn't love a captured face shot?!?!?! I'm sure Bronson felt that one. (he also probably had a smile on his face too)

I don't even remember WHICH friend this is, but I still can't stop laughing when I look at this!

WELCOME TO THE SMITH HOUSE, *WHAM*!!!

Kellyn wanted to be where the action was but not get wet, or get hit or join in. She's a walking contradiction......kinda like her inside-out swimsuit that she put on herself.

One thing is for sure, when Brooks zeros in on you, it's like his bag has a tracking device. You can TELL his eyes were set on getting the birthday boy here.

AAAAAAAnd he NAILED him. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and TAKE THAT!