oreos...

for our young women activity, suzette and i thought it would be fun to have a "game night". she brought some ideas, and i brought an oreo game i saw on our friends blog (thanks porters!). what you do is put an oreo on your forehead. without using your hands, you need to get the oreo into your mouth. harder than it looks and you get great facial expressions along the way (plus you get an oreo).

we also played tag, and a game suzette brought. you play in teams with clothes pins. each team member gets 6ish pins. the object is to try to take the pins off the other team members. the team with the most pins still on wins...it was really fun. it was a great night and so fun to be with them. i do love my beehives. they are all so different, but the same.

-ash

lindsey

when we got home from camping, i was hopped up on benadryl, in and out of sleep. linds called wanting to borrow a few eggs. i am not quite sure how i got the eggs from the fridge to the porch, but i did. i went right back to sleep. a couple hours later i opened the door and found a great thank you...i loved it and right away knew it was from linds (tyler helped with the 'a'). i love how she is creatively thoughtful. i need to be more like her...thanks linds!

-ash

camping

paul and i chose a weekend, told the rest of the family to come, and the planning started. it is so nice to get away. as we drove up strawberry looking for sites, we came across one that was perfect...yes, it was taken. we turned around and kept driving. finally in desperation we found an empty lot, by the road. it had rained buckets and the ground was mushy and muddy. mom had to give piggy backs to kelsie and abby so their feet didn't get the trailer messy...one word...hilarious... paul and i set up our tent, dad and mom went down to get ransom and emily. we finished setting up camp, moved our fire pit to a less muddy hole, set up the canopy and i got a wicked bug bite. i couldn't believe something that small, made that much pain. i am not sure what it was... it was latched on and painful. at first it looked like a mosquito bite, but as the hours went on, my arm swelled, and itched. it was annoying. i don't know why i am the one who gets the freaky bites...
after we set up camp, there were a few things that paul wanted to do. he told abby, kelsie and i we could do "girl things". i wasn't sure what that would be, but abby didn't miss a beat. her response..."we can like totally gossip now". we started laughing.
the next morning, my arm was getting worse, so dad took me to the little store at daniels summit (i forgot our benedryl spray). we needed more milk anyway because i had honeycomb for dinner while everyone else had chili, and i obviously have no control with milk and cereal (i think i had a better dinner). it was one of the most pathetic stores i have ever been in. no benedryl, but if i had a headache, i had an endless supply of options. i asked the girl working there (who was reading a book, and i obviously interrupted her book time) if all their supplies were out. she answered me in the same moment she turned her head to the book "yes". i so wanted to rub my arm in her face and say..."now do you care", i didn't do that. instead, went back to the burb, put neosporin on it. dad did a really thick layer and would ask every few minutes..."is it doing anything?" finally i looked at him and said "it still itches like crazy, but i don't want to get my fingers all ointmenty...i guess it's making me not itch it...that's a good thing?"
it was nice to be away and enjoy the woods. i took a moment and smelled my very favorite smell...pine. we love camping and can't wait to go again.
-ash

burning

each spring, paul takes a torch to the yard. i know he loves it. i love the way it looks when he is done. clean and controlled. we had some wind and all the smoke blew into our neighbors home (they were on vacation) and i know when they got home, their house must have smelled bad...sorry about that. it was nice to have it done...until next year!
-ash

running through the sprinklers

as conrad and i were watering the garden, the sprinklers came on. i was surprised because conrad doesn't like cold water, but he got his feet wet, then is leg, then his bum. we ran inside and got his swimming gear on and started running. it was so fun. he would do the countdown and then we would run as fast as we could. he sometimes would get a running start and get to the other side before me. he would then turn around and say "lala, come on" (with his hands on his side). he is hilarious! the best is when the sprinkler would spray right in his face. i loved running through the sprinklers when i was little and now i have a buddy to run right along side me. thanks paul for taking pictures...

-ash