He's not even close

I was hoping the power of suggestion would work but that hasn't been the case.  He's totally cool in diapers and he's fine being called a baby.  But these photos are definite incentives for me to crack down and get this kid potty trained.  He is soooo stinkin' cute in briefs.  He's also quite the poser.  What a nut!

Here we go again!

Speeches are to be recorded in a few hours and campaigning starts today.  

I'm so glad my kids are willing to try and to put themselves out there but I hate the way my stomach feels during the whole campaign.   

These are his little address stickers that he's passing out.  I got 660 of these bad boys for $5.  It was a total score since we've been given the budget of $25 for the whole campaign.  Genius, I know.

A recap of our summer in AZ

Now that school is back in session I've had a chance to go through our photos from this last month and thought I'd share what we've been up to.

 Ruby got caught up in reading a series of books.  She rarely put the books down.

 Eli finally learned how to swim on his own and loves to show off his skill of "swimming with all breathing" (keeping his head above water the entire time).

 I got to see these cute thighs almost daily.

 Charlie got ticked at Gib for some reason and set up a trap in his room.  You should've seen how tangled Gib got in it.

 Snow cones and friends

 Christmas in July is a high light.  We can only listen to Christmas music and watch Christmas movies for a few days.  I had a few projects planned that help prepare us for Christmas time and I'm even almost done with my sisters gifts for this year!  Rock on!  Have some new tricks up my sleeve for Christmas this year and got working on those too.

 This last year I bought a box of Hawaiian themed Christmas decor at a yard sale so now we have a Christmas tree for our Christmas in July.  The kids got a kick out of decorating the tree as we prepared for the week.

 Churned us up some peppermint stick ice cream (staying with the theme of Christmas) one night while the kids went swimming.  It was divine!!

 Had some projects planned and only got a picture of this one.  Too much hands-on on my part when some of the kids are still so young - not enough hands to take pictures.  This is our family banner!  GO KROFFS!!

 Lots of swimming and slack lining.  Since we were in UT for the whole month of June, once we got home in July the pool was still exciting so we swam A LOT!  I'm looking pretty tan!

 Slack lining isn't meant to go over one's pool but it's the only place I have two trees the right distance.  Yesterday Paul almost made it all the way across.  It's pretty tricky!  Next year we're going to master it.

 Planned on having some artificial turf installed to get rid of all the rock and open up our pool area.  Some guys came and cleared it all out pulling out bushes and shrubs to prepare it to install.  But the installer guy never came and installed.  Lame.  Still working on getting someone to do this, supposedly this Wed. but I'm not quite buying it.  Any way, we just spread it out ourselves like a grassy rug and made it work for us.  Doesn't look great but it'll do for now.

 Ate A LOT of popcorn as I purchased a commercial popcorn machine.  Total blast!  I used to go to the movies mostly because I wanted the popcorn.  I haven't really had the desire to go to the movies lately.

 Ate a lot of chicken nuggets (not me, the kids).  Somedays I was just too relaxed to make lunch so the kids opted for chicken nuggets.

 Had some family gatherings and Ty knew just the right peeps to hang out with.

 As I said earlier, lots of swimming.  Ty loves the pool but his favorite part is for someone to hold him outside of the pool and run and jump in.  He yells, "Charlie, Eli, look at me!" as he's flying through the air.

 Pretty much everyday after swimming we'd get dried off, come inside, go into my room and take down the bed and continue our Quantum Leap marathon.

 We watched the last three seasons in about a months time.  We all are total Scott Bakula fans now.  I was a little bummed at the last show as I really hoped that Sam Beckett would actually leap back home.  But a few hours later as my mind was stewing over it it dawned on me that he chose to keep leaping and
"putting right what once went wrong".  Kind of like a third Nephite!  What a good guy!

 

WHAT A GREAT SUMMER!!

Mission photos

I was asked to send some digital photos of Paul as a missionary for a youth fireside this Sunday so it definitely took me down memory lane.  Thought I'd share.  I fell asleep last night listening to Paul tell the kids stories from his mission as they looked through his missionary scrapbook.  What a great time in our lives.

 This is Savay.  He hardly spoke any english but it was as if he was waiting for us when we tracted into him.  We taught him the discussions in english and without hesitation he was ready to get baptized.  I would love to know his story.  He just knew!  How awesome to have been a part of that.

4th of July (This is by Ruby, everybody!!!!)

This year for the 4th of July, like always, we went to a friends cabin. As a tradition, we always make boats and have a race with them in the river. This year, we had new materials to make them. I made one with a tray, a sail, and some tape. I put a 32 on it, then I realized, as many of you may know, That that was Jimmer's number, basketball player of the year. So with that, I decided to name it Jimmer, and this is how it turned out.

Eli decided to make his completely out of Straws and tape, and it eventually fell apart.

Ty wanted to be like the rest of the kids, so he found a plain tray and thought it was good enough.

Some tough competition.
posted by Ruby