The 4th of July and the Enszer's

The high light of July for us was Jacob's family coming to see us for the 4th of July. I am not in love with this house but it was so nice to have enough room to put everyone. The kids love to see the family. The kids play so well together. When they got here we tried to take them to our favorite indoor play place called Castaway Cafe but they had closed it for the afternoon because they were too slow so we went out to eat at a Chinese buffet and just let the kids play.
Sunday was so hot that after church we pulled out the slip and slid and let the kids play...

The kids also had a lot of fun that evening after the barbecue trying to catch fire flies. They caught a whole bunch of them and put them in a jar.

Mirra and Ean looking closely for fireflies. Who knew you needed a biking helmet to catch them???

After finding as many fireflies as we could we went out and built a fire in the back to roast marshmallows and we let off our own fireworks surrounded by the twinkling lights of the fireflies. It was beautiful.
I think that everyone's favorite part was meeting Merrik though. I think he got held the whole time they were here. He loved all of the attention of course...

It was so nice to have them here to play. We loved having them. I know I have said it before but I am so glad that we are closer to Jacob's family. I love being able to get to know them better. 7 hours really seems like a breeze to me because I used to drive that repeatedly through out the year to go to Arizona but this drive there is more to look at so it goes quicker...

Mirra's Birthday

My baby girl turned 6 the day after we came home from Utah. She made sure though that we threw a party with her cousins before we left. We didn't do much but we had a lot of fun. We invited all of the Utah cousins plus Mirra's Friend that lives by grandma Nielsen, Aubrey, and Jenn and her little boy were visiting her sister so she came too. We blew up a bunch of water balloons and played pot potato and the water balloon toss. We also filled up Grandma's pool and put balloons in it that the kids had to try and sit on in the pool.

They had fun doing it but the water was really cold.

We had pizza for lunch (thank you Little Ceasers)

After we got home we celebrated her real birthday by going to Cars 2 and opening more gifts. Mirra got a new bike that she was so excited for. I can't believe she is six... She is such a good girl and helps me out so much with the baby. She is so big and I am going to miss her when she starts first grade and she will be gone all day...

Going Home!!!

I never imagined how excited I would be to go home for a visit. June 8th I got to go for the first time since we moved out here. When Mom left she took Mirra and Mason with her so the trip was me and Merrik on one flight and Jacob came on another flight. He didn't decide he was going to take the time for the trip until later. The first thing we did when we got there was go and Visit Hayley and the kids.

The kids always love playing there and we got to introduce them to Merrik.

The next few days were full of lots of family and fun. All of my brothers and sisters got together at Uncle Franks for a reunion planned by Lora. We went and saw the hot air balloons go up, ate at the fire station,some went to seven peaks, and lots of playing.

Lora made us all tea shirts with our family motto on them "walk on" we even got a family picture taken which is really hard to do.

We had so much fun that it was hard to have everyone leave. Jacob had to leave that Sunday and missed his flight. He got to stay one more day... Me and the kids stayed for 2 more weeks. it went way too fast though. There were so many things to do while we were there and I didn't get all of it done. I got to go to dinner with friends and see a couple of friends but there were so many others that I didn't get time with. We did get to spend time with the family though and play a lot with baby Dean. He is so cute. Mason loved him almost as much as he loves Merrik.

The hardest part was saying good bye. Mirra cried and cried. The best part was that Dad took the evening off from work. He usually has to work a lot of hours at work that week for mission presidents conference but took the night off to spend time with us. It was so nice. We didn't do much but it was good to spend time with them. Heidi and Mathew came over really late as well to say good bye and Becca was around for the evening too.

Merrik 2 weeks old

Today Merrik is 2 weeks old. It has been a crazy 2 weeks but wonderful. I was looking through pictures last night of all of the kids I found Masons picture that my friend Karen took when he was 2 weeks old.

Here is Mirra at 2 weeks old.

I think that they all look similar yet all so different at the same time. I have the most beautiful children in the world.