Swimming Lessons

Today was the end of the first week of swimming lessons for the boys.  It was a "play day" where the children got to play games with the teachers, go off the diving board and down the water slide.

Michael gave me quite the scare!  Most of the kids were going down the water slide and that is where all of the swimming teachers were.  Well a couple of the kids decided to go off the diving board without a teacher in the pool watching and helping if needed.  All of the other kids going off the diving board had been in swimming lessons longer and are better swimmers than Michael.  Well he saw the other kids jump off the diving board without a teacher so he thought that he could too.  Now granted he had jumped off the diving board countless time before but never without someone there to help him a little bit to get to the side of the pool. 

Luckily I was watching because after he jumped he started swimming to the side of the pool but started getting tired.  He was close but then he started to get afraid and started going under. I was yelling for someone to help Michael as I was running to him but I got to him before anyone else realized what was going on.  I put down baby Glen on the ground and was able to grab him just in time.   At that moment the teachers realized what was going on.  Lets just say Michael got a good number of people pretty shook up.  I think that it hit Me and Michael the most though.  What a horrible thing to watch one of your own children drowning right before your very eyes!

Michael is such a good sport, even though he was scared half to death he got back up on the diving board, this time with a teacher in the pool, and jumped off one more time.  Even though he was on the verge of tears up there he agreed to do it again to help him not be afraid of something that he used to love.  What a trooper! 

Now I can't look at Michael without thinking how close I was to losing my precious little boy.  What a horrible thought!  Hopefully I can make it through the next couple of weeks of swimming lessons.

Summer Fun

During the summer we try to have a lot of family activities that we do.  For Mother's Day Alan bought a large raft.  We have taken it out a couple of times down the Yakima River.  I love it because even if the river is too cold to get into we can still go rafting.  We have a lot of barbeques at the parks along the rivers and of course we go camping.  We try to go camping once a month during the summer.  The other thing that we always try to do is visit family.  This summer we haven't been too good at that but hopefully in the near future we will see some of Alan's family.

Father Son's Campout

 

 The dog dug a hole in our grass so the boys filled up the hole with water and decided to soak their feet in it.

  Barbeque at the Snake River

 It is a tradition to barry the children here every year.

 Three day camp out in Idaho

  The boys driving in our camp spot

 The boys hide out spot until I found a snake in the grass back there.

 Swimming at the hot springs wore the guys out.

Alpo

Alan as usual has been keeping himself busy with either work or play.  We sure do love and appreciate him!  Here are a couple of pictures of some of the things he has been up to.

Yes, this first picture is of Alan's broken tooth!  He went golfing and came back with this beautiful smile.  A guy who was golfing on the course next to his hole went to hit his ball and it went sideways instead of strait.  He yelled heads up so Alan did just that.  He put his head up and looked the direction that the guy was yelling from.  Oops!  Luckily the ball bounced before it hit his mouth or else it could of been a lot worse.  I would have been crying if it had happened to me, but it seemed to not even faze Alan!  He went and got it fixed and that was that. 

 Here is one of the recent projects that Alan took on.  He decided that he was going to cut down our pine tree in our front yard.  It was a lot bigger project than either of us would have guessed.  Probably three weekends and three hauls to the dump later he had it done.  He did a great job and now we have grass growing in it's place!  In this first picture he had already cut off the first 15 feet on the top of the tree.

 

The Boys

Here are just a few random pictures of "the boys".

Working hard on our box of wood that we have for our wood burning stove.

 Playing with Dad's clothes that he had left on the floor.

 

 Weston's "truck" that he rides around the house everywhere.  In the back are all of his important "Dad tools".

 I love this picture because they are playing so well together in it.  Life isn't always like this but more often then not they really enjoy spending time with one another. 

 I took pictures of the little guys back in March.  Here are just a couple of them.

 Weston just wanting to play

 Here they are "trying" to smile. =)

Catching Up (Christmas, Ashton and Hawaii Trips)

Well I think I have waited long enough to update our blog.  Since I am so... far behind I am afraid that everything is going to be short and sweet.

Last Christmas we decided to spend Christmas at our own house so that we can have our own family traditions.  We started this last year and it has sort of stuck.  The day after Christmas we drove to Ashton Idaho to see Alan's family.  After about four days of visiting his family we left the kids with Alan's parents and flew to Hawaii to spend a week with my family.  It was really bizarre to go from playing in the snow to swimming in the ocean!  The whole trip was a lot of fun!

 Alan's parent's place

 Laurie swinging on the vines (It's a lot harder than it looks!)

 My brother Luke playing in the waves for the first time.

 My Dad and Brother in law (Troy) snorkeling

 Here is where we stayed while in Hawaii (the condos were super nice!)

 Collecting sea shells

 This picture is of my parents and all of my siblings.  From left to right: Me, Mom, Dad, Amy, Mike, Katie, Laurie and Luke in the front.

I don't have any pictures of us buggy boarding but we did that a lot while we were there. It was probably my most favorite thing that we did, well that and jumping the waves. =)