Chef Hannah

Hannah wanted to cook dinner tonight. Great! We went to the store and got all her ingredients that morning. She wanted to make breadsticks, pizza with a red sauce and garlic pizza with olive oil and mozerella. A lot of bread! She worked so hard doing everything from scratch. It took all day by the time she let things raise. Everything tasted very good! The pizza with the red sauce had a little too much crust and we figured out that she was suppose to divide the dough into two. I love that she wanted to do this on her own. She can cook pretty much anything with a recipe.

House sitting

For 21 days, Isaac has taken care of the Potter's three cats while they were in Utah by feeding them morning and night, letting them go out and make sure they got back in and just going over and playing with them. He also got their mail and mowed their lawn. It was a great way to earn some money for the bird he has been wanting. He has done a great job but we did find out that he is allergic to the cats. He comes home with his eyes itching and nose running and sneezing. He said it was worth it. I'm glad to know we can never have a cat now.  Ha. The cats sure love him (Pepper is in the picture, Norbert and Little Kitty).

Fishing

Isaac spent the morning fishing with Wilson and Tyson at Rope Mill Park. Isaac caught the one and only fish. They lucked out and had dry skies for about an hour before it started pouring and Charlyce was ready to leave. They had a great time.

Acworth Beach

Charlyce wanted to check out Acworth Beach as a possibility for Izzy's birthday party. They were suppose to have a place to rent kayaks. We loaded up the car and got there right in the heat of day. Ammon and Roman joined us. Unfortunately, we should have read the website information better because they only rent kayaks on Saturday. It was hot and the water was a pretty gross yellow-green color. The kids decided to make the best of it and played a little and even got in and swam around a little. I only went in up to my knees. It did feel good to sit in the sun. We decided that place could be crossed off for a birthday party. It would have been a great place to kayak though.

Jacob

I got the sweetest card from Jacob. Of course it was actually from his grandma, Tammy. Jacob took this selfie of us in sacrament meeting last Sunday as he was playing with my phone. At least he looked cute! Holy moly I'm getting old. So many wrinkles!

Isaac's best week of summer

We had a great week while Wilson stayed with us. Izzy also stayed with us from Wednesday through Friday. She had yearbook camp in Atlanta the first of the week. Wednesday evening, we went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. Hannah had helped Izzy find some family names for her and Wilson to do and Ammon came with us and used some of our names. The temple was crazy busy. When I called that morning, there was only one youth group on the schedule before us so they told us we could do as many names as we wanted. When we got there, two unexpected groups had shown up. They still squeezed us in at the time we had made the appointment for but the kids only got to do four names each and I didn't do any but instead just helped hand out towels to kids from the group before while our kids were changing and then to them. It was great to see the temple so full but the kids were a little disappointed to only get to do four names. Just means we have to go back! After, we went to Steak n Shake (of course). 

A lot of this went on this week. Isaac and Wilson slept in the basement and it was pretty much their cave for the week. They loved it.

 Thursday night the Laurel class went to the Atlanta Braves game. It was rain delayed so it didn't start until after 9:30. We lucked into great seats. They were great because they were covered by the seats above us so we didn't have to worry about getting wet! I was so happy we had so many girls able to come. We had to leave in the 5th inning so girls could be off the roads at midnight. When we left, Atlanta had just tied up the game at 5. They ended up winning 12-11 so we did miss a lot of excitement.

 It was cool to see how they took care of the field for the rain. A little tractor attached to the thing that looks like a metal pole in the middle of the field and then drove forward and rolled the big tarp up. The pitcher's mound had a little additional tarp covering it up.

I love working with Sister Young! The girls love her too.

 Isaac and Wilson didn't have mutual that night. Nathan drove him and the girls into it.

Friday we went to Escalade Rock Climbing Gym. Isaac had chosen to do that for his birthday but wanted to wait until Izzy was here since he knew it was one of her favorite places. Nathan decided not to come and went out with friends instead. It was pretty cool. You can climb and then some areas you have to have someone to belay you down and others have an auto belay where you just have to trust that it will let you down. It freaked me out. The first several times I was so scared to lean back as you can't feel it holding you like you can when someone physically belays you. The kids had a blast. It wore me out! I think we were all sore the next day.

I told Charlyce her and JD needed to leave more often. So much fun having these two in our home.

Timber!

We love the look of the beautiful birch tree in our front yard. It adds so much shade to our house as well. Since we moved in, Nathan has called it his tree since as it is right outside his window. He loves how it keeps his room darker in the mornings. Well, we have erosion issues with that side of the house from the tree and we also found out it's roots have broken two sprinklers, messed with our irrigation box and is lifting the front sidewalk. Both the landscape man and the irrigation repair man said that the tree needed to come down before they could do anything. I had called to schedule it but didn't know the day they would be doing the work. I was quite surprised to come home and see over half the tree was already down. It is amazing how quick something that takes so long to get so big comes down. Glad I could see the last of it. It sure feels different inside the house now. So much brighter in the front entry. Nathan was not happy.

Isaac turns 14!

Since Justin has to leave town tomorrow, Isaac's birthday, we celebrated him today. He was so excited for this birthday because Wilson is staying with us for the week while his parents are in Canada. We spent the afternoon at Wilson's pool. We went there because it is never crowded and ours is always crowded. I love that these two boys will play in the pool for hours still. They dive and play games and just have a great time. Lauren was over so she and Hannah came to the pool too. We then had our Father's Day dinner since we were too full on Sunday to have a nice dinner. Isaac wanted to do his birthday dinner on his real birthday. We'll go back to the pool and then grab pizza on the way home. He wants Pizza Hut thin crust pepperoni. We had Justin's request of lemon pepper chicken, rice and Greek salad. Hannah and Lauren made Isaac's red velvet cupcakes for after dinner. Hard to believe he is turning 14! He finally got a phone. They ended the day with video games in the basement.

Roadtrip to Louisville for U2

Our friends, John and LuAnn King invited Justin and I to go with them to the U2 concert in Louisville, Kentucky. We made a quick overnight trip and had a lot of fun. I had no idea Louisville was only six hours away. We left Friday morning about 8:30, stopped for lunch along the way and then checked into our hotel. Before heading over to the stadium where U2 was playing, we went to a Mexican restaurant and had dinner. We weren't really all that hungry but knew we would be before the concert was over. One Republic opened up for them. They were great. I didn't realize I knew so many of their songs but ended up knowing everything they played. They would be fun to see at a small venue. Lots of energy.

 It was so hot. It was 7 pm but the temp was still about 90 degrees and humid. We were happy to be on the shaded side of the stadium.

The tour is called the Joshua Tree Tour and it is 30 years from the Joshua Tree album came out. They had a Joshua tree on the floor and on the backdrop. U2 started just before dark and played out in the crowd while it was still light and then moved to the stage up front when it got dark.

 I loved the first hour of the concert. They played all the hits. They got a little too political the second hour and played more new stuff I didn't know. I could have done away with that section. For the encore, they came back out and played another five songs. I was ready for bed. ha. The backdrop was really cool and kept changing with different stories of their songs.

This was a bucket list item for John. It was fun to see how excited he was. It took us a good hour and a half to get out of the parking lot after the show. We just sat in the car in the parking lot until things got moving.

The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel and then drove to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Justin really wanted to go see that. It was pretty cool. We got to see how they use to make the bats and how they do today. They don't allow cameras in the workshop. It is crazy how many bats they make! They say most professional players have 80-120 bats per season made. All Louisville Slugger wooden bats are made at that museum, they do outsource some alluminum bats. They make around 3,000 bats per day and during Spring Training it can be up to 5,000 per day! Crazy. Everyone that comes through the museum gets a mini wooden bat. They make those for ball field gift shops too. It was pretty interesting.

 They were partnering with Legos and had some cool Lego creations on display. What doesn't Legos have a hand in?

 We got on the road and headed for home with one more stop to make. We decided to eat lunch in Nashville. I have been wanting to go to Nashville! We basically looked up the closest BBQ restaurant to the freeway and picked that. It ended up being really good. I hope to come back and explore the city. It is less than three hours away.

The Kings are so fun to be with. So glad they asked us!