Spring into Summer

I know that four months might SEEM like a very long time to most people, but when you have four kids who are ALL home for half that time and a hubby in grad school it goes by like a FLASH of lightening!!

This summer we (in UCI housing) lost a great number of friends to the seasonal move out. Friends who have been loved, cherished and will be missed dearly.

I don't want to make a list for fear of excluding someone! That's how many are leaving or gone already, either that or my brain left too... ANYWAY, WE LOVE YOU! COME BACK AND VISIT US OR ELSE! (ill find out where you moved and egg your house)
"just kidding"...

So this spring was pretty nuts with the planning and execution of four birthdays and a wedding, not including cakes for at least five birthdays an anniversary and a wedding!!! none of those people payed me either! lol they were immediate family though, so i guess that's fine.
Oh, and if you want to see pics of the cakes you can go to My Cake Blog.

So anyway, I planned my little sisters Wedding Reception and made her wedding cake. The pics were done by a friend of a friend of the Groom, Piscitello Photography (she did a fabulous job and I highly recommend her!) turned out BEAUTIFULLY and my sis and her new hubby were ecstatic with the whole event and that was the whole point! We had tons of help from super creative family members and there were tons of people who knew how to take orders and everything turned out GREAT!!! Heres a link to the Facebook Album I hope you can see them!

As for the Birthdays, well ill include Elijahs as well, even though his was in the winter, since I didnt post about his yet either, we had a great Thomas the Tank Engine birthday for Elijah!
Then in April, I threw EmmaLily a Faerie Tea Party! In May, Nephi had a Spongebob Luau in our backyard! At the end of May I made a huge dinner for Shane and we had a small family party on his birthday, which was awesome and such a relief! In July we had Willows 2nd Birthday at Turtle Rock Park with some friends and combined it with Sarah Kates 2nd birthday (those little cuties are only two days apart) We had another little cutie (Mona) whose birthday was right in between theirs but never got the chance to ask her mom if she wanted in on the combo birthday at the park, i could have emailed but didnt think of it until it was way too late!! Thats my brain after four pregnancies!!!
Anyway, here are a few pics from those events






















As school was ending for the summer i felt an overwhelming urge to holler "Huzzah!" and dance around the school yard, but held that in and instead decided to write with a chalk marker on the car, "Schools Out For Summer!" and "Surfs Up" and other such end of school/summer time sayings.
I have now gotten in the habit of writing things on my car, with the exception of a van gough starry night replica a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture of any of these :( If anyone has a picture of them please send them to me so I can post them!

On the Fourth of July we spent the day at Corona del Mar beach with almost the whole Family. I dont have very many pics for having been so overwhelmed, and any pictures that my younger siblings took will have involved stupid things or blurry people... cant trust them to take good pictures of anything! Aaarg i want a digital slr camera soooooooo bad... too poor, not a priority, blah blah blah... lame!


oh yeah, I also chopped off ALL my hair in the spring! That made EVERYONE at church do a double take!! people i had known for years were about to introduce themselves to me!! Hahahaha, good stuff.
here are some pictures of that

BEFORE

AFTER

I LOVE it short! Its so much easier to handle and deal with and I dont have to worry about it getting stuck or pulled or too hot! The only problem I had was a couple of little kids thought I was a dude, but that doesn't bother me enough to grow it out again.


Here is one of the lemonade stand that my kids earned a total of $150 over a period of about four days (and the only hung out for a couple hours each day) Business kids!



My Aunt Annie and Uncle Byron were in town with their kids from Utah! I was so happy to be able to see them! and here is a pic of my mom and her brothers and their spouses



We spent Pioneer day with the PV stake this year! it was super fun even though there werent many people


I almost forgot about Scout Camp!!! I was the Bear Den Leader and i was there from 8 to 3 FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT, just about went crazy!! Heres a pic of my den and my two little ones who got to go to the sibling camp, they had a blast!