Summertime

 We had a great time camping at Ferron Reservoir this last weekend. Grandpa Steve brought his horse for the kids to ride, we went fishing, and ate tons of great food! Kyle has lots of memories of coming up on Ferron Mountain so we also had lots of stories and jokes around the campfire.

 Me, my brother, Mark, and Jannika cookin' up some breakfast.

 All the kids getting ready for the hobo stick hike. It's a tradition to pack your lunch in a bandana on a stick and take a hike with grandma.

 These pics are actually out of order... here's the first day of school last month. Jannika: 4th grade, Kirsten: 1st grade.

Our family in the pageant. We of course loved doing the pageant this year.

Catching Up

 Hey, I've been missing in action for quite a while but I will try to catch you all up on what we've been doing. Kyle's grandparents were down last Saturday so we all got together and took the opportunity for a picture will all of the Beagley/Hill cousins. (Yeah, the trampoline was sagging a bit...!)

 Castle Dale has a kids rodeo every year and have a chicken chase, a greased pig chase and our favorite: the stick horse race. Kirsten won this year and got a $20 bill!

 We went to our Stake's Lagoon day a few weeks ago and had lots of fun. Here we are on Rattlesnake Rapids.

 The kids loved all the rides and wanted to do them over and over again!

 I really liked the Pioneer Village (of course) and I got to see my ancestor's cabin.

 We celebrated Claire's birthday in April and I made this butterfly cake for her. We also had a butterfly party.

 And somewhere in there we took a family trip to Goblin Valley. I'll do some more updates later but that's all for now!

A K party and Christmas

Kirsten decided she wanted a "K" like Jannika's J party so I tried to come up with K things to do but it just wasn't as easy so it ended up being a Hello Kitty/Princess party. The girls made wands and crowns and we had a K cupcake cake.

We did the nativity for our ward party and Claire kept telling me that she didn't want to be an angel or a shepherd; she wanted to be a sheep. Well, luckily someone brought some sheep costumes for this girl and her cousin. They were the cutest little sheep:)

This is Jannika's school program. They did really well singing and dancing to "Up on the Housetop." There is pic of Claire's school program at the bottom. We were so proud of her doing her parts since she doesn't really love to perform.

Here is Christmas day after Church. We had a great Christmas and we hope you did too!

A broken arm and Conference packets

My poor little babe broke her arm last Friday. She fell in one of our window wells and Kyle and I were standing right there but we weren't able to catch her before she fell. Kyle jumped down in the window well and picked her up and we knew immediately it was broken. She cried for a while but then was calm and even smiling. She was so good at the hospital even though we had to wait 5 hours before they could set it because they needed to put her out but she had eaten too recently. We are so glad that it wasn't worse and that she didn't hit her head or need pins in her arm etc. We are so blessed!

We went to the dinosaur museum the next day so here she is in her temporary cast and sling. The kids all loved the museum especially digging in the sand for bones:)

Last, I have a conference idea from Sugardoodle.net. Make conference packets, one for each of the 12 and the first presidency and put a picture on each bag. When that person is speaking your kids can do that activity or eat that snack. I organized a bunch of my friends so that we will put the bags together and each of us will bring an activity and a snack for each of the kids in the group:

7 moms in the group

15 kids (not including kids under age 2)

Each mom brings 15 ziploc bags (one for each of the 12 and first presidency)

Each mom also brings 15 snacks and 15 activities (I will do an extra one of each because that only makes 14)

Anywho, you could still organize this if you wanted to or just make 15 bags yourself.

Claire's first day and a recipe

My babe had her first day of preschool. She rides the bus like a champ and loves school! Some things about this girl: She still likes yellow but also has other favorite colors, she loves macaroni cheese and going to the library. She has also learned to do puzzles really well. There's a puzzle at my mom's that she will sit and do over and over again! She is such a sweet girl:)

Fruit Salad

1 banana

1 apple

1 white nectarine

Grapes, blueberries or whatever you have

1 container vanilla yogurt

Cut and mix.

I have been making this salad a lot lately and we all love it!

There she goes

My number 2 is off to kindergarten! She was sooo ready for school and sooooooooo excited for it! Her teacher is Mrs. Story and she goes in the afternoon. She has loved picking out her clothes for each day and of course always picks a skirt:) She started on Monday and after school she said it was a good day but, "they are teaching things I already know like my letters and my numbers"! Then last night she said our family prayer and was going along saying, "we're thankful for... and for... and that I don't care if my teacher teaches stuff I already know"!! What a funny girl!

Some things about my Kirsten:

She taught herself how to read and loves to read everything she sees
She gave a great talk in Primary last week about her favorite scripture story: David and Goliath

She loves to wear skirts
She loves stuffed animals and has to sleep with ALL of them

She is very caring and considerate

We love her so much!

Hanging on to Summer!

I guess I better do an update of our whole summer because I haven't posted since school ended and I can't believe it's already time for school again! We had lots of fun this summer. This was our fourth of July camping trip. The kids really like fishing with Kyle, especially Jannika.

Fourth of July parade and riding the train at the park.

We also played a lot with friends and cousins and had a visit from our good friends that live in Wisconsin. So glad we got to see you guys!

Claire and her friend, Slade who lives next door. My kids spent tons of time playing with Slade and his brothers outside riding bikes and playing in the DIRT and MUD. I guess that's what summer's for!

Jan started 3rd grade this morning. She was so excited; she came into our room at 5:45 this morning wondering if she could start getting ready!