Tappana Times: August

Well September is practically half over, and yet I've still not updated about all the extra things that happened in August besides vacation and baby updates. So let me get to it!

Though August was hot, and all the grass, bushes, half the trees, and more died of dehydration (seriously, Utah was greener than Washington. Which is just crazy.) I worked hard and kept flowers that I planted from seeds from the dollar store alive.

I took a picture because first: it's truly a feat for me to keep plants alive. I'm a plant neglecter/killer. They don't cry like babies to remind me to water them, so I put it off until they die. Second: I have no idea what type of flowers these are, but our whole family is obsessed with them. They are beautiful. Out of two little plants, we've had multiple blooms of multiple colors. Red, purple, orange, pink.

Besides flowers, we've been blackberry picking multiple times. One of the benefits of living in Washington is that blackberries just grow wild everywhere so we found a secret location that had the best berry bounty, and we braved the brambles to fill our bowls.

Out of the berries we picked, we made blackberry cobbler, blackberry pie bars, ate them with our lunches, or just popped them like candy. We love blackberries around here.





With our fun out in the sun, Ammon had to miss his nap time quite often. Which means he got it in anytime, anywhere he could.

 I forced the kids to go out and play. I found Ammon like this a bout a half hour later.

Wondering why it was so quite in the playroom, I found Ammon sleeping in the most interesting way.

And I guess he found it comfortable to curl up and cuddle with the end of my bed....this boy just really needs his naps still.

And his sister.

We walk to my parent's house a couple times a week, and these two are often running together hand in hand. It seriously warms my heart. May these days never end.

At my parent's house, we've had fun with Uncle Kenny before he left for Honduras to serve his mission. This included a blind taste-test of hamburgers.

We always argue over which fast-food burger is our favorite, so we decided to do an unbiased taste-test to determine the overall winner among the family.

We ranked each burger in different categories: best overall, best meat, sauce, bun, and worst overall.

The results were shocking!

The overall winner was the Whopper from Burger King, which most of us claim to hate, and the runner up was McDonalds Quarter Pounder deluxe...the other place half of us refuse to eat at. Carl's Jr famous star was a close runner up with McDonalds.

The worst burger overall was Wendy's. Truly the burger was horrible. Almost everyone loves Wendy's so we were blown away. We postulated that it was because it was the furthest away so it was cold and older by time we ate it, but really it was just bad. However, Jack in the Box was pretty much tied for worst burger. No surprise there.

It was some good entertainment for an afternoon, and though I'm not much of a burger person, I do declare the Carl's Jr's famous star is the best burger, no matter what our results suggest.

After our last weekend with Kenny, he gave his second farewell talk, was set apart as a missionary, and had an open house for everyone to come wish him well.

We took a few family pictures with him that night.

I don't know why I'm such a giant in this picture, but usually Kenny has a few inches on me and Brigham is an inch taller....I better not be getting taller with this pregnancy! With my other brothers, I wasn't living in state when they left, so it wasn't hard to send them off. However, living close made it much more difficult to say goodbye. Especially since Kenny is such a great uncle. My kids adore him and really have no concept that he's going to be gone for so long. But despite how sad I am, I'm so happy that's he's doing what's right and serving the Lord. I'm excited for all he's going to do, and learn, and grow.

Speaking of growing, my kids' hair just won't stop. So to prepare for school, they had their back-to-school hair cuts.

I barely cut anything off Lydia's hair, but she cringed each time the scissors snipped, sure I was chopping off more than was bearable. We did add a few shorter layers around her face for something a little different, but mostly we just trimmed her ends.

Ammon wanted his haircut done as fast as possible, so I pulled out the clippers and we were done in no time.

Oh so handsome and beautiful. Now they were ready for September, school, and all that is ahead this fall!