Tappana Times: School's Out, Summer Begins

Normally, the weather turns warm, school ends, and then summer begins. Not in Washington. In Washington, summer begins, the weather is sometimes warm, and then school ends. We seriously don't get out of school until the end of June. So at the beginning of June, I was still hanging out with my two youngest after their siblings headed for the bus each morning.

Miss Ivy Sue turned one month old and started fitting into most of her clothes.

Hanging out with Kendrick and Ivy can be an adventure at times, and I'm sure glad Kendrick doesn't mind being buried in groceries now that his spot in the cart is taken. I'm not about to let him run free at the grocery store yet.

Though I spend most of my days with the toddler and baby, I was able to take Lydia and Ammon on a hike with some of our good friends to Twin Falls.

One of my favorite trails, we hiked along the river and then climbed for a bit until we were on the bridge over the waterfall. 

After the bridge, we journeyed to the second look-out and took in the spectacular views.

It was nice to get away from the babies and spend some quality time with my older two doing one of my favorite activities. Especially when you are only five weeks postpartum, I feel like some quality time out in nature is a must.

Luckily, the kids were out of school early for a vacation and family wedding in Utah, as described in the previous post.  Their last day of school was two and a half weeks into June, instead of three and a half.

Whenever I look at the side-by-side of the first day of school compared to the last day of school, I'm shocked by how much these two have changed.

Once we returned from our vacation to Utah, we began to start our summer at home.

After a rest, of course.

Lydia competed in her first powder puff pinewood derby. And lost miserably. Unfortunately, she and her dad didn't really know what they were doing when designing and executing car design, but it was shaped like a skateboard, just as Lydia wanted, and she still had a good time.

We celebrated father's day a week early for Brigham and he was thrilled with his gifts and love from everyone.

With Ivy turning a month old, it was fun to start seeing some life in her as she starting using expressions and waking up a bit more.

She sat in the bumbo for the first time (albeit, not very well or for very long) and even started smiling!

We started taking some more hikes with friends from church and explored a gnome hike in a nearby neighboorhood.

The trail has gnomes placed at various places along the hike and Ammon loved counting how many we saw with his friend, Milo. We sure had a large group of kids to keep track of, but we managed to get as many children out as we brought in with us.

I'm lucky that Ivy is a pretty good baby who I can take hiking and on all the adventures her older siblings are begging me to take them on. She's a sweetheart.

All four of my kids are awesome, and I was thrilled to have them back at home with me for the summer and all of our fun activities!

ps. we have a couple June birthdays in our family, so enjoy watching Kendrick sing to them

Utah Vacation: Weddings and Babies

In June, we took off during the last week of school for Utah. My brother, Kenny, was getting married and so our annual Utah trip was happening early.

Speaking of early, we left extremely early to get started on the 15+ hour drive.


We were attempting to make the drive all in one day with a newborn and two-year-old and wanted to give ourselves the best possible chance to make it, and make it with our sanity still intact...even with five hours of Elmo on the entertainment list.

The plan was to get up when Ivy woke up to eat for her middle-of-the-night feeding, feed her, throw everyone in the car and go. So when she woke up extra early at 2:30 am, I decided that was TOO early and waited to get everyone up for a couple more hours. But I had been up since 2:30 am to start our long trip. Perfect.

The drive went better than we ever could have expected, especially since I had been preparing myself for the worst. We made good time, only stopped a couple times to fill up for gas or to eat, and continued on our way.

It's a good thing we made it so quickly because we had a full schedule ahead of us. The very next day most of the ladies worked on helping Sadie put together all the flowers for the wedding.

Katrina's kitchen overflowed with purple, blue, and white buds as we chatted and arranged together. Sadie did the most amazing job creating the bouquet and more. I was seriously so impressed by her work! And she managed it from some you-tube tutorials and the rest from her brain!

That night included the bachelor/bachelorette parties and then we woke up bright and early for the wedding!

Sunny, beautiful, and bright, we all sweated together outside the temple taking pictures after the wonderful ceremony sealing Amand and Kenny together forever.

I met Amanda for the first time the day before she married my brother, and I could tell how much they loved each other and how excited they both were. I was happy to welcome her as my new sister-in-law.

The reception was in the sky room at BYU. Lots of yummy food, the best tasting wedding cake I've ever tried, and seeing lots of family and friends made for a lovely time.

First family picture with Ivy

Following the wedding, my family spent some time together at a cabin at Sundance in the mountains.

We obtained special permission to bless the two newest babies together at the cabin. A member of Scott's bishopric kindly took time out of his father's day to come and oversee the blessings and JJ was blessed first.

JJ is one month older than Ivy and it's fun to watch the babies grow together.

We were able to invite Brigham's family up to the cabin to witness Ivy's blessing with us. It was cozy to be so intimate with those we love as we welcomed Ivy with her baby blessing.

Ivy was blessed with a lot of beautiful promises, including peace and knowledge through trials and love for others. She's such a sweet little, beautiful thing and I adored her in her blessing dress.

More blessing pictures followed.

I love the picture of Katrina, Poly and me. Two years ago we had our babies within months of each other so that we have two-year-old toddlers running around together, and now we're back at it having our second round of babies all within months of each other again. Cousins to grow up and play and beat up on each other for life.

We played games, spike-ball, ate, talked, and hiked to pass the time in the beautiful canyon.

We made the harrowing drive to Cascade Springs after the baby blessings that Sunday, and even Amanda and Kenny took time from their honeymoon to join us.

The other hike, Stewart Falls, we journeyed on the next morning. With the three toddlers and one newborn, we were brave to attempt the four miles, but it turned out successful with everyone working together. The different colored butterflies and fields of wildflowers paired with gorgeous views made it worth it.

That weekend at the cabin was my favorite part of the trip. I just love spending time with my family.

I mean, how does it get any better than Grandpa Nils playing ring-around-the-rosies with the grandkids?

We spent some time visiting my grandparents and eating ice cream before we headed to the other end of the valley to hang with Brigham's family for the rest of the trip.

With Brigham's family, we visited the Museum of Natural Discovery at Thanksgiving Point and spent a lot of time swimming at the pool at the hotel we were staying at.

My favorite part was seeing Grandma Nonie splashing, swimming, and even playing chicken in the pool with the kids. I hope to be as cool as her someday.

Family dinners with Brigham's family are always a must and we enjoyed pizza and dessert together. We miss the Tappanas all the time, so it felt good to get cousins and brothers back together again.

We stayed at a hotel in order to fulfill promises to our kids about pool-time, and because this was our main vacation for the summer.

Unfortunately, Ivy got sick during our trip and one of the nights I spent at the ER getting her deep-suctioned out. She was breathing funny, we had been hiking at high altitudes, she kept choking and gagging and throwing up, and she was so little I just didn't want to risk anything. So I drove her to Primary Children's Hospital at 1:00 am. The respiratory therapist didn't like the rate of her exhales and said she was taking too long to breathe out, meaning she was working too hard. Luckily, her lungs were super clear (they said probably the clearest in the hospital) and the congestion was all in her throat area. After the deep suction, she was sounding better and we were sent home. I lost a night of sleep and regained a peace of mind that I sorely needed. Newborns! I swear there's nothing scarier.

We had to say goodbye to our families much earlier than we wanted, even though we had been in Utah for ten days. With so many cousins and loved ones, the time always flies by!

We broke our drive home up into two days. The first day we stopped near Boise, Idaho to visit Brigham's brother, Jake, and his wife and daughter for dinner. It was so good to see them! Why didn't I take picture?! We also stopped that day to eat lunch along the snake river in Idaho.

I swear the drive back is always double the torture, no matter how smoothly it goes. I'm always so impatient to just be done with it!

The beautiful sunset through our bug-smeared window.

But we made it, our kids did awesome, and it was yet another fun time in the Beehive state! Wedding done, babies blessed, family visited. There and back safe again. Success.