You know I'm a mom of boys when....

...I make a chalkboard sign to add inspiring or happy messages on.

I write a message "Find joy in the journey"

sometime through out the day it is changed to

 

Or when I go to the Dr. for a well visit with Luke and Josh.

The Dr at one point called them #1 and #2. #1 one leans over to #2 and says "the Dr thinks your poo."

Or after the "dreaded" part of the check up one of the boys says some what loudly so the Dr is sure to hear "I've been violated!"

Or when I take my older more "mature" one to the Dr and the nurse says I'm sure you'd like your privacy here is a gown to put on.

 He tried his best to figure out how to put the gown on, I was too busy laughing to help. He tried to figure out the purpose of "this dumb thing", he even made a cute dress for himself but in the end "gowns are dumb, boxers are better, why would she think I would want my privacy, the Dr is going to see all of me anyway"

The zoo

I love that my kids love the zoo. Every summer it's on the top of their list of places they want to go. We were able to squeeze this trip in for part of Josh's birthday celebrations in between guests coming to visit.

I really think Josh's favorite part of going to the zoo is being in charge of the map. He loves following our every step on the map and informing us of each stop ahead of time.
I'm pretty sure the map trumps the animals, this is how Josh looks the entire time at the zoo.

Our timing to visit the zoo was perfect. Most of the animals that we saw were either eating lunch or just before lunch so they were all very active.

It looks like Josh and this elephant are having a conversation

 

 This was one of the best looking animals at the zoo.

His brothers aren't bad looking either.

I could've hung out at the giraffes all day. They were fun to watch.

Especially this one showing off his long tongue. I had no idea giraffes had such long tongues!

 

Josh loved the sea lions. It looks like the sea lions like him too!

When were living in CA we went to an aquarium with some dear friends of ours. They took the boys to the gift shop to buy something and Josh, who was probably 2 (maybe younger) at the time, picked a stuffed otter. That otter was named Oscar and became his new best friend. It went with him every where. He doesn't sleep with it now, but it's still on his bed, he loves the fond memories that Oscar the Otter brings. We can't make a stop at the zoo without a picture of Oscar the Otter (all Otters now are named Oscar).

 

I've always thought it'd be fun to have a pet tiger. After I saw this red panda I've decided I better have one of those too. These guys are SO ADORABLE.

 

Check out these teeth

"Come here my pretty, I'd like to eat you for lunch" said the crocodile with the best smile that he could muster.

I used to have a flamingo painted on my finger nails. It looked just like this.

Glad I could spend the day with these 3 at the zoo.

Missionary goodbyes

The same weekend as the youth temple trip, and Luke's birthday we got to go to New York for our good friend Brennon's farewell.

We love this family and we love Brennon. He is now serving in the Denver, CO South mission for the next two years.
It was so good to hear him speak, it was obvious that he is ready to go and serve the Lord. I'm looking forward to hearing about his next two years.

As we said goodbye we had created a Balmforth/Brimhall hand shake

Good luck Brennon!

Temple trips

I love youth temple trips.

I love these youth.

This isn't all of our youth, but it's a good chunk of them.

I love the diversity in our ward.
I love the strength that these kids have within themselves.

I love the spirit that others feel when they're around.

I love that they look at life with their bright futures ahead of them.

I love working with the youth!

Birthday

 Luke turned 14 at the end of July.
I love this kid, he has grown and changed so much this year, all in good ways, all in ways that make me more proud to be his mom.

One thing I love about Luke is his facial expressions when he opens a gift.
It makes it 10 times more fun buying him a gift.

Luke had a plan for his cake that he was saving for his party on a different day, so for this celebration he wanted chocolate chip cookies and for his birthday dinner he asked for sub sandwiches. EASY PEASY yay for me!

Every time I asked Luke what he wanted to do for his birthday he said the same thing "I want to blow up my cake." A few weeks previously we went to somebody's house for dinner. They light some firecrackers with the boys that night, this was their first experience with lighting firecrackers of course they loved it and of course in true Luke fashion, he couldn't stop thinking about it.

 He decided it would be so awesome to blow up his birthday cake. That is all he wanted to do for his birthday. I kept asking him if he wanted a party or to have some families over to help him blow up his cake? "Nope I just want firecrackers and a cake"

He got home from scout camp on Saturday, and on Sunday evening the night before his birthday, he decided that we needed to invite all of the young men from both wards that were at scout camp to our house for a bday party to help with the cake explosion. Surprise for me! All of the young men? I asked him, twice.

Later on in the week we had his party.

It was a very simple pool party.

Boys are easy to please

As for the cake explosion, we got these certain kind of firecrackers that just explode, there aren't any lights or flashes.
We cut a hole into the back of the cake, put the fire cracker in the hole and left the fuse hanging out.

The boys at the party didn't know about the firecracker. 

So they sang and Mike light the candles on top and the fuse in the back.

You would've thought we planned it. They finished the song with

"Happy birthday to you"....and at the exact same time BAAM went the cake!

The boys weren't sure how to process what just happened until they realized it was a joke. Luke thought it was hilarious so that was good. 

We had made a second cake, so with them aware of the explosion coming this time, we did it again. HA! It was fun!

Afterwards we had a real cake with firecracker candles (we had those on hand just in case the explosions didn't work he could have firecrackers with his cake in some way).

I love my little firecracker boy.

Blueberry picking

 

One of my favorite parts of July is that it's blueberry picking season!

I love blueberries!!
We brought our good friend Jessica blueberry picking with us because she hadn't ever been.
She loved it. She exercised the one for me, one for the bucket method, the only true way to pick.

The blueberries were endless!

We picked 13 POUNDS of blueberries, if I had more time in between batches of visitors I would have gone and picked another 13 pounds.

I made one batch of jam and froze 1-2 quart size bags. The rest of the blueberries were eaten like candy nonstop all day long. Yummmm

Palmyra, NY and the Hill Cumorah pageant

Just a few days after our family left we packed up and join a couple other families (the Ferrins and the Harris) to Palmyra to see the Hill Cumorah pageant. We caravaned to NY as you can see, when our carload of kids weren't busy hitting each other during their twizzler wars or playing games, I had to work hard to entertain them. :)

At one point in the drive Jessica, one of the girls in our car shared her fresh mozzarella and tomato snack. After it was finished she asked me to dump the juice out the window so she could put the tupperware away. I did and not long afterwards got a phone call from the Ferrins who were following us. 

"What did you just dump out of your car that is now all over our windshield!?!?!?!"

Oops.

We had a good laugh and then Heidi makes the comment that they are out of windshield fluid so they can't clean it off. 

Mike and Paul came up with a great plan.

Mike sprayed his windshield fluid and Paul got really close to the back of our car so the over spray would land on his window.

Mission accomplished!

Window cleaned.

The days of tomato juice out the window had come to an end.

We rented a couple of cabins at a church owned campground.

It was beautiful, peaceful, spacious and just what 16 tired travelers needed. We had stopped on the way to the campground and saved our seats at the pageant so this couple of hours were spent completely stress free relaxing. Perfect.

We had a picnic, played frisbee and soccer, danced, visited and were just down right goofy.

We got to the pageant early enough to visit with some of the people that were performing in the pageant. It lightly rained during that time but during the pageant the weather was perfect.

 

The pageant was awesome. Going to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant before my kids started leaving the house has been on my bucket list since we moved to MA. I'm glad I can finally cross it off the list. It was an inspiring evening to everyone that was there.

The following morning was Sunday. We had the Ferrins traditional camping cereal in a box breakfast.

Easy and fun!

 

Instead of driving an hour to church at a ridiculously early time in the morning, we had our own testimony meeting at the amphitheater there. I loved that meeting. I loved hearing the kids (and adults) sweet testimonies. I love the feeling of love that was there. I'm so thankful for the gospel in our lives and the good people that we have the privilege of associating with as we live it.

This was a short quick trip. Friday night, Mike and I had to go to a wedding on the Cape for someone that he works with so we weren't able to leave for Palmyra until Saturday morning and Monday morning Luke had to be at scout camp at 6:00AM. We sandwiched this trip in the middle and took advantage of every minute.
He left to camp sleep deprived.
And continued being sleep deprived for most of the week.

He was asleep in a matter of minutes when he came home at the end of the week.

All signs of a good week.