Pineview Dam with the whole Fam Damily

We spent Cynthia's birthday, July 22nd at Pineview. We rented 2 Wave Runners and spent the entire day until past sundown enjoying family, sun, food, beach, and the water.

The kids dug a huge hole and made a hot tub.

Tie-dye trauma

What are they up to? Their faces are so mischievious!
They know how much I hate tie dye, I don't know why it bothers me so much, I can't explain why, it just does...so Nadia goes out and buys a tie dye kit just to annoy me. Brats.
Mariah and Tierra even tie dyed their underwear!
Cynthia wanted them to do Logan's "wife beater" tank top, but I refused.
Why? Why do they want to torture me?
Mariah was even going to go so far as to swap her shirt with a stranger she sat next to on the plane, just to annoy me when I picked her up. Luckily, she didn't dare and Darren picked her up anyway.
Who in their right mind wants to adorn these psycho-delic garments?
They are hideous. Nobody wears these anymore!
....Yah if you said "we do" Exactly my point "NOBODY" who is anybody wears this crap.

Mariah is lucky I put this much tie-dye on my blog...she wanted to show her undies too. Not havin' it.

Nice not matching PJ pants Nudia.

Why are your eyes shut T? You don't want to see yourself looking this way either?

I need to lie down.

Colorful Harvest

All the many delicious vegies growing in Pop's garden. I especially love sauted squash, peppers and zucchini in fresh homemade lemon marinade (compliments of Nadia)

Annual Lava Hotsprings Trip

Read post first to better understand pic's

Usually we go to Lava over the 4th for the awesome firework display they have. This year we were fortunate enough to meet my sister's friends the Walkers who lived with them in the Azore islands. Jerry is a dentist and Heidi's is a mother of 4. Cameron, Christopher, Andrew and Kate. She also plays and teaches the harp. Heidi's mom teaches the Harp BYU Idaho. It has always been a dream of mine to play the harp so Nadia and I learned a little from Heidi and she offered to give me lessons. I would love to go spend time with them every month, but it's a 2 1/2 hour drive. But I am really looking into learning the Harp even if it's from here.
The Walkers home looks like a cabin) hidden in the mountains of Soda Springs. They let us rent their clubhouse. It was only $45 a night! It slept 30 people and has a pool, volleyball net and basketball court. It was so much fun. We joked around about the out of date decor...and that it looked and smelled like the 70's but it was only $45. Who can complain about that?
The Walkers also let us ride their 4 wheelers. They live 1 mile from the clubhouse so that is how we'd travel back and forth. They have goats and chickens and paintball equipment. So we also made teams and paintballed.
Larry, Tierra and I were against Kyed, his friend Andy and Mariah. We played in the trees next to their house and it was very intense. My team lost. I got hit and it was moderately painful. Then we played in the field, where we had to crawl on our bellies for cover. I rocked at that and shot Mariah a few times. Very exhilerating. My team won. After the big kids played we let the little kids play in the field, Hudson, Caden, Zane and Cameron. Hudson got hit in the hand and said it hurt a lot. He really liked it though. Parks wanted to play too, but we just let him shoot a few paint balls.
You can also shoot skeet off their balcony, but we didn't have a chance to do that. They also have a huge telescope. Up there the skies are so much clearer and the stars more visible.
Parks loved holding a chicken, that Jerry helped catch for him. He kept singing. "I have a big ol' chicken, a big fat chicken" with a huge grin on his face. And asked everyone if they wanted to pet it.
The Walkers joined us at Lava on Andrew's birthday. He turned 5. All the Najdawi's enjoyed jumping off the platforms except Caden. Zane probably went the most. I've already posted the video of Hudson's jump off the 3rd platform. I jumped off the 3rd with Kyed, well we were suppose to jump together but he finally came after me. I thought I'd jumped my last time a few years ago. I still got a little umph in me yet.
That night after the pool we went to the Mineral Hot pots. Sooo nice. We stayed there till around 11pm winding down.
The clubhouse had 6 bedrooms with a basement and 2 living rooms, 5 bathrooms, and a laundry room.
The chitlens wanted to swim in the pool in our backyard the day after Lava. Us adults were too waterlogged. Larry made dutch oven potatoes and chicken and we brought up corn on the cob from Nolan's garden. Then we played some volleyball, kickball till dark and board games. Cahoots was really fun.
The Walkers invited us back for snowshoeing, cross country skiing and snowmobiling this winter. I hope we can keep that date!

Welcoming ceremony for Hudson

I am excited to join the Scouting program as the Den Mother of the Wolves. I know nothing about scouts and was never interested until my son became one. It will be a big change going from Young Women's to Cub Scouts. Hopefully I can teach these fine young men a thing or two. Hoowwwwlll Brady as Pack Master... The other scouts sit and offer Hudson the "gifts".

This is something Hudson is going to love.
Play time. Swinging over the creek in Cliffords back yard. Ryan Peek says "me first, watch and learn."
Nice form, nice farmer tan.
Wow, even better form Hud! He's an old pro at this.
Hud fell in. Not from swinging, but losing his balance on the board, standing behind Jetta, he almost pulled her in. We weren't informed to wear our swimsuits!

Hud's Jump off the 3rd platform at Lava

Turn off my music first if you want to hear the sound.

Since my last post mentioned what a dare devil Hudson was I thought I'd share some of it with you. Here is his first jump off the 3rd platform at the age of 8. My first jump was at the age of 12. I thought he was too young, but Hud and dad thought otherwise!

Hudson

H is for Humor. Hudson’s school teachers, his friend’s moms, and his leaders at church have all told me that he makes them laugh. He keeps his brothers and cousins laughing too.
U is for Unique. Hudson is special and has his own way of solving problems, telling stories and he enjoys many different hobbies. His hair color and handsome freckles are not found just anywhere!
D is for Daring. Hudson is a dare devil. He does things that makes my stomach drop! I’m always worried he’ll get hurt, but his dad just encourages him. Hudson climbs on the icy roof of our house in the middle of winter to help his dad shovel snow off or in the summer to collect all the balls and toys that have been flung up there. Last summer, Hudson jumped off of the 2nd platform at Lava Hotsprings Swimming Pool at the age of 7. Last week he attempted the 3rd platform at 133 ft high. He loved every minute of it! He was also the youngest one to paintball in Soda Springs. Those things hurt! We went four-wheeler in Soda Springs and 35 mph was just way too slow for him. Surprisingly he hasn’t had any broken bones or stitches yet.
S is for Smart. Hudson is very good at math. He already knows most of his times tables and he enjoys solving math problems and making up problems for us to solve. He is also a very good speller. He was the youngest competitor, taking 3rd place in the Spelling Bee as a 2nd grader, competing against 3rd and 4th graders.
O is for Opinionated. Hudson is usually strongly opinionated about every day decisions. Most others only see him as relaxed and easy going, which he is also. He can be very stubborn in holding his opinions, even when it is really not a big deal. "A strong mind for strong people."
N is for Nonsensical. What I mean is…Hudson is very creative and silly. This goes along with his sense of humor. He makes up nick names for people and uses funny sounds and nonsense words to express himself. He enjoys talking in an accent of some sort. Most of the time it is very entertaining and catchy. We find ourselves and others repeating him and using his made-up sounds or words in our everyday communications.

Yes I'm still blogging on Hudson's birthday. Sorry I'm a month behind on this, but it really doesn't matter. This is how it's going to be for the next few months till I get caught up. ha ha Hudson really liked the smiley face pancakes I made Parks for his birthday, so I had to make them again.
For Hudson's Birthday Party he invited 20 boys and we went to Central Park and played Water baseball. I thought it would be a laid back game for fun...but half of the boys were from the RedHawks baseball team and they all wanted cold, hard rules! Even if they weren't on a team it wouldn't have been any different...that is just how boys play. Sports is never just for "fun". Here comes Hud sliding in to home.

Crowding around to sing Happy Birthday

Birthday presents galore.

This present from Andrew (Connie and Brent) made me cry! It is pictures his dad took of Hudson pitching.

Hud enjoying his Bow and Arrow, thanks Garrett.

After water baseball, they got crazy with the hose, buckets and pop bottles full of water.
Here are most of the boys, it was hard to gather this many of them..and to ask them to hold still would have killed them.

Hudson says "Thanks dudes for an awesome time!"

Summer blues

I am so sad...my sister and her family left this morning. They have been here for 6 weeks. Mariah was here for over 2 months. Their leaving was especially hard for me this year, I think because all the kids are older now and we can all interact and really enjoy each others company. And because they visited longer and they were living with me the whole time. This may sound funny, but I now have empathy for the FLDS families that were torn apart. (not that I didn't have any sympathy at all.) I feel like I too lost half of my family. I had 13 people living in my home and now we are down to 7 (Nadia is still here until school starts in Sept.) But my little kids don't take up much room so it feels a lot less empty than it sounds. It is sooo quiet. Well maybe not today. My boys have been rambunctious. I thought I could relish in the space and the quiet, but instead I have less patience for my kids while they run, play, laugh and cry. Before, I was just too busy planning to do something or packing to go somewhere or talking to someone about anything, that I didn't mind all the other chaos going on around me. Now I have nothing to distract me from the noise.
I may be exceptionally emotional also because of the lack of sleep over these past weeks. I think the earliest we ever made it to bed was 11:30pm, but even that was rare. The usual was around 1am. A few nights we were up till 3am.
I'm very behind on what we did while they were here so I will be blogging about them for a long time to come. I hope you Najdawi's enjoy viewing the pictures and relishing in our good times.

Hudson growing up

It's Great to be Eight

My oldest boy turned 8, July 1st!

We were in Park City on a baseball tournament in July so we had to postpone Hudson's baptism. If we had done it last month Hudson would have been the only one baptized that day from our stake. Instead he was baptized with Jimmy, Baden and Noah. I think it made it even more special to be with other boys he knows who also made the decision to be baptized.

Hudson and Parks sang the musical number Choose the Right Way. Thus this song.

Hudson was blessed on his cousin Hunter's birthday and now he was baptized on his Great Grandma Leah's birthday. She passed away 6 years ago. I'm sure she was smiling down on him.

We're so proud of you Hudson!

Some of Hudson's buddies came to show their support.

Scott, Parks, Andrew, Hudson and Aaron.

My sister's family, us, my mom and my brother's family.