Snakes and Dragons

Hudson loves the movie Toy Story and quotes it quite a bit. He drew this on the driveway and said "There's a snake in my boot!". I laughed out loud it was so cute!


Here's Hudson sporting 2 of his newest possessions: a wiggle car and dragon jammies with a cape (on clearance at Walmart for $3!). I don't think he'll be without either much this summer.

Oh the things you can do when you're a dragon!

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Hudson just cracks me up with the things he says. I need to do better at writing them down. Here are just a couple of recent ones:

7/13
H: Do you like the shade brown?

7/12
H: Can I have more ingredients? (noodles)

He also gets a kick out of calling me names that I have no idea where he hears them. The only ones I can remember right now are Amanda, Savannah, Dorthea, and Miss Johnson???

He also has a pretty wicked cowboy and English accent. He's such a funny kid.

The 4th (and 5th)

On the 4th of July we had Jeff's parents over for a farewell roast dinner since they were leaving for their mission to Perth, Australia the next day. We also had Jeff's brother Scott and his family over. Jeff's parents couldn't stay too long, understandably busy with things to do to get ready. Scott and his family stayed for some ladderball, roasting marshmallows, and a few fireworks. They mostly had fun blowing stuff up with fire crackers.





We did most of our celebrating on the 5th. I wanted to go to the hot air balloons at 6:30 in the morning, but Jeff had to help the scouts set up flags in the neighborhood, so I made him promise me we'll go next year. We made it to the parade, though.

We were finally able to see my cute little sister, Natalie (the one looking at the camera), in a parade doing her color guard stuff.

This is my sweet Grandpa Schumann (& Grandma holding his hand) who is a WWII combat veteran. I love it when he is in the parade, he's so cute and he makes me so proud! I get pretty choked up on this holiday. My heart swells with pride and patriotism for my country and for those who serve it.

Grandpa and Grandma after the parade:

Hudson's being a little shy, but I love that these two have the opportunity to know each other.

After the city festivities, we went out to lunch, then went to a park and let Hudson play in the creek while our idea was to relax in the shade. Hudson wanted us to play hide and seek and play in the water, so we didn't get much relaxing in. Then we went to have one last quick visit with Jeff's parents and watched them head off for the airport. Then we picked up some fried chicken and Roxberry's and headed over to my grandma's house to celebrate her 83rd birthday.

...and since I just posted my grandma's birthday, I'll post a pic from grandpa's birthday last month:

I think he's 87 now.

Swimming Lessons

I was a little worried about how painful it was going to be to put Hudson in swimming lessons again this year because last year didn't go too well for him. Hudson really didn't like the water, especially getting water in his eyes or ears or getting splashed in the face.
This year, when I told him it was time to do swimming lessons again, he started whining and saying he didn't want to go. But of course we went anyway. Once we got there I couldn't believe the 360 he made. He was laughing and smiling through the whole class and doing things I thought would really make him nervous. I was so amazed and in shock and PROUD! He did amazing! We still have another week to go and I'm so excited for him to keep learning new tricks. His teacher does such a great job.

All done! Then he gets to go jump on the trampoline to dry off.

The nice thing about all this is bath time is so much easier now and he loves to show us what he's learned at swimming lessons while he's in the tub, especially for Jeff since he's not there for swimming lessons. Bath time used to be so hard when it came to washing his hair because he didn't want water in his eyes or ears. That problem seemed to vanish after the first day of swimming lessons. Woohoo!

Mountain Man Rendezvous

Last month was Jeff's family reunion called the Walker Rendezvous. We camp for a few days (some all week) and do all sorts of mountain man activities and it's a lot of fun. It was stinking hot most of the time, and there was a flu bug going around like wild fire (Hudson got it the last night we were there, Jeff a couple days after we got home), but we had a great time. I think they said 125 people showed up.

There are a lot of activities for the kids: Bows & arrows, slingshots...

BB Guns.....

throwing tomahawks and knives (the adults do this, too, of course)...

starting fire with flint and steel...

cowpie toss....

a rodeo where they made their own horse then had to ride them through an obstacle course...

They also had a nature hike, gold nugget treasure hunt, stilts, candy cannon, playing in the stream, washing clothes on a washboard, making crafts with beads and leather, and tons of other fun stuff.
The adults get to have a lot of fun, too. Here's Jeff with his brother, Brett, trying to pull each other off the logs.

We have a walk-through where you try to do different things with a muzzleloader. I got second place in the womens (5 pts. away from tying for 1st). I shot a match in half, split a bullet in two (by hitting an axe head) hitting two clay pigeons, and hit a bunch of targets.

Hudson watching the shooting with his ear protection on...cute squishy face.

Jeff's looking pretty hot with his mountain man gear on!

Jeff with his dad and brother Brett in their mountain man gear with their muzzleloaders.
We always have a big dutch oven dinner one night where everyone makes a dinner and a desert and shares with everyone, a big breakfast of pancakes and eggs the last morning, a raffle for prizes, and a watermelon bust. Jeff's family knows how to have a good time at a family reunion. I love it!

(There is supposed to be a video here, but lately I've been having trouble getting videos on here?) Hopefully I can get it up later...

Jeff was asked to perform for the campfire talent show. I convinced him to sing this song. It was so funny. He really does sing on tune most of the time...I think he was just a little nervous!

9 Years of Happiness!

On June 1st, Jeff and I celebrated our 9th anniversary! Jeff surprised on Tuesday morning by saying "Pack your bags. We're going on an overnight getaway." He's so good to me! So I packed, we dropped Hudson off at Grandma's and went......shopping at Smith's! Haha. I decided we would need some treats, then decided I needed a new jacket, so we found some on clearance and we ended up buying his and hers matching jackets!
After our little detour we headed up to our getaway location. Jeff wouldn't tell me where we were going, which was kind of exciting and slightly annoying. We ended up at the Alaskan Inn which is up Ogden canyon.

We stayed in our own cute little cabin along the river (not this one but one just like it):

We were really impressed when we walked into our room. They had some nature music playing...

some homemade cookies and chocolates on the table, and a bottle of Martinelli's chilling on ice. I asked Jeff if he had planned all of this and had them set it up. He said something like, "No......I mean....yeah! Of course I did!"

That night on our way to dinner, we stopped to try to do a little fishing. We weren't able to find a good spot to get down to the lake, so we ended up only "fishing" for about 5 minutes. Then we went and ate dinner in a little town called Eden. We had ribs and pulled pork, and it was a really nice restaurant with a great view. Then we went back to our room. The lodge had DVD's you could take back to your room to watch, so we watched 2012 and Taken and ate candy and drank Martinelli's.

When we checked in they asked what we wanted for breakfast the next morning. We ordered french toast and a Belgium waffle with strawberries and whipped cream, hash browns, sausage, bacon, mint hot chocolate and oj. It was delivered to our room. I was so excited for breakfast but woke up not feeling well at all, so I only had a few bites. I was so sad I didn't get to eat it, it was so yummy!

It was a fun little getaway (except for me getting sick the whole next day) and Jeff was so sweet to plan it all. He is so good to me and has been for the past 9 years. I'm so blessed he is my husband. I have loved being married to him, I can't believe it's been 9 years already. Time has flown by.

I love you, babe! Thanks for being a wonderful husband!

Art

Let's just say I had a little bit of a lengthy post prepared, in which I was spilling emotions and regrets and excuses as to why I haven't done any art lately. Then it all got messed up, I got frustrated and deleted it all. You're probably grateful you don't have to read all the detail and drawn out version now. To sum it up, my excuses are: Motherhood (and life in general), guilt, and perfectionism.

But basically my point was I want to get back into doing art. A while ago I was lucky to meet one of Jeff's sister's friends, Jennifer Rasmusson. I was able to visit her art studio in her home and I was amazed. I now follow her blog and every time she posts new pieces, it gets my creative juices flowing. Check her stuff out. I love it!

Now I just need to get going on some stuff of my own.

Todays coupon trip to Smiths

Oh how I love couponing! I've been to Smiths 4 times in the last 3 days ('cause I'm scatter brained). I thought I got some pretty good deals today. Thought you were dying to know...:)

These tampons weren't rock bottom priced, I'm sure, but I picked them up anyway at $2.99 with 4 $1 off coupons= $1.99 a box

I was excited about these pantyliners: $1.09 with $1 off coupons=.09 cents each!

Did you know they make dark chocolate almond Sandies? Me neither. I was excited. They were $2.49 and when you bought 3 you got $3 off, then I had 2 $1 off coupons and 1 .55 cents off coupon=2 at .49 and 1 at (what? .94 cents? I can't think...close enough!)

Stocking up for the summer! Hot dogs on sale for .88 with $1 off of 2 coupons=.33 cents per package!

This bottled water (our favorite brand) was on sale for $2.99 per case. When you bought 4 they give you a $5 Smiths coupon (can be used on anything) to be used later, so they ended up being $1.74 each

I love finding things on clearance! I picked up 4 of these Softsoap refills at $1.49 each. Wish I had some coupons to go with it, but I still thought they were a pretty good deal!

But I DID have coupons for these. Not exactly my preference when it comes to these things, but at this price I couldn't pass them up. Great to stock up on for emergencies. I had $1 off coupons so I bought 2 at $1.50 each and 2 of another variety at $1.74 each!


I also had $1 off the sunscreen making it $4, and .55 cents of the pretzels making them $1. 43.
My total for the whole trip was $46.53, if you deduct the $5 coupon they gave me: $41.53

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4 boxes of Playtex tampons
4 packs of Carefree pantiliners
4 packs of Always pads
1 Coppertone sunscreen
3 packages Keebler cookies
1 bag pretzels
8 packages hot dogs
4 Softsoap refills
4 24 ct. Arrowhead bottled water packs
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