I Wish Summer Would Never End.

I know everyone at this time of year is so excited for fall. Not me. Fall is fine, fall is fun, but summer forever. Especially when you live somewhere where summer seems rather short.

We have swum (isn't any occasion to use "swum" the best?) and boated and partied all summer long. We have eaten more watermelon and corn on the cob than I can describe. We have even taken our corn to a new level with elote. Dan has smoked steaks and roasts and butts (ha!) on his new smoker. 

Our neighbors are some of the best gardeners on the planet. They went out of town for a month and asked us to harvest their garden. It was amazing. I made one zillion zucchini chocolate chip muffins. Dan learned to make Zuppa Toscana. I learned how to cook beets. We had a pretty successful garden as well. We've eaten like kings.

Part of our garden:

Bounty from Lee and Earl's garden:

Lee and Earl's amazing garden:

As always, we crashed other churches' Vacation Bible Camps. Three this year.

This dark photo is June accepting an award for memorizing the required verses at one of the camps.

We hiked into Saint Peter's Village to use the rope swing and go down the rock slides.

First you must climb over all of these rocks.

Swimming, Tarzan-style!

Rock slide:

Gwen's birthday was in July. It was on the same day as a summer party I scheduled for one of our co-ops. I didn't even realize that it was on Gwen's birthday until two days before. 

Picking out which donut she wanted for her birthday breakfast.

New shirt from Grandma Sandy, plus some spending money.

Charm bracelet from Grandma Kristi:

Summer party that day. It was her friend Dora's birthday as well so we moms were able to pretend that this party was for them. Except it wasn't. 

I convinced a bunch of moms to launch a sneak attack on all of the kids with some water balloons. When they retaliated, I picked up someone's baby, hoping that kids wouldn't throw water balloons at a woman with a baby. But they did.

Lots of swimming and boating, but not lots of photos of either. The kids all love tubing, and the girls love knee boarding. I have finally gotten up on skis, but haven't stayed up long enough to count it. We are going again a couple more times before it's too cold, and I'm really hoping I can accomplish this goal before we put the boat away for the winter.

We attended a class one evening all about fireflies. 

The girls and I attended a performance by BYU-Idaho's Dance Alliance team.

June started wearing reading glasses:

The kids have loved on Gilbert. They love him TO DEATH. Like he might die of being annoyed by them. We have had many talks about how no one likes being chased down and poked constantly. To no avail.

We have been able to attend the temple a lot this summer. Two times on our vacation to Utah, and three times since coming home. I took my friend Cathyjo through for her first time. Her son was home from his mission to have surgery and was able to see his mother go through the temple. He was so sad to have to come home from his mission for a couple of months, but we now all see how it was the Lord's timing.

Dan and I attended the temple twice together this month. That is a very rare occurrence. Our ward offered free childcare at the church building across the street one of the times, which was a huge blessing for us.

This is why I love summer. This particular summer we decided not to do any sports and hardly any camps so that we could swim and go to the temple and boat. It was awesome. 

Today we had our Back to School Feast, and tonight Dan will give the kids and me blessings for our new school year. Technically, we started doing a few things at the beginning of August, namely math, handwriting, music, and some reading. But this week and next our co-ops will resume, and we will be full-fledged schooling for the next several months. I know it's time but in my heart I'll be thinking about swimming.

The End.

Utah, Boat, Dog.

 We've had some major life changes take place in the Jolley household lately. (By the way, I just misspelled our last name. I first wrote Jolly. I'm finally giving into what the world wants, and that is for the -e to be omitted from our last name.)

At the end of May, we went to Utah for two-ish weeks to see family. The first week, we stayed with my mom and did all of the northern Utah things. We went to BYU, Temple Square, took TRAX to Music and the Spoken Word, ate loads of Cafe Rio, and saw many wonderful friends.

On the flight out to Utah, Beck threw up no fewer than 10 times. Who knew a little body could contain so much spew? Dan took Beck to the back of the plane to use the bathroom, and after several minutes, a shirtless Beck came marching down the aisle, stopping at each set of seats to make sure that everyone saw that he was half-naked and getting away with it. Beck loves being naked and rarely gets away with it anymore. 

Then he sat down next to me and proceeded to barf 98 more times. When we changed planes in Denver, I was the lucky contestant accompanied Beck down the jetway whilst holding a barf bag to his lips to catch anything that came flying out on our journey. 

I saw so much fear in so many pairs of eyeballs as we walked on the next plane to Salt Lake City. Everyone was silently pleading with us not to sit anywhere near them. Which, to be honest, I am used to that look. But this had an extra "nobarfnobarfpleasenobarf" level next to it. A new level of desperation.

So that was a tough part of the trip, only to be matched by the other hard part of the trip, which was when Harris took a turn at throwing up, and this time it was right outside the Church Office Building. We know how to leave an impression.

The second week of the trip, we went to St. George for Dan's family reunion.

There were 28 of us in a house with a private pool and a hot tub and a large lagoon we shared with a neighborhood. We cooked and cleaned up and swam and made s'mores and watched movies and made crafts. And then we would go to bed and do the same thing all over again the next day. It was all very fun, and we were dead by the end of it.

My friend Kendra took amazing family photos for us. 

The Original Jolleys:

The Whole Huge Gang.

And Our Small Crew.

Anyone who knows Dan Jolley knows that he has wanted a boat more than anything. More than a wife, more than kids, more than financial security. I kid, I kid. But a boat has always been on top of Dan's list. So when we found one for a very used one for a decent price, we decided to splurge. 

There's been a learning curve involved. Most of the time, I'm a huge planner. But sometimes the four kids and the homeschooling and all of the responsibilities pile up on me and there isn't much time to plan, so we jump forward and plan later. Which means that we bought a boat without knowing how to get a license, and without having a hitch on our van, and without knowing how to back up a trailer. The first time Dan went to take the boat out, he couldn't remember which one was ours. That's the level of jumping ahead I'm talking about. But we finally got licensed, insured, hitched, and practiced backing up the trailer.

In fact, here is a super blurry pic of Dan backing the boat up into the water. I'm his first mate. I'm a terrible first mate. I know nothing and help with nothing besides documenting boating trips by taking terribly blurry photos.

THAR SHE BLOWS! I realize that that phrase refers to a whaling expedition and not a ski boat, but it seemed much more interesting than "Here's our boat."

June on the knee board:

Gwen on the knee board:

Captain Dan, and his loyal Sea Puppy, Gilbert! Yes, in the midst of this non-planning splurging we had going on, we also acquired a dog. Just about as much planning went into the dog as did our boat buying.

I was so against him. But I love him. I'm his favorite, which makes me like him more. He gets it, you know?

Other happenings:

The lady that teaches June how to ride horses (and who also sold us our new puppy) offered to host all of our kids at horse camp one week this summer in exchange for my cleaning her she-shed. I do love a good organization project, so I readily agreed. The camp counselor quickly discovered that the only way to contain Beck was to keep him atop a horse, so he had more than his fair turns riding compared to the other kids.

Gwen had her big annual dance show. She and her friend Heidi have been in jazz together two years in a row. They did such a great job that it almost soothed my soul from the terrible experience of having to put mascara on an 8-year-old who hates it several times in a single week.

We've had this clematis for three years, but it would never bloom. Bloom it did this year, and I'm thrilled. Now I just need a better wreath for my black door so it doesn't look like a giant bruise.

We had our second annual strawberry picking fest with our friends the Cramer's at Sauder's Strawberry Patch. We went the very last day of the season because it was the only day we had time, only to arrive and find out that all of the strawberries are free the last day. We went crazy.

I made tons of freezer jam and we ate so many strawberries that we were a little sick. 

And our church photo from today:

The End.

Beck + Josie

I recently did a photo shoot for a toddler wedding. My own toddler's wedding. 

Let me back up.

Several years ago, a man stopped by my family's table at a church activity to chat. Seeing that my kids were hopped up on goofballs (as they usually are), he made the oh-so-unhelpful comment, "I see that the inmates are running the asylum here." I wasn't mad in the slightest because he. was. right.

And that coup from many years ago remains successful today. We parents are mere pawns in our children's schemes. Sometimes I get to carry out one of my own ideas, but really it's only an idea that my kids have planted as a seed in my head and then have worked tirelessly to grow until it comes to fruition. I am the Manchurian Mother, a mere instrument through which my children are taking over the world.

Which is how I came to host a totally unnecessary and somewhat frivolous toddler wedding within the walls of my own crazy home.

Some of our closest friends are the Whitlocks. My June and Gwen and their Charlie and Raelyn have been talking about pairing up our Beck with their Josie for the longest time. I didn't mind this a bit as the girls could be entertained with the planning of this for hours, and it bought me a lot of time during our playdates. 

But then they started asking when we could host this thing. And I balked. "That's ridiculous," I said. "We aren't going to be weirdos who have toddler weddings."

It turns out that's exactly who we are going to be--weirdos who host toddler weddings. I don't remember the exact moment I changed my tune but what started out as an adamant "NO!" turned into me at Dollar Tree blowing 15 bucks on toddler wedding decorations.

Beck, at his destination wedding beach spot, eagerly awaits his one-true-love/playdate-partner-he-often-refuses-to-play-with, Josie.

The blushing bride, scampering down the aisle to see her beloved frenemy. 

Harris, the sole shy resident of this family, chickened out of officiating, so Head Bridesmaid/Wedding Planner/Wedding Dictator June jumped in to save the day.

The solemn union was solidified by a hug. They exchanged ring pops. (Note: Dan made fun of this whole thing for a long time and kept giving me a hard time for giving in. But then an hour before the ceremony, he went to the store to buy ring pops because he said "they have to exchange rings!!" Everyone is guilty over here.)

And a KISS! 

The happy couple departed on Harris's borrowed big wheel, complete with streamers and a "Just Married" sign June made and affixed to the back.

And then we had pizza and a little white cake I had made. The best part was that the parents weren't allowed to participate in the actual wedding, so we all wore sweats. 

The End.