Jaxon Turns 14!

Jaxon turned 14! He is growing up before our eyes. He's also turning out to be a quite capable, reliable, and responsible teenager, with some silliness on the side.

He got a fanny back from Ivy last Christmas, and oh my goodness, he was inseparable from it. Every day at school and church (I make him take it off to pass the sacrament). But it finally broke over the summer from overuse so his sisters got him another one! He calls it "Bolsi", from Pixar's Inside Out 2.

He loves school, engineering, programming, Chinese, French, and loves playing with his younger siblings, no matter the age difference. We love you, Jaxon!

P.s. That evening we enjoyed(?) watching the planes dump water on a nearby fire on the mountain. It was actually a pretty bad fire, we were so grateful to be safe.

 

First Day of School 2025

 Oh, say it's not so! Talmage is officially a preschooler! No, it's been really good for him and for me. He goes every day for a couple hours, making new friends and learning English. He's loving it. I'm enjoying my time at the rec center trying to get a little healthier.

Then we have the elementary kids...

Ivy is a first grader and loving the Chinese immersion!

Violet is in 6th grade. Middle school is next year! (She's starting to read my old journals...) 

Ginger is in 3rd grade. She's such a good, responsible student.

And of course, there's Jaxon. He has a personal goal of keeping a 4.0 the whole year. So far so good!

Travis photo bombing...

Knives

The HHJJ in our ward spent the summer making knives! It was a great project and they were all so proud.

We're missing a couple boys in this photo, but they loved it!

 

Go Cougars!

After we celebrated Ivy's birthday, we got ready for BYU's season opening football game!

It was definitely a warm evening!

We shared a couple Cougar Tails for the experience!

 We won big time! What a fun evening!

Ivy Turns 6!

Ivy dives turned 6! She's almost the absolute youngest in her grade but she can keep up with the best of them! Ivy is very creative, sweet, helpful and loves to be challenged. :)

I love it when she helps me out with dinner, and she's always eager to set the table without complaints. She is such a beautiful part of our family. We love you, Ivy!

End of Summer

We spent the rest of the summer just chilling together.

 

Travis and Jaxon had a couple HHJJ campouts this summer that were a big hit for the ym.

Travis doing "pago", which is the kids look forward to every month.

More rec center fun, Talmage is so happy to be big enough to ride the indoor waterslides!

Of course, more Tuesdays with cousins.

Violet's birthday activity with Travis was camping, again. All the kids love camping with Travis.

Silliness before school starts!

Paradise Reservoir

In July we scheduled in a week for the cabin. This time I thought we'd try something different from the norm and we went to Paradise reservoir for a day. It was so much fun, we'll definitely have to do it again!

 

What We've Been Up to this Summer

 Aside from the larger trips to Bear Lake and the cabin, we've found plenty of ways to fill in the summer. Settle in for the photo dump!

Travis and Ginger had her birthday activity. She wanted to go camping and chose to wait till the summer to camp instead of a winter campout.

Jaxon had a stake HHJJ campout for a week.

Here is a typical made up backyard game I'll call "Hide from the sprinkler"?

There's always a trip to the Bean Museum, or BYU Dinosaur Museum.

Ginger and Ivy powered through their summer workbooks in a month. Ivy has since wanted more, and more workbooks. She just finished her fourth and now wants "a break". Can't blame her!

We had our annual summer Ward BBQ with some fun games. We love our ward so much.
 

We go to the BYU Bookstore and just mess around. Here the kids are using a stage to dance to the "audience".

We had swim lessons, of course, and just normal pool days.

Ivy is my little nutritionist. She seems to be very aware of her body's needs. She's the kid who takes a couple of bites of a dessert and says, "Mmm..I think that's enough sugar for my body. I think I want a banana now." You go girl. She had been wanting to make these fruit skewers for a while and now that it's summer- perfect time.

She's also very innovative. I'll be honest, I forgot what she said this was.

We celebrated the 4th at Mamie and Papa's with food, fireworks, and cousins. 

Britian (spelling is correct) is always like this on the 4th. Very typical.

That evening we had our youth fundraising activity- cleaning the BYU stadium after Stadium of Fire! We had a great turnout and most didn't have to stay too late! Only about 1:30am or so. Poor Travis and a few other fathers handled the hoses till 3:30am. We spent a long day at the pool to let him recover.

Jaxon and Violet took a bowling camp at BYU. Have I mentioned I just love living so close to campus?

Typical Thursday at Mamie's house with cousins. Here Ginger and Beckham are up to some magic tricks.

Violet finally let me take her to get her hair trimmed. She still thought it was too short.

Sleepovers with cousins at Mamie's house...

The annual backyard summer recital...

A fun Saturday evening at the splash pad.