Sand and Sunday Posers

Well, we finally got the rest of the sandbox finished....or I suppose I should clarify that JASON finished it...I did however help him spend the money to get the rest of the supplies...that counts right?
So here are a few pics of the last of the process of getting it all ready for sand!  That's the last step.  Jason has been checking out a few places around town to see who has the best sand.  He's pretty particular...haha.
Getting the first board in.  Lots of leveling...and then re-leveling...it was more involved than I thought. 

 2nd row of boards up!

 Using the clamps!  :)

 Third row up, and completely finished.  Except for the whole sand thing.  We still need to get that...:)  It's gonna be one heck of a sandbox!!

Jason never fails to impress me with his skills at building things!  He rocks.

And now onto the Sunday Posers.  Both girls wanted braided pig-tails for church this last Sunday.  So that's what they got.  Then Makayla wanted her picture taken, and of course then Brookie did as well.  So it turned into a mini photo shoot while they ate their breakfast.   

 Cute little posers.  :)

 I think this is one of my favorites of Brooklyn.  Just captured her cute little personality so well.  She's always asking questions with this cute little head tilt, and at the end of every question, she'll say, "right mom?"  It's adorable.  That's what she was doing in this one. 

 

Saturday Projects

Our backyard is basically a slab of grass (thankful for at least having that).  No trees, no fun toys...nothing except grass, with lots of spiders in it.  Our poor girls are always going to other friends houses who have all the fun stuff.  So we decided it's time to build a sandbox.  Plus Jason really likes digging holes.  So it was perfect.  He can dig, me and the girls could oversee.  Haha...which basically means we just sat in the shade and watched him do all the work!!  I was very diligent with getting him big tall glasses of ice water every hour or so.  Go me.
We might even manage to get a tree or two in before winter comes along.  If not, then that will be a project pushed back to a spring weekend.
This is possibly going to be the biggest sandbox in the neighborhood.  I have yet to see one so large.  We didn't really plan on it being so big, but we had a nice square shaped section already kind of "there".  So we just decided that would be the sandbox spot!

*Getting started

*I brought water :)

 *Overseeing.

 *Messy child.

 *Helping.

 *Almost done!  Just need to be a little deeper, then boarded in and filled with sand!  Hooray!

Top of Utah Half

Jason completed his first half marathon on Saturday.  He LOVED it.  Not until a  day and a half later I suspect, but he said he's definitely doing it again!  So I guess overall it was a great experience!  There were quite a few people from our ward that also ran, so he had fun visiting with them before the race, and my brothers also ran it.  Jason's official time was 2 hrs 48 sec.  I don't remember where exactly he placed, since we don't get the paper with the times.  I read it last night at my moms.  I do remember he was in the top 3rd overall, 800 something out of 2600 people.  And in the top half of his age group.  I'll have to get the specifics later.  So here are a few pics to document.  He's going to kill me for posting the one of him crossing the finish line.  He was mid-arm raise and saying hi to me as he crossed and I took the picture...so it's kind of silly.  But it's the only one I was able to get of him at the finish.  People were coming in so fast, we didn't have time to take more without backing up traffic.

My brothers crossing the finish.

 The awesome pic of Jason crossing.  YAY!!  So proud.

All the boys.  Jason didn't ever wear his medal.  Stinker.  It's actually really cool.  He handed it to me and it got shoved in my purse and forgotten about till later.

 Hooray!!  It's over!  He's already looking forward to next year!  Maybe I can talk him into doing the full!!  Haha....yeah right.  He said there's no way.

Congrats Jay!!  Couldn't be more proud of you!!  Wish I could do it!  Maybe some day...

4 going on 14

Because she's so cute.  And sassy, and loving, and silly, funny, sweet, etc... etc... 
She's just about ready to start back up in preschool again in a week and a half, and is SO excited!  She had to try out her new school shirt, and wanted me to curl her hair all cute like she wants it for school.  Definitely acting much older than her mere 4 years. 

I can't really explain why I love this particular photo of her so much...maybe it was because she was holding still for more than a few seconds, or because her little profile is so cute, or her cute little bare feet.  I don't know, I just love it...and her. 
Sappy enough post for you?  Ok, I'm done!  She's my missy girl, and I love her.

Nephews, Sunburns and Spiders...really nasty looking ones.

Hooray!!!  We finally have a cousin on the Horrocks side!!  Little Paxton was born on August 2nd!!  Teeny tiny little guy, only 5lbs and some change, but probably one of the cutest little babies I've ever seen.  I can't WAIT to hold him...won't get to till October for his blessing, so I'm going to have to get by with pics for now. 


How could I not fall instantly in love!?

 We also had some fun at the splash pad this last week...and we picked a really bad day to run out of sunscreen.  The poor girls got nice and red.  Lucky for them, they just get really nice and tan.  Makayla especially.  She's our little brown-skinned baby.  She's in the sun all the time. 

And last but not least, went out to pick our first tomato off of our plant, and found this guy...he is SO huge and scary with those needle sharp pointy legs of his.  I freaked out and made Jason pick the tomato.  I was not about to get my hand anywhere near that thing.  Apparently it's harmless and loves tomato plants.  Please please please just don't let it show up in our house one day.  I would probably die.

We also had a trip to Bear Lake with our friends the Knight and Smith families.  Such a blast, we were there for 6 or 7 hours, and only Jason ended up burned.  He peeled like a reptile.  So incredibly gross.

And since my camera is basically useless at this point, I only ended up taking about 4 or 5 pics, and only few turned out decent. 

Love that place.  Can't wait to go again in 2 weeks and then again for Labor Day!! 

For Cassie

My blog background was in much need of a change up, and I came across this one for Brain Cancer.  So this is for my sister Cassie, who passed away 3 years ago from brain cancer.  Her birthday is this month.

Miss you Cass!!

Reunion-ing and Big Girl Beds

We had the Horrocks reunion last week.  A good time as always, even though we were only able to attend abt 3/4 of the fun.  We missed out on Cowabunga Bay early Friday, but made it down to Daryl and Teri's house for dinner and movie on the lawn.   It was so much fun.  The girls were in heaven having so many cousins to play with, and then when the movie screen got all blown up and ready and the popcorn machine started popping, there was even more excitement.  We watched How to Train Your Dragon (which I love...so funny), and listened to the very loud crickets.  The girls all sat on the blankets on the ground with Aunt Ashley.  Even Brookie sat there the whole time, and only at the very end, at almost 11pm she came over to snuggle mom.  I was impressed. 

Then the next day we headed up to Park City to just hang out, shop, do the Alpine slide, zip line, coaster, etc.  Well, right after we bought our tickets, it started to sprinkle.  Then the sun came out, blazing hot for about 20 mins...then it started to sprinkle again.  And kept sprinkling.  By this time we had been in line about 45 mins and were 3/4 way to the front.  We decided to stick it out and hope a bunch of people bailed while it was on a "rain hold"  they can't operate till the rain quits and the track dries off.  And of course a bunch of people bailed.  But since we were only there for the afternoon, and weren't coming back, we stuck it out.  We got soaked.  But we were at the front.  Like 5 people from the very front of the line.  Makayla had been SO patient the entire time, people around me kept saying how impressed they were that she wasn't whining or crying from sheer boredom.  She was awesome.  It had finally stopped raining a short while after we'd been there about 1hr 15 mins.  So were were waiting for them to dry the track, when BOOM...major thunder.  Then the rain started up again, and they had lightening at the top of the mtn, so they had to close for the day.  Makayla was DEVASTATED.  The tears finally came, and she didn't understand why we weren't coming back later.  Ugh...it was a major bummer.  But out tickets are good til October...so hopefully we can go down and do some back to school shopping at the outlet mall soon and redeem our ride! 
This was her standing with the slide in the background shortly before it started raining again, when we were about 3/4 way to the front of the line.

After that disappointment, we headed up to Uncle Lynn's cabin in Oakley.  Abt a 30 minute drive from Park City.  Beautiful drive by the way.  We loved it.  Especially in the rain.  It looked so pretty.  Stayed there and ate dinner in the rain.  Nothing like waiting out an incredible thunderstorm in a small cozy cabin filled with family.  It was great.  Then we headed home after dinner.  We had to drive back to Logan that night, so we were one of the first to leave.  We had a great time though, and can't wait till next year!  Hopefully by then I'll have a new camera so I can take more pics!  I just use my crummy phone camera now, so it's not really worth it to take great pics, cause they don't turn out very well.
Oh well. 

And on to the big girl bed!
We've been looking and looking for a twin bed for Brookie forever.  She's older than Makayla was when we put her in her big girl bed.  We just couldn't find anything for fairly (extremely) cheap that we liked.  Not even something I could re-paint.  So we just went with the crib she is already in and took the front panel off, converting it to a day bed.  It's still got the small crib mattress in there, so it's really low to the ground.  Which is probably good, since I'm sure she'll fall out once or twice.  If she's like Makayla, once is all it will take!  So for now, she's all set!  We're still looking for a small bookshelf to put in there, and a stand up 5 drawer dresser for me to re-do, or if we find a nice one for cheap that I don't have to re-do...but those odds are slim, since we don't like paying for the nice new things.   Not that we don't like them, but they're not in the budget at this point in time.  So we're going for cheap.  Might have to hit up some garage sales and see if we can find a diamond in the rough.

All ready for bed!!  So excited.

And good night!