Holland's 4th Birthday

On August 23rd we celebrated Holly Cottle's 4th birthday.  

It is hard to come up with words to describe how I feel about her life and death. Her passing changed my perspective on many things. It makes me sad that Lexie, Nick and Holland's sisters have to live without her. It also feels weird and wrong to talk about how her death affects me because it is so totally not about me. 

Anyway, her birthday is usually happy because we get to send off balloons and my girls look forward to it. But I think it's also okay that her birthday makes me sad too.  

In a funny coincidence, one of Elise's other best friends has the exact same birthday as Holland, so I can very clearly imagine what it would be like if Holly and Lou got to be friends right now. 

Summer Bucket List

When we got back from Wisconsin/Minnesota we had a week and a half until school started. I wish I could say I jam-packed tons of fun into those days, but I didn't. We finally completed the last few things on our summer bucket list.

First was a hike. We had planned on Stewart Falls, but Elise's hiking performances early in the summer showed us this may be too lofty a goal. Plus, the girls told us they didn't want to do it. 

We decided to try out Cascade Springs. It was perfect. Beautiful and not strenuous. 

Another bucket list item was a pizza/movie pj party. The girls were anxious to host it all summer and we did it a few days before school started. We called it a little summer send off and invited all the first grade girls in our neighborhood, along with some younger sisters. 

After pizza we settled in to watch Little Rascals. The girls all seemed excited, but within 20 minutes only 3 girls were left watching. Instead they got into our massive dress-up collection.

The weather was so beautiful the rest of August/September that we went swimming at our little swimming hole, Manila Creek Pond, several times. 

Sadie and 2 friends attempted- and failed- to get on a paddle board together

On one of the last hot days we met several moms and their kids. It was so fun to watch all those kids together.

The only item we didn't cross off our bucket list was teaching Sadie and Elise to ride 2-wheelers. I blame it on the fact that we live on a busy street so we have to drive somewhere else to teach them. We put a few lame attempts in with Sadie, but we realized her bike was too big to learn on and we never got around to taking off the training wheels on the smaller bike. Some day. 

Roominate

 For Sadie's birthday Mimi sent her a roominate kit. These kits are filled with building materials and circuits. There are no instructions because kids are supposed to create their own things. Sadie feels really cool when she connects the circuits and makes lights turn on or fan motors turn. 

Elise loves to play with it, but makes me do all the work.

August Randoms

My phone was full of random photos for the rest of August.

 Lots of selfies

Met up with one of my favorite old friends, Lauren Johnson, but all I got to show for it is Lou with a handful of grass sitting by Lauren's son Bryce.

4-year and 15-month well child checks with all 3 kids. Nothing could be more fun that doctor's appointments full of kids. 

Hiking the Y with dad. They made it halfway up

10-year anniversary date dessert at The Chocolate

Emett Faucette's 4th birthday party

Coloring/eating wax

Walking home from church

Flying kites in the driveway

Glitter crafts

Keeping me up in the night while Daniel was at Lake Powell with his team

Millie loves smoothies

Just an adorable pic of Sadie reading to Mills 

Uncle Ben was in town for a wedding

Adorable picture of Lou tickling Mills

Normal chaos at our house

A crown braid. It looked awesome, but when I picked her up from school it had completely fallen out. Her hair is too short/thin

One of their favorite playing spots

Camille's other favorite play spot

Second cousins playdate

An innocent menace. Broke a third pair of my sunglasses

Pandora dance party