The Rockets Red Glare

It's been crazy busy the last couple of weeks and we have been gone a lot. I am the secretary for our homeowner's association and there was an important meeting I couldn't miss on Thursday night so we had to wait until that was done before leaving for my parent's house for the 4th of July. It was probably good we waited because traffic was a breeze by the time we left. I was supposed to work on Monday after the 4th, but Sara and Derek were coming to my parent's after getting off of their honeymoon and I wanted to see them so I canceled work and we stayed through Monday. I worked on Tuesday and Wednesday. Kyle and I were chaperones for Youth Conference (another post on that later) and so Wednesday night was the kick-off fireside. We packed up that night and left the next morning for Youth Conference at 7:20am. I was stressed about getting ready for YC (more on that later) and trying to do primary stuff, work, household stuff, play with kids, pack the kids (they went to my Mom's while we were at YC), do homeowner's stuff, etc. I was a little overwhelmed trying to juggle everything. I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown. Kyle was telling me to calm down and everything would be fine. I lived.

We had a great 4th of July. We had a Sabin reunion and it was good to spend time with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The weather was good (not windy) and we even had our own little 5K race in the morning. We were going to go to Othello to their 4th of July 5K race, but we went last year and NEVER got our t-shirts that we paid for!!! Annoying. We even emailed them and nothing. So we boycotted that and kept our money this year. We ran up near the high school and up this big hill (the same loop we ran for the 5K we did at Thanksgiving time). My Dad, Marci, Jared and I were the brave runners. :) We started at 8:30 am and it was already HOT! We thought we were going to die on the last leg of the run. We joked that we all got 1st in our age divisions and that my Mom would make us t-shirts! HA! We had a good time with it and jumped in the pool when we got home.

Kate splattered with dirt. She lived in her bathing suit this weekend. Well, that and dress-up clothes.

We were outside talking and Jared was laying on the ground. Preston would come over and lay down next to him. It was cute.

Kate doing her first sparkler. Last year she would scream and run away from fireworks. We were planning on putting her to bed before the big fireworks since we had early church the next morning, but she insisted she wanted to stay up because she liked fireworks. She actually loved it and commented how she liked the red one's. ha!

Preston is a handful. He is into everything and is quite good at throwing tantrums. My family calls him "moaner" because he will moan and whine all the time. Well, he's also good at throwing up. He is a gagger and so watch out, he'll gag on something and end up throwing up. He threw up like 8 times over the 4th of july weekend. It was annoying. We put him to bed before the fireworks, but I went to check on him and he had thrown up. I changed the sheets and tried to put him back down, but he was hysterical. I brought him outside with me for the fireworks (because everyone was waiting for me) and he did good. I thought he would cry, but this was his expression most of the night and he just sat there.

Kate insisted on sitting in her purple chair that Kyle brought from home. She had fun playing with all the other kids. She adores my cousin Allison (who is probably 11 or 12) but she calls her Alice. It's so funny. Allison just goes along with it and doesn't correct her, but Marci and I were trying to get Kate to say her name right. It was funny.