Hannah the Babysitter

We've often kept Hannah busy with babysitting opportunties at home when there are errands to run or appointments. Also once in a while on the weekends for a date night we pay her to watch her siblings. Hannah was thrilled though, when she received an invitation to babysit for some church friends who needed someone 4 days a week for 2 hours each time. She has spent the last two weeks doing that and has really enjoyed it. I guess it helps that our friend pays her more than we do. :) She has two or three more weeks of helping them before school starts and she expects she will be able to achieve some monetary goals she had by that time.

Laurel Dancing Reprise

Laurel's dance video was so popular, we thought another one would be in order. She gets quite jazzed up when she hears this song.

This and That

Here's what we've been up to in the last two weeks

--Jamie and Samantha taking swimming lessons. Jamie is greatly benefiting from them, and Samantha is barely getting in the water. Oh well, it was worth a try anyway.
--Plenty of doctor and dentist visits. The baby is doing well. Just two more months to go! Adam had a visit to an orthodontist about the space in the back of his mouth. The good news is he doesn't need anything done now, we can wait for his 12 year old molars to turn up.
--Hannah began private piano lessons. Her teacher up to this point has been Cathy, but Hannah's abilities have gotten to the point that she was ready for someone more experienced to help her further develop her skills.
--We attended our Stake Pioneer Celebration Fireside. It was really nice. The primary children sang three songs and all of our children, except Laurel, participated. They all did a great job. Afterwards we enjoyed some pie and visiting with friends.
--We spent a day at the Tech Museum with some friends and had a good time. The kids loved the Mummy Imax show.

Bowling

While Cathy's parents were still in town, we took the opportunity to go bowling with the kids. For the most part they enjoyed it, but struggled with the heavy balls. The little ones tried all kinds of ways of getting the ball down the lane--pushing, kicking, dropping, etc. Most of the time Jamie tried to roll it, but it ended up being a drop with little speed. Amazingly enough it always made it to the end and knocked some pins down. They used the "bumpers" and that helped, even for Grandpa!

At the bowling alley--Hannah, Jamie, Mackenzie
Grandma O.

Samantha and Laurel--often they got tired of watching
and wished they could do more. So Laurel spent much of
the time running through the place and climbing on anything
she could.

Mackenzie's Baptism

Mackenzie was baptized on Saturday. We were blessed to have both sets of Grandparents join us for this special occasion. Also, many friends from our old ward and new one came to support her. The program turned out so nice and a beautiful spirit could be felt. Grandma O'Dwyer and Grandpa Taylor both spoke, and Hannah sang a solo song.

We are so grateful that Mackenzie is trying to choose well in her life and will be a good example to her younger sisters.

Mackenzie and Derek before the baptismal service.

Our family before the service

Mackenzie and Derek with both sets of Grandparents
(Taylors on the left, O'Dwyers on the right)

an angelic Mackenzie, age 8

Cub Scout Day Camp

Adam attended a week-long cub scout day camp. It was held at Los Gatos Creek Park. He had a great time! He participated in all kinds of activities--from sports to crafts to biking to learning scout skills. His favorite activity however, was shooting BB guns. He got to do that almost every day and he loved it! He also enjoyed learning to fish, but was disappointed that they weren't given enough time to really catch anything. Parents were asked to help 2 days of the week and I went and helped teach the sports station. Unfortunately this week was one of our hottest yet of the summer, so it was a pretty long and tiring day being out in the sun most of the time, but I survived!

The whole group of boys at Cub Scout camp. (Adam is
in the middle on the 1st/2nd row)

Adam's den at the closing ceremony of camp. They recieved
homemade fishing poles. (Adam on far right)

Adam receiving an award certificate for participation.

Adam's NXT Projects

Adam has loved the extra time this summer to work on making different Lego NXT models. He gets ideas from the NXT website, makes the model, shows it to everyone and plays with it a while, then takes it apart and works on another. Here is a video of one model he made that was pretty cool.

Water play

The day of the girl's birthday party, Derek went on an overnight scout trip to a lake. A boat was brought and they had many hours of water activities--skiing, wakeboarding and wake surfing. Derek hadn't tried some of these before, so it was his first time. Derek was quite impressed with the skills of some of the boys. They were pulled by a rope behind the boat on their surf boards and then would let go of the rope and would ride the waves behind the boat for about 15 minutes. Some of the boys knew how to do flips from one side of the wave to the other on their wake boards. It was a fun time! Derek came home very tired and stayed sore for a few days because he'd used muscles that were rarely used.

A short time after Derek returned from his lake activity, we went to an Elder's Quorum get together at Golfland. This Golfland in San Jose has a few water slides and the older kids just loved going on those over and over. Jamie was hesitant to try, but once she did, she loved it and stayed at it a long time. Laurel, Sammie, Mackenzie and Cathy played a quick round of mini golf and enjoyed the BBQ and visiting with others there. Some of us even tried a few arcade games, but that wasn't nearly as fun as being outside with the water slides and golfing.

Birthday Party

Hannah and Mackenzie both had a "friends" birthday party this year for their birthdays. Their birthdays are about a month apart, and because of having many mutual friends, they had one birthday party for both of them. That made for easier planning, but it meant about 20 girls were invited! The party was held at a park near our home and Hannah and Mackenzie had planned a number of fun water games to play. They had a great time! They actually ran out of time because they had so much planned. They provided some fun snacks and ice cream and had a great time playing with friends. We brought cameras along to take pictures, but were so busy, that no pictures were taken. Oh well, maybe next time.

Crazy Dress-up

Hi! Today for fun, we decided to dress-up in crazy costumes and take pictures of ourselves. We looked pretty funny. I thought you would like to see a few of our 'outfits'.



Unfortunately we could not convince Adam to do it. We looked pretty crazy, but we had Lot's of fun.

Love, Hannah :)

Fourth of July

This year for the fourth, we went to a ward BBQ. It was fun seeing friends. The girls played an egg toss and made kites. That evening we walked to nearby Creekside park for fireworks. Here we are waiting for fireworks.
The fire works were spectacular-especially the Grand Finale!

Love, Hannah
P.S. Every once and a while there will be a post from me.