Laurel the artist

Laurel is experimenting again with artistry. That of the body this time. (though I don't think she has ruled out walls and furniture yet). It seems she has the ability to find pens and markers with ease, and then quickly proceeds to decorate her arms and legs and face. Quickly, because she knows she'll be caught (and washed up) very soon. Here is an example of her latest piece with a purple marker.



She also seems to have an aversion to wearing shorts or pants. They just don't stay on anymore. Life is so interesting and varied when you have a toddler. They go through so many "stages" of funny things they do and try out.

Laurel making a face for the camera

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.

Dancing Queen

Laurel entertains us with her energetic dancing. This was the most we've seen her get into the beat. So cute!

Anniversary and Seminar

This June Derek and I celebrated our 13th anniversary! We enjoyed a nice lunch to celebrate and enjoyed reviewing the last 13 years and planning for those to come.


We also had a little getaway to Colorado, where Derek was presenting a constitution seminar. He was representing The National Center for Constitutional Studies (see www.nccs.net) and gave an all day Saturday seminar in Grand Junction, Colorado. This was Derek's first presentation and he did a great job! It was also my first time to sell NCCS materials and it was a good learning experience. While we were in Grand Junction, we were able to visit my parents and siblings. It was nice to have two days of calm and quiet. As always though, we love to get back to our children after we are away.

Derek teaching at the seminar

Cathy helping at the book table

End of School Year Celebration

At the end of each school year we like to give a couple of awards to each of our children and have a fun activity. We first had our award ceremony, and then drove over to Golfland for some mini golf. We had a fun time. Even Laurel was given a small putter and she followed us around on everything. (we had to take turns keeping her out of the way actually). Unfortunately, Jamie wasn't feeling well this night, so she played very little and just watched.

Derek and Laurel

Adam

Samantha and Laurel

Mackenzie

Hannah

Adam's tooth

Well, it finally happened. After 2 and 1/2 years of trying to save one of Adam's permanent molars, he had to have it removed. At the beginning, his tooth had serious decay, and from that point on, he had numerous visits to dentists to help preserve the tooth and roots. Unfortunately, he had many recurring infections as well. Recently, he visited his endodontist (who had given him a root canal a while back), she discovered why he continues to have infection. There was a crack in the tooth that went too deep and there was no way to save it anymore. So we promptly went across the street to an oral surgeon, where they had his tooth out about an hour later. Now, he has his back molars (that haven't surfaced yet) moving forward into the empty space. Our next visit is to an orthodontist to make sure the teeth line up properly. Hopefully someday the extra dental visits will end because of this one tooth!

Samantha's new modeling career?

Some friends of ours from church run a children's clothing business. They make super adorable clothes. They mostly sell locally, but have some ads in various catalogs. My friend called the other day and was asking if they could use Samantha as a model for some pictures. A military catalog they advertise in was giving them a last minute deadline to submit pictures. We said sure, and within an hour or two they had sewn up a dress and hat that was Samantha's size and we met them at a park for a photo shoot. She said she thought of using Samantha for this because she is adorable even without smiling, so they figured they'd get a decent picture even if she didn't cooperate too much. Samantha loved wearing a new dress, but wasn't so sure about smiling and posing for pictures. Near the end, we had to do some bribing (offering french fries and time on the playground) as she was stomping off saying she wouldn't do anymore. Many pictures turned out cute enough and they were able to meet the deadline. Here are a couple of pictures, with more to come of the reverse side of the dress.

Because it was for a military catalog, they wanted Sammie to hold a flag and pose near some memorials at the park.

Brazilian BBQ

Datascaler provided a nice dinner for employs and spouses to celebrate closing their Series A funding. We went to a nice restaurant in Palo Alto that specializes in Brazilian BBQ. (see http://www.pampaspaloalto.com/food.htm and click on dinner menu to get an idea of what they serve). The food was great, but there was a lot of meat!! We also enjoyed the atmosphere and company. Derek works with a great group of people!

Fruitful Harvest

Our backyard is full of fruit trees and bushes. This last month the fruit has started to appear. We've enjoyed gathering apricots, plums and blackberries from our mini orchard. We also recently discovered a cherry tree and 2nd apricot tree. In another month or more we should have pears and apples ready to harvest. What a great yard and what delicious fruit!

Blackberries

Apricots

Plums

Taylor Family Reunion

We had a fun 3 night stay in a beautiful vacation home near Showlow, Arizona. The accomodations were excellent and the time with family was wonderful! The theme was military, so many related activities were planned, as well as some laid back time for visiting and games. We expected hot weather in Arizona, but were quite pleased with the cool temperatures that were more like California weather. Here are some picture highlights of the reunion.

Laurel enjoying the built in playhouse under the stairs

Samantha playing on the porch

Hannah taking a turn pitching for a kickball game

Grandpa leading some marching exercises

Jamie enjoying a morning hike

Our family

The whole Taylor gang

Grandpa and Grandma teaching the Virginia Reel

Family Camping

A few days before the Taylor Family Reunion, we drove through Yosemite, and then south to a beautiful area called Mammoth Lakes. It's a snow ski town, with numerous lakes and hiking and camping spots. The weather was a bit cool for early June, so we shouldn't have been too surprised to see so much snow on the mountains and the ski season still going. We had to miss out on some of the hikes we planned because of it, but ended up finding some other good ones.

We arrived the first night a bit late, which meant Hannah and Derek set up tents in dark, cold, wet conditions. They did really well however. Cathy made an effort to find all the food and supplies for us to eat something before going to bed.

We camped for two nights among lots of trees, (and supposedly bears) and enjoyed going on a couple of hikes. Some RVers next to our camp site said that a bear walked through our site while we were away. After that, Jamie was even more on edge about bears coming to get us. Even now, she says she never wants to camp in the mountains again.

The kids had a fun time exploring the campgrounds, and got an afternoon of game playing in our tents when the rain went on and on for about 3 hours. Despite the cold and on and off rain, we enjoyed this beautiful area and using our camp equipment again (it's been 2 or 3 years!)

Mackenzie with Half Dome in Yosemite in background

On theTioga Pass road through beautiful Yosemite

The kids enjoying a fun hike near an earthquake fault
in Mammoth Lakes area

Large earthquake fault

Mackenzie at our campsite

The other part of our campsite

Going on a hike in Mammoth Lakes, up to the
top of a dome mountain

The kids were thrilled to see snow on the hike, we
had to hike through some of it in one section (Samantha did not like that!)

The view of Mammoth Lakes valley at the top

A view of the beautiful mountains in the other direction

View of some of the lakes at Mammoth Lakes

Adam documenting our campsite

After camping, we drove through Death Valley National Park on our way to Las Vegas where we enjoyed very nice accomodations, and could shower, wash clothes and swim. The next day, we drove the rest of the way to Showlow, Arizona for our reunion.