Tomato Festival

 According to once source: "Once known as the “Tomatopolis of the World,” Crystal Springs knows a thing or two about a good tomato! And they have a whole weekend set aside each year to proclaim it! Celebrating all things tomato."

The girls and I had to check it out!! It's too bad the weather wasn't very good. It rained for almost the entire kid parade. That didn't stop us from having fun, Though!

 

Janie joined us and we ran into Rick, Shaun's co-worker. 

 The biggest hit was the red balloons! The girls played with them for the entire day!

 We huddled under the tree to stay dry as the parade went by.

In the afternoon we headed up to Clinton to make sure daddy was still working hard! The girls were thrilled to see him and I got a chance to mow our lawn up there. Kind of a fun, busy day.

The sad part about today was my Grandpa Lundquist passed away. He has been suffering from complications from a stroke and from kidney failure. We knew it was a matter of time, and we are grateful he is no longer suffering...it just came too quickly. So Idaho here we come!

Kate 17 months...

 Kate is our little bundle of adventure! If there is fun, she will find it! 
She is an incredible eater! She will try everything and wants to eat lots of different kinds of foods. 
Currently, some of her favorites include: rice chex, fish, eggs, my raspberry jam (the other day she kept licking the jam off of the biscuit and then wanted more jam.) She will almost always request a goyogurt! I think she likes the independence of it, but also the cold yogurt feels good on her teething gums.

 Kate loves to play, climb, discover, and tease!

 Kate also loves her mommy! She will go to other people but wants her mom in view, if possible.

 Kate is a great little sister! She does tease, and loves to push claire's buttons but has only good intentions.

 One of the newest toys at our house is the red slide. the weather  is getting HOT HOT HOT in mississippi! We got the slide to give us some fun inside when outside wasn't an option. 
Kate has proven to be quite the dare devil. She will go down the slide, climb up the slide, and lately started climbing up and STANDING on the top of the slide. She has fallen off a couple of times but just jumps back up and gets back on the slide.

 Church is quite the adventure for us! Since we sit on chairs it's very hard to keep Kate contained. she's been going to nursery 2nd hour (that's the only hour  they have nursery) so that's been awesome, but 3rd hour in Relief Society brings tears, hunger, tiredness and just plain being done with church.

 Kate is really starting to love books! One of my favorite times during the day is reading to my girls!

 Kate LOVES to go visit daddy at work! We like to deliver treats to the employees too!
Kate is also getting really good at animal noises. The animal sounds she does best: duck, dog, cat, sheep, cow, and saying fish.

 

Balloons are ALWAYS fun! 

Kate's newest trick is using a chair to get where she wants to be. She now climbs on chairs to open doors, pushes the chair over to the counter to get stuff off of the counter, climbing onto the chair, then onto the kitchen table, etc. She seriously has no fear! She jumps in the deep end of the swimming pool, she wants to do what she sees big kids doing. 

Kate is also so so sweet! She gives the best hugs. When we are outside playing, whenever a grounds worker drives by she stops whatever she is doing to smile and wave at them! They LOVE it! 

Kate almost has all of her teeth and we are so glad for that! Teeth is not her favorite thing! 

The other cute thing about Kate is she LOVES to dance! Claire will make up words to songs or we will be grocery shopping and Kate just busts out her moves. It is awesome and it makes lots of people just grin! 
She goes to bed at 6:30 pm and loves to sleep with her Minnie & Mickey! She will sleep until 6:30 the next morning. 
We LOVE the ray of sunshine that Kate brings into our lives! 

HaPpY FaTheR's DaY!

 

Claire's cute survey about Daddy!  

After Claire was done drawing the picture she said- "I made daddy look funny." Ü 

 I wasn't feeling the best after surgery...I'll post about that soon. But I still wanted to make Shaun's day really nice. The day before I managed to make it to walmart and got ingredients to make pull apart monkey bread for breakfast. That's about as easy as it gets. I didn't get a picture of breakfast because we ate it too fast and ran to church.

 Shaun's gift was socks. Lame, but necessary. :) I also make his this apron card. He loved it!

 Claire also helped me throw together this carrot cake. We wanted to make it when my parents came with the fresh carrots from the garden but we ran out of time. So I opted to make it for Father's Day. It was A MAZ ING!! Seriously so good!

 Shaun thought it would be fun to drive up to the new house in the afternoon to see his handy work. Kate found the headphone and HAD to wear them. She was cracking us up!

 Prior to Father's Day, Claire helped me put together these M&M's for the Dad's at church. It's not too hard when there is less than 20 men. I think they turned out super cute!

Last but not least, here is a picture of our Daddy! He works so hard during the day, then works half the night on the house, and also continues to serve as the Branch Mission leader. We've been having the elders over every Sunday for dinner and then their meeting. Elder Cook (on the left) just got his visa and headed to Australia. Elder Hill is from Driggs, Idaho. He's now training a new elder from Idahofalls, Idaho. 

We sure love this great daddy of ours!

house construction

 Shaun's been working so hard lately trying to get our house ready for countertops. This has been the busiest time for him at work as well! He's been trying to submit a 2.5 million dollar grant. He's on a team for this one, but it has been quite stressful! 

He also is teaching a class this summer. Although he has 0% teaching appointment. One of his students from Iraq that he is mentoring was in need of a tissue cultural class. They don't offer it on main campus so he is now teaching it. The student moved into the other house on the station. He has 4 boys- ages 11, 10, 8 & 5. The sad part is his wife doesn't speak ANY english. I took cookies over to them the other day and the husband just translated. 

They returned the gesture with delicious Iraq food!

I seriously have such an amazing husband!

 a week ago

 

Yesterday! 

 

It's coming together!! Now just floor, paint, crown molding and move in, right?!

Nana & Papa visit the 'Sip

We had one FUN week at our house! Nana and Papa came to check out our life down in Mississippi! My mom flew in Monday. My dad joined us after he finished at his conference in DC on Thursday.

We hit up the library for a fun story time! The girls had a blast!

They were pretty excited about Nana coming and loved discovering what was in her suitcase. ;)

Blueberries are in FULL bloom at the station. There are over 30 blueberry bushes LOADED with berries. Anyone can pick them from the station for free! I have 7 gallon freezer bags full in my freezer.

 

Time to go pick some more fresh ones to eat! 

 

My blueberry pickers!

One hot afternoon we went to play at my friend, Heidi's house. Her pool is to die for! There is a little shallow area just perfect for kids or mommies.

Shaun gave my parents a great tour of the entire station. Claire had to make sure mickey mouse got enough to drink.

IN the afternoon we checked out the local dairy freeze to get ice cream. Kate's first cone and she was LOVING it!

Another day we went to our science museum. The girls LOVED it and it was a great air conditioned activity!

a little bird watching?!

My dad was a HUGE help with our new house. Shaun and my dad worked on it quite a bit Friday and Saturday. Shaun was so grateful for the help!

Good byes are hard but we were so glad it worked out for my parents to come! The girls were in heaven and so was I! Life is just complete when we can be around our family! 
Miss you guys already!