I’ve lost my determination to blog this summer. I keep telling myself that its worth it just because I haven’t been good at doing scrapbooks for the kids past the first year, but even that doesn’t motivate me. Oh well! We haven’t had too many really exciting happenings around here lately so maybe that’s part of it. We’ve just been hanging out a lot. Jackson and Lacey told me the other day that they are best friends. They should be, they are together ALL the time. It was nice to hear it from them though.

The kids and I went to the cabin for the last week in July. So Fun (except at bedtime)! We had a few overtired meltdowns at bedtime, but the fun outweighed the trouble. Almost all the cousins were there, and my kids would kinda just disappear for a while with their cousins and come check in every once in a while. I tried to keep an eye on them here and there at least just to get a few pictures! All my sisters helped out a lot with Jackson, Lacey, and especially Rachelle. One night I was sick and Lacey and Rachelle decided to get up in the middle of the night. Robyn was kind enough to hold Rachelle the rest of the night so I could get Lacey back down and recover with a little sleep! Thanks Rob! Lori and Michelle took Jackson crawdad fishing with them while I was packing up the car to go home and he caught 3 big crawdads and 1 little one, and over all the group caught 67 or 68. From about the minute we arrived at home Jackson and Lacey were asking to go back. Its always a nice getaway for the kids!

We had a bear that came most nights at the cabin.

Here are the footprints across the driveway on the way back up from the dumpster

While we were at the cabin, a few visitors moved into our house… Termites! Expensive little visitors! Actually, they’ve probably been here for a little while, they just were keeping themselves hidden until now. We’re getting someone out on Monday to get rid of them. I think we’re lucky that they are in a fairly contained area… just in Jackson’s room and the bathroom right next to his room, all on one wall. I was really upset about it at first, but as I’ve read up and talked to 4 different inspectors, I’ve learned that they are quite common around here, and if you catch them early, its not too big of a deal. They say if you haven’t had them, you’re going to get them. I just can’t wait until Monday to get that off my mind – its been bugging me!

Rachelle has been growing so fast! At her last check-up (about 4 months old) she was nearly 17 lbs and in the 95th percentile for height. She has been army crawling since about 4 1/2 months, and pushing herself up to her hands and knees for about that long too. She just can’t figure out how to get those cute little chubby arms to MOVE! July was a fussy month for her, and my baby that had slept so well decided that she didn’t feel like sleeping through the night anymore. In fact, her sleeping was significantly better as a newborn than it has been in the past few months.  August brought a little more sleep, well, some nights anyway. She is a little particular about who holds her and when and how. She doesn’t really like to be sitting, so… maybe that’s part of my lack of blogging. She isn’t a terrible or colic-y baby – she’s just picky. She is pleasant around home quite often though. Her smile brightens the room, and Jackson and Lacey just go crazy to make her laugh. Her giggle is adorable. I started feeding her some oatmeal lately and she eats like a pro!  We love our little Shelly!

This video is a little long. Its from a few weeks ago at the cabin.

We started potty training with Lacey again today. We tried before Shell was born and at that point Lacey did awesome the 1st and 2nd day and then she just decided she’d rather go in a diaper than have to run to the bathroom every time – that’s way too much of a hassle. This time around, she has a Dora sticker chart that she puts stickers on every time she goes to the bathroom.

Then when she fills it up, a Cinderella Polly-pocket is her prize. She is so excited -she keeps asking “can I have my princess?” She has 7 stickers on her chart today (100%).

The little nut…I hope she decides going to the bathroom is worth it this time around, but I’m wondering if I’m going to have to reward her like this forever. I guess only time will tell. Silly little girl.

When we got back from the cabin, I decided we needed to get back to a routine. I had let go of chores and pretty much anything else, so we needed a fresh start. I made new chore charts and new chore sticker charts. Jackson and Lacey have LOVED them – I keep forgetting how much happier they are when they help out.  Jackson came in to my room this morning before Micah or I had gotten up and showed me that he had gotten himself dressed already (that’s one of his chores). Good boy. He’s getting pretty excited about Preschool starting in a few weeks. He still asks everyday if he can go to the childrens museum.

We’re still working on the articles of faith. This is the most recent one – it took quite a while to learn, even Lacey has it down.

Last but not least, Steve and Krista are here for a while! Yahoo! We can’t wait to see them and hang out with them. They are so fun!

So now you know what’s up at the Stubz.

We had a ton of baby birds in our backyard through out June. They were so cute. We found our firsdt one while hanging a peanut butter birdseed treat  out in the back yard. We ended up leaving it on the ground for him to eat. I think he got thirsty though and ended up jumping into the pool. :o( sad. The same happened to the second. I’m not sure what happened to the third, but we didn’t find him in our pool. We left a little bowl of water out for this one hoping to avoid the mishap of the others. Here’s the fourth one.

His feathers were a little more full. He had a brother or sister come help him figure out how to fly. It was precious. He at least made it over the wall.

I’m not sure why we’ve had so many baby birds this year, but the kids loved it!

Baby Shell is about 4 1/2 months old now and usually I’m antsy to start my babies on real food at about 4 months, but not for her. So the other day I decided we’d try her out with some puffs.

Do you think she liked them? Isn’t she the cutest!

Nothing like a couple little helpers feeding her puffs all the time!

I guess we’ll start the cereal sometime soon.

We drove up to Utah from the cabin for the Stubblefield Family Reunion. On our way we stopped at our old house to show our kids where we lived and to take a look. Sad, sad, sad. Micah said it wasn’t as bad as he expected, but it was way worse than I expected! I guess I knew it could go that way, we sold it to a guy who was going to rent it out, but it sounds like he’s had a hard time keeping renters in there (obviously… if he would keep it looking even a little nicer maybe he’d be able to find people to rent it).

This is how it looked when we moved in

This is how it looked when we moved out

This is how it looked this last visit

Oh well… we’re glad its not ours!

The reunion was in Heber, and it was beautiful. The first night, we (well actually just Micah from our fam) tie-dyed our family reunion shirts. Each family made their own design and they all turned out great. On Friday they brought in a big bouncy water slide. It was so fun, but the water was oh so cold! Jackson would play until his lips were blue and then come in, take a warm bath and head back out. He did that 3-4 times.

One of Jackson and Lacey’s favorite things at the family reunion was shooting rockets! We don’t have too many pictures of it, though.

There was also a pool table, ping pong table, media room (which we used well), and a great kitchen full of delicious food! We took a trip down to BYU one morning.

We were lucky to get to hang out with Tim and Audrey before they took off to Africa.  Audrey treated Lacey like a princess and painted her toe nails… then Lacey looked at her unpainted fingernails and told Audrey in a concerned voice, “Look, they’re empty.” So Audrey kindly painted her fingernails too! Lacey loved it! Then we all went bowling together. We had such a great time and the kids keep asking now “where are Timmy and Audrey?” Back at the cabin, one of the nights instead of the Talent/variety show we’ve done in the past, each family was asked to bring a homemade music video for everyone to watch. They were funny … here’s ours:

We had such a great time. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

We took all day Sunday to drive home from the family reunion. We pulled in about 6:45, got completely unpacked and settled, got the kids bathed and to bed, and then Micah took off to the airport after repacking. He had a conference most of this last week that he needed to be to by Monday morning. It was in Canada, so he took a red-eye flight over to be there in time. I knew we’d need a few out of the ordinary things to do this week without him coming home every night. We swam a lot while the baby slept, and one day we went to the Children’s Museum of Phoenix. It was a lot of fun and Jackson has asked every day to go back. We were glad to be in the company of the Woods and Kings. Lacey’s favorite part was painting the playhouse size castle and playing with the kitchen stuff. Jackson’s all time favorite thing was the car race track. Mommy’s favorite part was the noodle forest – I wish I could have played in there longer! Everyone save your pool noodles for me – I think I’ll turn our living room into a noodle forest ;o) Rachelle was pretty content most of the time (after the car ride over) and slept for quite a bit while we were there. Some other things that the kids loved: the 3 story climber, a plinko board, wind tubes, the cactus that spiders jump off of, and all the ball ramps! We did have a great time, but then it got me thinking… I think I could make most of those things – maybe its time for a little creativity in our home! Was that the purpose of the museum? It sure got our imaginations going!

(Click on the picture if you want to see it bigger)