Goodbye to Lais

Lais, our Brazilian foreign exchange student who has been living with us for the past year, is now going home. She stayed at a friends house in Provo this past week while we were in Utah, and on Saturday, we stopped by to say our final goodbyes. She is flying back today, and we will miss her.

Maya & Sage's hennas

During our week in Utah, Maya and Sage had a blast at Uncle Derek's House with Avery and Broilen. Aunt Becky gave the girls these Henna tattoos. Above is Sage's henna, and below is Maya's henna.

Temple open House

Maya and Sage in front of the Temple

We all went to the Temple open house.

BYU Swim camp

This is Star, starting her race

The twins at their swim meet

SOAR

Mari and Ali at brown camp

Mari went to a BYU multicultural camp this week called SOAR...Brown camp

Happy Birthday Mari !!

Mari turned 17 today at exactly 10:13 am.  She is a nice brown girl and we love her.  She got some very interesting gifts today--a toilet seat from Ty and Lea was too funny when she gave her a check. (check out who she made it to!)  Kirk surprised both me and her when he came home with the new i-phone for her!  Way to go Dad!

My bounty

These are my tomatoes that I grew in my miniature garden.  They were so heavy for the plant that they broke off!  I placed a lotion bottle next to it so you can see that they were actually good sized tomatoes at that.  Hopefully, I can get them to ripen in the house!

Our one SUNNY day

We've had quite a bit of rain these past few weeks.  We are truly quite green..but these girls needed to get out and bike ride and enjoy the sunny day.

Oh, What do you do in the Summertime?

You find another way to use the vacuum instead of the intended use!

Time to move on...

It's been a week full of endings for our family.  Last night, Star, Sky and Maya had 8th grade graduation and will move to the high school next year.  Today, Sage graduated out of elementary school and will head to the middle school next year.  And Lea, well....her school career is now over.  It's been an emotional day for Lea realizing that she won't be riding the bus anymore, much less going to school.  She starts her new life as an adult just working everyday.

"Saturday is a SPECIAL day..."

Every Saturday we write jobs on the white board that need to be done.  Everyone just starts taking a job and doing it and when they complete it, they wipe it off.  When the jobs are done, everyone is free to do whatever.  This is the routine we do when school is in session.  Kara was off to work early this morning and Mari was taking the SAT at school.