Summery Summary

I had to reclaim my title after my mom tried to give my sister the credit for my cleverness. Also I couldn't think of a better title.

I have Lincoln trained so well to fall asleep in his crib on his own! Yay! Part of the reason it's necessary for him to fall asleep on his own is because he insists on grabbing/scratching my face any time I try to rock him to sleep. No bueno. 

While visiting cousins in Panguitch, Eli was introduced to the world of Minecraft. He has since been BEGGING for the game. Jeff suggested Eli do chores around the house to earn some money to pay for Minecraft. The next day Eli said to me, "Mom. Can I do chores to earn money?" I replied, "Yeah. You can vacuum your room for 25 cents." To which Eli surprised me by saying, "Hmmmmmmmmm...How 'bout 26 cents?"

His negotiation skills could use a little work, but I was impressed he even attempted!

Jeff and I celebrated 7 years of marriage! Woot, woot! We went to the Bountiful Temple to do sealings and then we went out to eat at Chili's. On our way home, Jeff found a sign with his name -- written the way he spells it! We traveled down Jeffery Drive hoping to find that Sarah Drive crossed its path, making for the perfect sign of our love to cap off our anniversary date, but we had no such luck. What we DID find was that the end of the road had a sign that labeled the street "Jeffrey Street." WHICH IS IT?!?! We mustered up enough self control to refrain from rummaging through the neighborhood's mail in an attempt to solve the case of the misspelled street.

This little rascal enjoys his evenings plopped on a blanket on the grass in the backyard, watching his crazy brothers flop around on the trampoline.

One day the crazy brothers got an innocent grasshopper in on their flopping. Grasshoppers like to jump, so it seems only logical that grasshoppers also like trampolines. I don't know why this grasshopper was so eager to escape the grasp of my children.

Eli does this terribly irritating thing where he obsesses about electronics. We do an hour of computer in the morning and an hour of TV in the afternoon. If he senses it's getting close to either TV or computer time, he is all up in my grill driving me CRAZY asking me when he can play. One day I was frustrated with him because he had a friend over and he wouldn't play with his friend because he was too worried about when he would get to watch TV. After his friend left, I lectured him on how it's not nice to be worried about TV time when we have a friend over and yada yada yada. Well. He was NOT taking my lecturing to heart. I could see sassiness begin to ooze from his eyeballs as soon as I began the lecture. Then halfway through he started staring at me like this:

It was a look that said, "Mom. I know this lecture is ridiculous. You know this lecture is ridiculous. Stop talking." And so I did and we both started laughing. Then he threw me a bunch of dramatically crabby faces when he realized just because the lecture was over didn't mean I would let him watch his show early.

Carson has been a bit of a sass cake as well lately -- but never when he's helping me make cake. Or zucchini bread in this instance. We have had our first truly successful garden this year, so we have zucchini coming out of our ears! One day I whipped up 4 loaves of zucchini bread and my trusty sous chef was anxious to help. This boy will drop whatever he is doing if he senses movement in the kitchen. He loves to help with any and all food preparation and I love him for it.

My mom has been deep cleaning her house over the past month. She's forced me to take ownership of all the useless childhood memorabilia that I never wanted in my house, but I loved in hers. One such memorabilia is my hearty Pokemon card collection. Eli and Carson were drooling over my stash for days! Trying to fit in with all the neighborhood boys by collecting Pokemon cards finally paid off as I was able to genuinely impress my boys for the first time...ever.

I've got a Pinterest-worthy tip for all you moms of little children who have begun to venture out of their beds after bedtime...take pictures of them! One night Eli and Carson would not stop coming downstairs just for the sake of coming downstairs. I had the brilliant idea to shoo them back to their rooms by paparazzi-ing them until they retreated back to their rooms. For two boys who hate having their picture taken, it worked like a charm!

I have this problem called I only cut my hair once every year. And then it turns into a mop.

It had only been 6 months since I got it cut last, and it was driving me crazy. Too long. Not a good cut. Too much hair in general. Add that to the summer heat and I was d-o-n-e with it all.

Bam! Chopped off four inches, added some bangs and had nearly half of my hair thinned out! It dries in half the time, feels so much lighter and I totally love it!

In a story that was utterly traumatizing to the whole family and that I don't think ever completely made it to the blog, Eli once had approximately 4,000 cavities and had to get two teeth removed through a process nearly as expensive as braces. *sad face* (PSA - Brush your kids' teeth and don't send them to bed with milk. Ever.) So you can understand my hesitation to return to the dentist seeing as the last time we went we were suddenly thousands of dollars in the red.

I braved up and scheduled the whole family appointments for the first time...ever? Carson was first up. He did an awesome job getting x-rays. Then he saw the big dental chair and instantly started the waterworks. "That's going to hurt me!!!!"

What? How did he even get that idea? Are kids hard-wired to fear a dental chair? With much coercing, he finally climbed aboard the chair and with much more coercing finally opened his mouth long enough for a cleaning.

Meanwhile I braced myself for round two of dental debt.

The dentist came in, looked at Carson's teeth then looked at me with...the look. The look of "how am I ever going to be able to break this terrible news to you?" I gulped. He began, "It looks like...he's got...quite a bit of...staining. On his back tooth."

Pause.

I glanced back and forth from hygienist to Dentist, waiting for the bad news to continue spewing forth.

Silence.

"...What's...staining?..." I asked with hesitation. "It's what happens before cavities...ladi daddi da..." He answered.

Pause.

"Is that it?" I continued, still holding my breath? "Yup! That's it! Everything else looks great!"
WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Eli's appointment is in a couple of weeks...Still holding my breath we'll have good news for him.

My house is a never-ending Lego explosion. Eli's getting quite crafty in his creations, and the boys stay busy sifting through Legos for hours at a time, but there are Legos in literally every corner of my house...and everywhere in between! Not a night goes by that Jeff and I do not find a rocket ship to greet us on our nightstands as we go to bed. It's endearing and infuriating all at the same time.

I'm beginning to suspect that Lincoln loves baths so much because he loves getting out of the bath so much and being a cuddle bug in the towel. He always gets bright-eyed and excited when he gets wrapped up post bath.

Well, let's face it. He's bright-eyed and excited most of the time.

Unless he's hot at a splash pad. Not his thing.

Carson decided he wanted to hold Lincoln one day to see how much he'd grown. Carson always says, "He's not a peanut anymore!"

We had a parknic one evening as we began to get ready for school and bid summer adieu. But more on that later!