1. My class at Jessica Sprague.com went smashingly well. It sold out in under 7 minutes! That was just the first sign of how dedicated and awesome the students were! They made my first experiance teaching online fabulous!
2. We went to Utah for a month this summer. My Dad had the semester off and he missed the boys so he and my Mother offered to watch them so that I was able to spend, many, many hours on my class. They are pretty much the best Grandparents on the face of this planet. More to come on that later in the list.
3. For the first time in a few years my whole family was together. My little brother has been on a misson in Brazil for our church for the last two years. Both my sisters and I and our families were all able to make it back in time for his homecoming. We weren't together for long but it was so, so good to be together again.
Here is a new picture of my handsome little brother. I was going for the BYU cougars football ad from last year look.
4. All of our husbands had to leave fairly quickly after the event ( Mark stayed in Utah for a week and then had to get back to NYC for work) So we were never able to get a photograph with everyone but we wanted something so we got one of our original family. I love how it turned out.
It's especially good considering that this was our photographer:
Grant took the photos for us and my Dad paid him five dollars! It was his first paid gig. It's never to early to start training a good assistant!
5. My Aunt agreed to watch all the boys one night so that we could go see a movie. There was much debate on what to go see and the only thing we all agreed on and no one had seen yet was Get Smart. I don't think any of us really expected it to be good but we actually all loved it!
The next day we were talking about taking some fun photo's as siblings and trying to come up with a great idea for them. I said we should take Get Smart photo's and then Marissa talked us all into going to D.I. and a costume shop for wigs. The thing you need to know about Marissa is that she is super good at coming up with crazy schemes and then talking us all into them. Mainly because while crazy they always end up being really fun. So we did it!
My Dad took the photo's in the street in front of our house. He did a great job. I'm sure our neighbors were totally laughing at us and wondering what silly things we were up to now but it was really fun and my parents were entertained.
6. We did have a great time on the fourth of July. The fourth is a huge holiday for our family. Complete with the pararade, BBQ's, fireworks and glow sticks.
7. We hiked to Timpanogos Caves. It was tons of fun but I have a serious issue with heights and that trail is pretty much a cliff the whole way. I was clinging to the boys the whole time!
8. Back to the best Grandparent bit. I spent a lot of hours on my class and articles this summer and to fill the time with my boys my Dad decided to design and build a tree house with them! They were thrilled. They were absolutely no help at all but they were right there with him during the whole process and loved it so much.
I don't have any photographs of the finished project so I'm going to have to get my parents to take one. It's pretty amazing.
My Dad even spent the night out there with the boys for a tree house slumber party. Can you even imagine the awesome memories they are going to have of him? They love him and my Mom so much!
9. At the end of the month we came home to Brooklyn.
My class finished, did I mention I have excellent students with newly acquirred mad photo skills? Since then we have taken the boys to ToysRus in Times square, taken bike rides by the Brooklyn bridge to pier 71 and gone to the central park zoo. With only a few weeks of summer left and both boys starting school this year I feel like I need to make up for the time I missed with them this summer in the next two weeks!
The end for now!