Gwen's 4th birthday party

About a week after we moved in and the day before we drove off on another long trip, we decided to throw Gwen a little birthday party. We invited some kids over for a costume party and served an easy Mac n' cheese lunch with cake and ice cream. It was fun to have people over to see our new house and itwas fun to celebrate Gweny's 4th birthday. 

I had gotten some toys out for the kids to play with but they just made up their own game of girls verses boys with bases on opposite ends of the house. I asked Gwen later that night what her favorite part of the day was (thinking it would be opening presents or eating yummy cake or something or wearing her batgirl costume) but she said it was playing the game where the boys chased the girls. Ha! I think we're going to have our hands full when she's a beautiful teenager. :) Good thing she has her protective Daddy and two older brothers to keep an eye on her. 

Her actual birthday was in Utah. Grandma Dixie helped make it special with fresh, pink-frosted cinnamon rolls for the birthday breakfast in bed and some presents.

Fourth kid and I'm still figuring it out.

I guess Frederick was tired, not hungry as he fell asleep inbetween bites.

Home again and moving in!

After the Archibald fun in Utah, we stayed a day or two more to have some Betteridge time. My nephew, Tyler was getting baptized and my parents were flying in town for it. Now my dad could meet Frederick! The baptism went really well and even though my parents had to leave right after, we had enjoyed some talk time the night before and watched a movie. By Monday morning, we were ready to head back home and drove a different way home, first North, then East, crossing Wyoming and Nebraska (On the way there we went across Oklahoma, up through Kansas then West to Colorado and down south near Moab).

Pulling in we saw fireflys in our back yard! Although was way hot and muggy it helped life our spirits to see such a fun surprise. As we walked into our rental campus house, it was sort of depressing getting back to normal life in a dirty old house. But we had talked a lot on our drive and decided to just move into the house we just bought, despite the plans for renovations. Things were going a lot slower than we had hoped and it felt good to move forward with what we could control and not rush finding a contractor. 

So we started moving boxes over and gave our notice to the campus housing people that by the end of the month, we would be gone! We basically used our van to move things over in small loads. I would try and be packing all day and when Chris came home from work we'd take the seats out of our van and take a load over. On the weekends we would try to get a couple of loads in. This slow, piece-meal process was nice in that we could move ourselves by ourselves and unpack as we go...making our home we moved into not very chaotic/messy. But what I didn't expect was for this process to result in MASSIVE chaos on the moving out end. I hate living like that but across the 2-3 weeks it took we still needed SOME food and dishes in the cupboards and SOME clothes in our closets and SOME toys for the kids to play with and SOME towels and cleaning supplies, etc. We did borrow our realtor's company moving truck for the big stuff and asked a few guys from the branch to help. Then we finished up and cleaned the old house on our own. It was a LONG LONG process. I know it sounds prideful and stubborn to not want help moving, but after all the help we needed from this little branch to get us through the past 10 months of chemo, transplant, childcare, meals, cleaning, new baby, more meals, gifts, another hospital stay, etc... I just wanted to be independent and take care of my own stuff all by myself. 

A cute moment of Charlie pulling Alec on this trike......

...it reminds me of when Charlie got this trike for his birthday 3 years ago and how he pulled Alec on the back of it then, outside around our EV apartment:

My how time flies and how far we've come since then.

Frederick got placed in the willing hands of his siblings for most of the crazy packing/cleaning times. Poor guy. He's so loved. Charlie fell asleep holding him on a bunched up memory foam topper, but Frederick wiggled away and was screaming by the time I came up to find out what was happening. 

Our first dinner in our house on the first night sleeping there. Mcdonald's on the floor. :)

I caught Chris in a moment of contemplation out in our yard. I've seen him like this often and I find myself doing the same thing. Just walking around all the beautiful trees and space thinking and dreaming about all the potential.

The kids finally finished saving up for their big prize. Alec, in particular has been saving and earning smiley faces (the family currency) since last August. Gwen and Charlie have been working hard too and Alec decided to let them in his plan when he found out that if everyone pooled their smiley faces, they would only be a few hundred short. Also, once summer hit, we started awarding lots of smiley faces for finished chapter books. They wanted to get one of those cool looking plastic PowerWheels that looks like a real car, but Chris helped convince them to go for this Razor brand dune buggy since it could hold more weight and go much faster -- almost 10 mph -- on real rubber wheels.  I wish I weighed about 35 lbs less so I could ride on it too! 

Homemade Hot air balloon?

For as long as I've known Chris, I've heard about this mythical home-made hot air balloon that he made with his school class in Switzerland. Apparently it was very memorable and Chris has every so often expressed a wish to make it sometime. I pictured some small lantern-y thing and once I saw Tangled, I assumed it was a lot like those floating lanterns that Rapunzel was fixated on. 

We found ourselves with a spare couple of hours after we returned from the Heber Archibald Reunion and before heading over to my side of the family for a few days. It was the perfect time to try it! Chris was got all the supplies together and set to work at the table with the kids, some glue and tissue paper.

First you glue sheets together in pairs. I don't remember how many we did. A lot. Maybe 8 or so pairs.  

Then he glued some triangles on either ends and glued the pairs together.

Then he glued the bottom triangles all together and glued the edge of that to some foil and with wire hung a little tin (a cute burrito tin left over from the wedding).

Then he glued the top triangle pieces together and we taped all the corner seams so it would be as air tight as possible.

Then he poured rubbing alcohol over some cotton pads in the tin.

And lastly...light the alcohol soaked pads on fire!!

Oops. The tin was hung a little too low so the flames were licking the bottom edges of our tissue paper...

Instead of a hot air balloon we had a pyrotechnics show and watched the ashes float into the sky. It went REALLY fast. In seconds, our hours of work was gone. 

I can totally understand why Chris' memory is so awesome and I'm excited to try to make it again sometime. It was really fun.  Not to disappoint our aerial dreams, Edward prepared some rockets to launch. I guess Kayla has never seen him launch them before.  Wha?

Oh, and Frederick is still the Cutiest of Pies. 

Archibald Extravaganza: Heber Reunion

The day after the wedding, We all (except the bride and groom) drove up to Heber to stay in this big house all together for a few days. It was so fun to sleep in the same house. Usually, when we come to UT, Jess and her kids stay at their own house and we get together during the days, but that leaves out a lot of 'together time' around waking up, bedtime and post-bedtime. There were enough bedrooms for the older cousins to share a bunk room and Chris told or read them stories every night. We somehow lucked out with the sleeping arrangements and got the master suite - and it was SWEET! It was our first experience with a master bath and a walk-in closet. The double shower and king bed were huge! 

We really didn't leave the house much except for an outing or two. We walked down to the fishing hole and fished. The kids LOVED this, although no one caught any fish. I think one of the cousins, Jackson or Graham 'caught' a cool magnetic ball bracelet thing. 

Grandpa taught the older cousins how to cast and reel in a fishing rod.  He told them he used to fish when he was a boy. 

Cy and Freddy are so close in age and so cute to see side by side. Cyrus has such a deep voice, it is super cute to hear him babble and talk. 

Kayla and Edward made an appearance and stayed the night twice towards the end of the week. Kayla feels like one of the family.  She seems like a perfect last puzzle piece to the Archibald family. We really had such a nice time all together, I really love this family I married into. 

We mainly hung around the house - doing puzzles, playing outside in the sprinklers and hot tub, watching movies, taking naps, eating food, doing crafts. The boys went golfing one morning and later in the afternoon the girls went shopping at the outlets in Park City.  Most nights the adults all gathered in a room and talked. We planned our next reunion (an adult-only trip to WA for the 2015 US open!!), sat around the projector and looked through the old family slides, shared spiritual experiences, did puzzles, and ate popcorn, wedding cake, and peanut M&Ms. It was a perfect family reunion.