Tired of length . . .

Have you ever watched "What Not to Wear" and laughed at some of the subjects when Nick Arrojo comes and girls start crying or simply refuse to cut their hair. I find that one of the most amusing parts of the show. Why are people so afraid to cut their hair?

I think I may be crazy. But, I have always wanted to donate my hair, that's why I keep growing it out so long. But, then I hit the point where when individual hairs fall out, I can feel them on the back of my arms . . . . and I can't STAND IT! That's about the point where I can't keep growing it. And I go into a hairdresser impulsively to get it cut right then and there. This time it really was impulsive, I was going grocery shopping to Buy Low, but I passed Fantastic Sam's and I decided to turn around. I went and cut my hair on my way to go grocery shopping. I realize that there are a lot of people who get scared to cut their hair, I think I feel quite differently, I get anxious to cut my hair. And once the idea is in my mind I can't get it out until I actually get my hair cut, and it seems to solve the problem.

My only stipulation for my hair cuts is that I can still put it in a ponytail, I don't care if I have to use bobby pins or clips, just as long as I can have something to do with it on a bad hair day. This time I cut off six inches. I always think about just trimming it, but that doesn't really seem to solve the problem. So I always end up with something like this . . .

Maybe one day, I'll be able to cut my hair. . . I'm starting to think that's just wishful thinking.

Guess where the Grandkids Retreat was held this year?

This is in the courtyard of the house. There is a little well and it's kind of fun.

James and I got to stay in the guest house for a couple of days prior to GKR starting. It was quite the charming place, it wasn't connected to the rest of the house, but we LOVED it!
Ha ha, this was the little water pump. And here is cute James in front of the guest house. Doesn't it look like Italy, though? It was a fun escape from the busy life of Southern California. That may be why my grandparents bought it, it's far enough out of the way, that you don't realize you are actually in a busy city.

No we didn't go to Italy, although most of the house was imported from Italy and Spain. But, this is the house my grandparents bought in Shady Canyon in Irvine, CA. We stayed there for Grandkids retreat. And the last picture is from Disneyland, this was the group that James and I took around Disneyland and California Adventures.

Katie's Wedding

Well my aunt Katie is married! It was a really nice ceremony. It was nice to listen to a sealing from my Grandad other than my own. He said similar things, which made it that much easier to remember our sealing. They were sealed in the Newport Beach temple on July 3rd. And here are some pictures. The reception, was at the Ritz Carlton, which is where these pictures were taken. I didn't get any good ones outside of the temple. But, maybe I'll have to post some of my mom's. . Here are the Bateman girls with my cousin Karli. Melissa, Karli, and I along with a couple of other cousins were bridesmaids. It was a beautiful wedding and reception. I'll have to post pictures later when I get to see the professional ones that were taken. Because we took pictures out on the beach too!

Aren't we great babysitters (Clay and Kami, here's what we do when you're not home!)

I don't think these really need any explanation!

Part II of California

The real reason we're in California is because my aunt and uncle are on a cruise right now with my grandparents. They have three adorable blonde boys. Matthew, Jay, and Ethan. We wanted to share some pictures, I hope Kami doesn't mind that I have a picture of Ethan in the tub on here. Ethan has been sick for a little while, and then Jay and James started to get sick. I had to include this picture, because most of them are with James, since he's been a hit with the kids.
One day, Ethan woke up at 4 in the morning and wouldn't go back to sleep, so after about an hour and a half or rocking him, I took him downstairs and we started watching a movie. He was on the floor playing with my pajama pants and then a few minutes later when I looked down he was asleep.

Another favorite. Here are all three boys, all up playing the wii before school.

This is typical, but I don't have a lot of pictures, because the boys are keeping us super busy.

Part Two (Part I of California)

We woke up really early on Saturday and drove down to LA for Jaren's basketball games. So we spent part of Saturday and Sunday with Doug, Justin, Marin and Carden. It was fun to spend some time with them . . . and to play with Carden.Look at all of those handsome Sweeney boys!
This was a divider that was in between the two beds of the hotel room, Carden loved playing with it, and so I had to take some pictures from both sides.


We had fun spending some time with them and watching Jaren.

Part One (Oregon)

While we were in Oregon we went up to Silver Creek Falls to go camping. It was really fun, but really cold at night. But we had lots of hot dogs and smores and playing in the fire - - we are definitely a bunch of pyros.

This was one of my favorite pictures, but you can't see just how beautiful it was. It's too bad, because I took several trying to capture what the sun was doing to the waterfall, but I never caught it. Oh well.
These are the North Rim Falls, the whole hike is about 12 miles around the whole park, but we didn't go to all of it we started at the South Rim and that is the main waterfall that you walk behind in the picture above, and the main North Rim waterfall is in the picture below.
This was taken as we started hiking. We didn't last very long, but we went and saw the main waterfalls, and took some pictures.


We also went out to the coast for a day, and we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Yum! We tasted a bunch of their cheeses, and so we bought some of the fancier cheeses. We also all got ice cream cones with 3 scoops. It was so good. We got all of the flavors from Tillamook mud slide to Marionberry pie. It was DELICIOUS! It was also funny because while we were there a whole bunch of college students came in too, and they happened to be the Chamber Orchestra from BYU. It was kind of funny, afterwards we gave them directions to Mo's and actually led them to Lincoln City and ate there ourselves.

We did some shopping at the outlets in Lincoln City and bought this kite, it was a really fun kite to play with and worked really well, until it got really windy - - I was afraid it was going to break. It was really fun. We went to Woodburn and shopped there, went to the beach, went camping at Silver Creek Falls, went to Enchanted Forest- though I left my camera at home so we don't have pictures of that. We celebrated Carter's birthday and drank lots of Italian sodas! It was so much fun. And we're in California right now. . . I'll post pictures of that later.