July 2023

Liam: my heart is happy. My heart always talks to Jesus and then Jesus makes my heart happy. 

Uriah: what are you going to give your mom for her birthday? 

Peter: I don't know. Maybe a chainsaw or something. 

We did soccer camp for the summer. Once a week is perfect for a sport!

We always love when Faith's family comes to visit!

I had to document Liam actually in the water and having fun! He's 3 years old here and still has refused to ever wear a floaty, or put his face in the water to learn how to swim.

Poor Benj. I am merciless when it comes to games and was whoopin him pretty good with Spot It.

At Benjamin's flag football game. I love Liam's binoculars he makes with his hand to see better.

Peter avoiding the heat as usual. He runs hot and hates getting too hot.

Benjamin was the star of his team and the coach gave him some nice leadership roles.

Soccer camp

Peter and Nathaniel did a nature camp together.

More football

Having older kids is getting so convenient.

Mel and Lamoni put in some can lights in our bedroom. It's so nice and bright now!

We got our house painted and enlisted Simon and Colter to help move our giant piano.

We drove up to the reservation for Grandma Mary's funeral. It was so sad to have her pass. She's Lamoni's paternal grandmother. She was really struggling with dementia, so it was time for her to go, though.

Jacob and Kathryn let us stay with them spontaneously when we got back from the funeral and found the paint fumes in our house unbearable. We stayed with them for a few days until we went to a friend's house in our neighborhood who was out of town.

Here's our house ready for painting. It was such a nightmare! I would never ever do it again while living in the house.

Doing schoolwork in the car driving to Jacob and Kathryn's since we were essentially homeless for over a week.

We'd stop by the house occasionally to grab new clothes and food, but the kids couldn't touch anything, so we utilized the TV to their delight.

This was our car during the week of being "homeless."

Kathryn and Benjamin did a police leadership camp that week, which was a ton of driving and further complicated things, but they had a lot of fun.

At a friend's dinosaur birthday party.

At tennis lessons

Liam was my buddy and would watch the teachers  and then tell me how to teach him to play tennis too.

I think I can safely say July was the worst month of my life. It was already ridiculously stressful with getting new paint and carpet, Grandma Mary dying, and then Kathryn went into labor early and delivered a very sick baby Olive who died 4 days later. My heart still breaks every day for them, and I wish they could have their baby back right now. It was such a hard time and it makes me cry just seeing these pictures and remembering.