Father's Day, Ethan's Birthday, Fourth of July, and E.R. visit.

A monthly post is about all we can do at this point I'm afraid.  I admit, part of the problem was taking pictures.  We covered a lot of time, and plenty of big events, but there's not many pictures to show for it. I was usually too tired to hunt down the camera really.  Sorry.

We start the day before father's day, when Richard's parents and grandmother came up to visit and I made shish kabobs and homemade ice cream for them.  Delicious!  The next big event was probably Ethan's birthday, or should I say birth-week.  His birthday happened to land on Sunday this year, and we were heading to Rexburg that night, so we kinda celebrated it the day before with a few presents (yes, Gabe thought they were all for him) and some grilled pizza, Yum!  The next day, Richard and I had talks in church and then we left for Rexburg celebrating Ethan's birthday with cake at least twice, and going to the splash park.  The kids and I stayed in Rexburg while Richard went on to Boise to defend his master's thesis.  It was accepted (Yay!) and now he's just got to do all the paperwork and submit it then we'll be done and Richard will get his diploma!  Woohoo!  I'm so proud of him; he's worked so hard.

After that, we came home for a few days, and then went back to Rexburg for an informal family reunion over the 4th of July weekend.  We all went to the new water park there, but didn't manage to get any pictures.  We did, however, manage to get some bad sunburns though (not the kids, just Richard and I).  That evening Richard and his family went to the temple while I stayed with everyone's kids (I think there's one picture of them all zombied out in front of a movie --yep, piece of cake).  Sunday afternoon we went for a drive to see where the Teton Dam broke, which the kids didn't fully appreciate, but it was nice to get out of the house.  Monday morning before the parade there were several family members who had planned to run a 5k, but after finding out that the date had been moved and they had missed it, they planned their own Samuelson Family 5k, complete with timers and water stations and prizes for finishing each mile.  Almost all the cousins ran all or most of it, even down to my three year old nephew in diapers and I think wearing crocs who ran the whole thing.  Wow!  Richard, although I can't remember the last time he ran any kind of distance, decided last minute to run as well --in regular shoes and jeans no less, and he ended up getting 3rd place overall --right behind his 10 year old nephew (just in case he needed some humbling).   Of course, I wasn't so sympathetic when he complained about being sore and tired.  I really didn't need both of us feeling that way.  Still, I was impressed, and a little sad I missed it all. I stayed with Gabe, waiting for Ethan to wake up (he's not the early bird his cousins are apparently), and missed the whole thing.  We did make it up in time for the parade though, (once again forgetting our camera --all we had was Richard's phone) and were set up quite comfortably near the beginning of the route.  The kids had lots of fun gathering candy... that is, until a wayward piece of candy caught Ethan right in the face and gave him a bloody nose.  Who knew parade candy could be so dangerous?  It took him a while to calm down and get back into things, but then his hand got stepped on and he gave up trying for candy altogether.  Gabe subsisted on what cuteness could do in persuading his cousins to give him their candy for the most part.  Still, too much sugar all around.  We stayed and visited some more that evening, and then left just in time to come back home for the Jackson firework show, which was still amazing even though we watched it from a distance, but I'm afraid we stayed up way too late.  Poor Richard had to start work early the next morning --and no, the kids did not sleep in. Isn't that always the way it goes?

Richard added a bunch of random work pictures to this montage, one of which shows a semi on it's side near where they were spraying.  Don't know much about it, except that it was way over the weight limit. Another one was from this past week, where he saw plenty of moose.

Speaking of this past week, I'm sure most of you already heard, but I went to the E.R. with a kidney stone last Sunday.  You can find the whole story HERE, but in short, they put a stent in to bypass it, gave me pain killers, and will take it out when the baby comes. I am feeling okay, there's a little pain and overall discomfort (which is partially due to being 2 weeks away from my due date), but for the most part it's manageable.  As much as I'd like to have my body all to myself and everything else resolved, this week my goal is to not have a baby, but to find housing for us to move to Boise by August 12th.  Wish me luck!