I've gotten a few requests for another "hot guys" post and I'm only too happy to comply! Since I put boy band music on my blog, I've become re-obsessed with the Irish band Boyzone and specifically this song:


You can just ignore the Notting Hill clips with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts and focus on the hot band mates

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especially Ronan Keating,

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and most especially Stephen Gately.
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Of course, my hot guy posts have to feature vampires. I'm not the biggest Robert Pattinson fan and I did already include a pic on my last post, so this time I'll feature the hottest Twilight vampire, Dr. Cullen (Peter Facinelli).
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I'll admit, the blonde hair does throw you a bit at first, but they just can't cover up sex appeal like this no matter what they do to him!

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First runner up in that category: definately Kellan Lutz as Emmet. Sorry Edward, I'm sure you'll make my top five list, or at least top ten :)

Time to go old school with one of my first vampire crushes--Keifer Sutherland in Lost Boys. He can even rock a mullet, and that's pretty impressive.

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No list of hottest vampires would be complete without Brad Pitt as Louis in Interview with the Vampire.

But for long-haired Brad ultimate hottness, it's got to be Legends of the Fall.

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For a current reference, there's Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) from True Blood,

but the hottest guys from that show aren't vampires. Sam (Sam Trammell) is a shape shifter

and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) is just a knucklehead.

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But if I'm mentioning vampire costars, I'm going to take this thing full circle and include this eye candy: Jacob's New Moon poster. WARNING--JAIL BAIT!! IF YOU ARE OVER THE AGE OF 19, VIEW THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.




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It's worth the risk, if you ask me, but I'll include the poster of the rest of the wolf pack here at the end for those that get a creepy "Primetime: To Catch a Predator" feeling from looking at that one.

Camping!

A few people have finally heard my pleas and voted in my preschool polls, but I would love more! I've been posting more fun craft ideas to lure you over there--Clever Sprouts Preschool
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Also, I'm in the mood for boy band music for some reason, so I changed to that--hope you enjoy (mom)!
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On to my online journal entries!
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I did Faith's piggies with these hot pink hair tutus for church the morning of July 5th and then she donned another outfit to match for the rest of the day. Cute!
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We played games at Tony's parents that evening. We love dominos!

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On the 8th we had Ann, Natalie & kids over for our 4th of July party. It didn't work out to have it the week before, so we just extended the celebration of our country's independence! We had fruit kabobs, Chinese chicken salad and pasta salad then monkey munch and Pop Rock "firework" cupcakes for dessert! A bit later, the homemade blackberry ice cream was finally ready. Tip: always pre-mash your blackberries, don't just throw them into the mix and turn on the ice cream maker. Ours still came out delicious, but it was more like vanilla with frozen blackberrry lumps!

The kids had a blast swimming and juming on the trampoline and then I had them make some flag inspired placemats. I laminated them when they were done and ours have really held up after using them almost a month. I love that Faith got creative with the star punch and folded her blue square to get it to punch stars in the middle. She ended up with 44 stars just by estimating! Christian did his completely on his own after I showed him which corner the blue went in. I thought it was funny that he glue stick-ed both sides of his red stripes, but unfortunately that doesn't really show now that the glue is dry. I also love his little line of blue stars!

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I had us moms tie ribbon wreaths, but they came out a little sparse. I was going for this look, but was too cheap to spend that much money on ribbon!
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The next morning, the kids and I left for an impromtu trip to the Uinta's to stay at Jordan's family cabin. On the way there, we were twice slowed down by giant flocks of sheep crossing Mirror Lake Highway! Faith got this great close-up picture out of her window. Christian kept saying, "Mom!! Me get out and pet dem?!"


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It was "F" week for Sierra, so right after we got there we had some fun with Faith in Jordan's old fort




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and found some flowers.


Next, we drove over super rocky unpaved roads (for what seemed like an hour to the kids who were bouncing all around in their car seats) to Lily Lake. We hiked around the lake for awhile before Jordan finally found what we were foraging for:





FROGS!





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Faith got brave and held one,





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and Christian couldn't get enough of them.


While he was holding his third frog, he all of a sudden lifted it up and kissed it! Faith's exclamation of "Yuck!" startled him and, by reflex, threw the little guy into the grass. Because we laughed a bit about it, the next frog he got to hold he promptly gave a big kiss and a fling!

We next drove to this stream and the kids could have spent all day throwing pepples into it. By the way, the reason that Christian has no pants on is that he overindulged on all the fruit at our party the day before (he probably ate two pints of blueberries and nearly a whole pint of blackberries that were meant for the ice cream in addition to the watermelon). After two blow outs, I decided that he could just rock the pull-ups and saved the last pair of shorts for the next day.

I love all the pretty flowers that grow up in the mountains!

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We then hiked a trail that went through an area destroyed by a forest fire in 2002. Faith was so excited to finally go hiking for the first time in her life!

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Christian is always doing something crazy :)

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . And yet another example:

Here is Joy's family (with the addition of my kids), I'll have to get my family pic from her that she took. It was an easy and interesting hike and we loved reading the informative markers along the trail.

We had chili cheese dogs for dinner and then roasted marshmallows and Starburst (two of their friends told them to try it--they were actually pretty good!). We spent the next several hours trying to get the kids to sleep while we watched episodes of Firefly. I'll have to do an entire post soon on how much I love that program and what an injustice it is that we only ever got one shortened season of it. Soldier on, browncoats!

The next morning we cleaned up after breakfast and then hiked down behind the cabin to this stream. Below is a video of Faith crossing on the log bridge (with Joy's help).

We then packed up to go. Isn't it a cute cabin? Jordan's family built it themselves!

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This video is of the cool moths that hang out on the front porch. I love their defense mechanism!

We stopped at Butterfly lake to eat a picnic lunch and then headed home. It was a super fun trip even though it was way too short! Luckily, we didn't have to miss the Uinta's for too long . . . stay tuned!

Kids say the darndest things . . .

I forgot to mention some funny things that happened over the last month, mainly because I didn't have pictures of them to remind me!

On Father's day when I was making the cupcakes for our hamburger treats, I let Christian play with an extra cupcake liner after he put the rest in the muffin tin. I saw him pointing to my baking cabinet and saying "Abba-ca-dabba sprinkles!" He then looked at his empty hand and dejectedly sighed and said, "Oh, I not magic." He looked like he was ready to cry! On previous cupcake making occasions he had gotten into the habit of filling a cupcake paper with sprinkles and then eating them on his finger. I guess he thought that since I was busy baking and he wasn't tall enough to reach that he could just "abracadabra" them down off the shelf :)

The kids are always obsessed with popcicles, but this summer their addiction has seemed worse than normal. Christian has started making his own with juice or kool aid in little plastic cups with a spoon as the stick. The bottom of my freezer is always packed with these and sometimes fall out when you open it! A few weeks ago he came to me with one of his creations because he was having trouble extracting it from the cup. I ran some hot water over it and it poppep out with a little tug. I stood there for a minute staring at it as I held the spoon handle in my hand. It was strange looking--tan on top, clear in the middle and whitish on the bottom. "What kind of popsicle is this?" I asked him. He very proudly replied, "Wheat fins and water!"

Buddy is getting to be a pretty good little talker, but sometimes he mispronounces words so badly that I can't figure out what he's saying. When I repeat what he said and then guess at words that I think he might mean, he repeats himself more slowly, loudly and enunciating each syllable more. He gets so frustrated with me! After the fourth or fifth try, he's shouting and overenunciating so badly and you can tell by his facial expression that he's thinking, "Come on, dummy! I can't make it any clearer for you, you dunce!"

Lastly, I do have one funny Faithy story. Faith was getting ready one day and as she came into my bathroom I could see that in addition to her snazzy outfit she had on lipgloss, some glitter spray in her hair and smelled like fruity lotion. I asked her if she was ready to go and she said, "Almost. I just need some ear pickers to put on my eyeshadow." I just about died laughing! She, of course, was just out of the Q-tips in her bathroom that she uses as makeup applicators.

4th of July

Unfortunately, I spent most of my birthday cleaning house to prepare for out big party the next day. Tony spent it assembling my birthday gifts! My grandma & grandpa Quinn give us a very generous check for our birthdays and this year I didn't want to put it in the bank and let it get eaten away by bills. I wanted some fun stuff for our backyard--a swingset and a trampoline. When Tony went shopping for them, he found a great clearance deal on a patio set and gazebo tent thing and I settled for those instead of the swingset. I must admit, I do love them!


On the morning of the fourth, I took the kids to the Kaysville City booths and parade while Tony finished his assembly work. We had never been before because we usually go to Willard. They didn't have many booths, but a company that was advertising their inflatable party service had a bunch of bouncy stuff that kids could go on for free!



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Faith & Christian went on this slide about a hundred times.






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They loved the ball pit at the bottom!







They also loved the one that had an obstacle course. Just after the parade started, I got the kids to leave the slides and bouncies to find a spot to watch it.


The parade was not especially entertaining. Given how many millions of people were there to see it, I was very surprised when a man sitting in front of us commented, "Ooooh, a float! Kaysville parade's finally got a float this year!" It was mostly pageant winners, police vehicles and posses. It was kind of funny that that same guy was shouting to everyone in the parade as they passed by. Things like, "Woo, hoo for miss Kaysville/Fruit heights! Lookin' great there, let's see that wave!!" and "All right Davis County Commissioner ___ !!!! You can throw that taffy right here!" and "Go pioneer outfit kids, yee haw! Uh oh--I mean Thoroughly Modern Millie olden day costume kids!" (that was the musical Kaysville city was performing as part of the festivities). I loved that it made them all look kind of tickled and embarrassed at the same time and it also got more candy thrown to our area :)
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After hiking back to our car, we got home to set up for our 4th of July BBQ. It's traditionally held at Tony's parents' house, but this year they were dealing with getting the interior painted and also Larry's office remodelled because of water damage from a broken pipe.
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Larry & Lana, Tammy, Tina & Brian, Zach, and Jason & Athena came over to celebrate with us. Of course, we had a ton of food.





The kids swam for a bit right after dinner. Don't they know about the 30 minute rule? ;D

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We laughed at this giant bumblebee climbing into and out of our snapdragons.

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The kids sure enjoyed bouncing on the new trampoline!

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Pa Braegger and Christian went into our bedroom to "watch Little Bear" but this is what I found just a few minutes later. I think it's so funny that they fell asleep in the same pose!

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About a half hour after that, they had both rolled over into a snuggle :)

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Grandma Braegger got obsessed with playing Wii bowling.

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Leave it to Faith to strike a pose and become the center of attention in a picture where she was supposed to have a supporting role!

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Tony dared Tina to get on the tramp, and then bounced her so hard that she fell down. After that he kept doing it so she couldn't get up. I don't think her hysterical laughing helped either!!

At sunset we woke Christian up for marshmallow toasting,

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and sparklers.

Faith barely even got brave enough to hold hers poked into a pencil eraser, but she loved it!

Lastly, we went to the front for some fireworks that Tammy & Tony had gotten. I love how they are all covering their ears for this loud one! They loved the show, but I think their favorite part is taking turns choosing which ones get lit next :)

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It turned out to be a wonderful Independance Day! We feel very lucky to live in a free country and very much appreciate those who have fought for it and those who are still working to keep us safe.

I'm sure most of you are getting sick of the incessant plugs for my preschool blog, but I'm going to keep begging for participation until at least 6 people have voted on my polls!! Thank you so much to those of you who have already. I think I will have a give away soon where those who vote (and then comment letting me know they have) will get a chance to win something awesome!

I just started putting up letter themed ideas on that blog and began with A is for Apple. I hope this will be a fun resource for anyone with a preschool or kindergarten aged child, much like the Crafty Crow letter themed posts are. Just so you know, I won't be posting them in alphabetical order, but in the order of my preschool lesson plans. Let's get crafting!

(Images are linked)