Miss Kim's Swim School

At the beginning of summer I called multiple places to find out details on swimming lessons. Much to my surprise not a lot of people offered classes to 3 year olds for a good price! Luckily my neighbor told me about a place really close by. After a couple months of deciding if and when she would do a class, out of the blue I get a email saying she'd do a 3 year old class! I was so excited and luckily Jackson's neighbor friends wanted to do it as well. The class was schedule for a Monday- Friday 9-9:40. I was really nervous because I know Jackson has such a fear of water right now, but he couldn't have been better or more excited. Here he is all dressed for his first day of swimming lessons.
The kids did so well listening to Miss Kim teach them what they were going to do next.Some of the things Miss Kim taught Jackson was to float on his back.
And my favorite part to watch was when Miss Kim taught them a swimming stroke they could do on their backs. She would have them stand on the stairs and practice their arms before it was their turn to try it in the water.
We'll have to work on straighter arms for Jackson's airplane.

With me still working it got kind of crazy juggling swimming lessons, but thanks to awesome neighbors and Nana Rothe for taking him on a couple of days. I was so glad I at least got to watch a couple of the days so I could see this cute smile.
Nate even got to watch the last day of class to see him be so brave and show off all he learned! Miss Kim let the kids do a free swim the last few minutes of class and offered life jackets to the kiddos. Jackson was even brave enough to go off the diving board. He only did it once, but later I found out that he hit his knee on the board when he fell/jumped into the water.
You couldn't tell at the time he jumped that is what happened because he just kept swimming to Miss Kim like nothing was wrong. Later when going through pictures and video you can totally see him hit the board... no wonder why he wasn't about to do it again.
Overall, it was such a fun class for the kiddos! Jackson has some of the greatest friends and hopefully he can remember some of these skills for next year. I was so proud of him because he never once cried like he usually does when we take him swimming and was so brave to try all that Miss Kim asked of them. Here is all the kiddos on the last day at the end of class (we are missing Landon because they went to Lake Powell) Tyson, Sadie, Ayden, and Jackson!
Thanks Miss Kim for a fun week!

Tubby time!

Seriously, I think my kids are the cutest ever when they are in the tub or just freshly out. My boys LOVE the bath and get so excited when they know its tubby time. There is one component to bath time that makes Jackson the happiest... and that is when their Spiderman PJ's are clean and they can wear matching PJ's to bed. We got these for the boys as souvenirs from Florida when Nate and I went on vacation earlier in May and they by far are Jackson's FAVORITE. I think these PJ's spend more time in the dirty clothes than his dresser because the second they are clean he is wanting to wear them that night to bed.
Can this little ham, get any cuter! He is getting so cheesy with his smile and I am loving it.
And there is something that happens to Jackson when he wears these PJ's... he magically gets all this Spider-man power and starts webbing my face and everything else in the room.
Man I love these boys!! I can almost smell your yummy bathed hair and baby lotion-ed bodies from these pictures.

Youth Conference {Bear Lake}

Two weeks after girls camp, we were gathering again for another camp out. This time it was for Youth Conference. With our ward being so young, our Bishop opened up the opportunity for all ages between 12-18 to attend. This is our cute group of 6 girls (and us 2 leaders) that went this year.
{Emma, Marissa, Taylor, Lizzie, Adrianna, Brittni, Me and Nikki}
Lucky for us, the Smith's let us use their family cabin in Bear Lake to facility our Youth Conference so we didn't have a cost for location. What an awesome couple they are and I enjoyed every minute we had with them there.
Our theme for Youth Conference was what the entire church youth theme is "Be Strong and of a Good Courage" What a powerful theme it is! We used this theme to do a bunch of survivor type activities where they were broken up in teams. Each leader picked one leader/prophet in church history to teach their story of how they were strong and courageous and then acted out the story in some type of challenge. As the were competing from activity to activity the youth would collect a new piece to our puzzle. Our afternoon activities the kids gathered 20 out 25 pieces and come the evening we had a group activity for them to earn the other 5 pieces. The evening activity I taught the story about David and Goliath and the courage and strength David had as he pleaded with King Saul to let him fight Goliath. With Goliath being physically armed, David chose to be spiritually armed and on his way to the valley to battle, David grabbed his sling shot and 5 rocks. So to act out this story the youth got to shoot water balloons at "Goliath's". Thank you to our Bishopric and YM leaders for volunteering to be Goliath.
I think the men had more fun than the youth!
The next day was scheduled to go to the Minnetonka Caves in the morning with the beach in the afternoon. Long story short the Cave worker forgot his keys, so plan B became beach all day with yummy shakes when we were done. Aren't these girls so cute? I am so lucky I get to spend so much time with them. We spent probably 4 hours at the beach playing frisbee and tackling the boys off the tube brought by the Howards. We had close to 12 people on this tube at all times, usually trying to knock someone off or dunk the boys trying to tip us over or climb on. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time nor gotten that many bruises at the same time.

Like promised, after we were done at the beach we went to La Beau's for their famous shakes.
That night two more YW leaders joined us for testimony meeting. The mosquitoes noticed fresh blood and bit Bonnie right on the left eye brow. It swelled instantly, but it wasn't until the morning that it turned into a swollen eye! Hilairous
Before we left Saturday morning to come home, we had all the youth hold up their puzzle pieces. It spelled "Be Strong and of a Good Courage"
What a busy month filled with nothing but planning, preparing, packing, unpacking, cleaning, etc from youth activities but I can honestly say I had a BLAST and I am so grateful for my calling! I love spending time with the youth. I gain so much strength from them and I am constantly amazed at the strength they have been given to fight the daily battles Satan has put in their paths.

Jackson First Sleepover!

This is a late post, but the day we went to Raging Waters we invited Jackson's friend Landon over to sleep on the tramp that night. The boys were so excited! Of course they are still too young to stay out there by themselves without us moms, so me and Allison joined them. I loved doing this growing up so I am glad we have a tramp to do it with Jackson. I didn't know how well they would sleep because it took them some time to calm down and relax, but before we knew it Landon was crashed and Jackson was telling us Moms to be quiet so he could go to bed. These two boys have so much fun together and are such good friends (when they want to share). I am glad Jackson has such good neighbors to play with all the time and it makes it even easier when we love their parents.

Overall, it was a good night sleep... just cut short because of the early sunrise and the morning rooster... AKA Jackson!