Ladybugs, Dad's, and Floating cake

I've actually got quite a bit on my mind right now... mostly a lot of little things. So, I'll try to empty my thoughts as I write. Our poor kids have been stuck in the house a lot the past few weeks.. yes, we did go to Tucson last weekend, thankfully, but other than that, we haven't been getting out to do the routine errands and playgroup activities. We've just been way too distracted and disorganized trying to get our home in some sort of order and trying to take care of all the stuff that goes along with moving. For example, I spent 7 hours last Monday cleaning our old house from top to bottom... there's something a little disheartening about moving all your stuff out of a place and realizing how dirty the house was. Granted, the place hadn't received much cleaning attention in the past month as we prepped to move, traveled a bit, packed everything up and then left it vacant for over a week before I headed back to clean it... but I would have liked to think my baseboards and walls weren't so gross. Anyway, 7 hours after arriving to the house, it was pretty darn clean. I hope the new people moving in appreciate it. :) A couple days later Ben went over to the old house and finished up the move out tasks - taking down the scary old trampoline, removing the swings and ceiling fan, and getting a couple last minute things out of the house and garage. We turned in our keys and garage door openers and can now officially be rid of the old place - it's a little stressful trying to settle into the new house, while still having the old house on our minds as something to deal with. Now we can really just focus on settling in. We went to our new ward for the first time yesterday and LOVED it! Ben and I were nervous before heading over to church - your first time in a new ward somehow feels like a job interview or something. I mean, nobody know who you are and what you're all about - we could potentially be in this ward for a long while (depending on where Ben gets a job coming out of residency) and we want to make a good, honest first impression. That's understandable right? We'd like to be social, active, contributing members in our new ward and it was pleasing to discover that this new ward is very outgoing, fun, and welcoming. There seems to be lots of activities going on (I'm already planning on going to an Enrichment and Primary activity this week) and everyone we talked to was very nice and easy to talk to. We hope to really begin to feel at home here - this ward has a lot to live up to, since our last ward was so amazing! But, I'm happy to say that we think we'll fit in well in our new community.

Ben started his first day of residency orientation today. I hope he comes home feeling good about how the first day went and positive about the experience that the next 3 years will bring. I'm excited about the changes, but I'm also not the one that has to go to work and stress about trying not kill somebody while utilizing newly acquired medical knowledge. It's got to be a little overwhelming starting out as a new doctor - I mean, I remember my first day of teaching quite well, and I was beyond nervous and stressed, but I wasn't holding people's health in my hands. Anyway- I have faith and confidence in Ben. He's going to be a fantastic doctor.

Since we hadn't been getting the kids out much, we took a moment to do a fun cooking project last week. Emma and I made little ladybug cookies while Ben was hard at work hanging curtains in our family room. It was really fun because I didn't have anything invested in these cookies - meaning I wasn't planning on giving them out to anyone, and I was really able to just let Emma do it all. She loved the freedom to be able to do all the stirring and decorating. So, these are really easy if you want to make these with your kids - we just dyed some frosting with red food coloring and spread it on little vanilla wafer cookies. We used mini chocolate chips for the spots and then a junior mint for the head. (We got the idea from this cookbook which we also used a while back when making the teacup cupcakes).

We had a great Father's Day - Ben got a yummy breakfast made for him in the morning and was then showered with simple gifts. Emma made him a card and gave him "tickets" to take him on a date to get ice cream sometime soon. Becca made him a paper airplane card (with a little assistance) and the girls both gave him treats of jelly belly's and swedish fish (some of his favorite candy's). I gave him a pepper grinder and a little coupon book for various services like getting his car washed and such. Ben likes to cook and has been wanting a pepper grinder to help in seasoning steaks and such - I love that he appreciates a good cooking tool! :) We went to Ben's parents house for dinner and celebrated Father's Day as well as the Summer Solstice. It's tradition every year at this time to float a cake. It's weird, I know. But the kids think it's very amusing (and so do I). We read favorite poems and enjoy the summer evening while watching our lighted cake float around on the water. It's always a pleasant summer tradition. I most enjoy eating the cake afterwords and always find it lucky that the cake didn't somehow sink.











And it just wouldn't be right to post about Father's Day without putting in a tribute to my own wonderful dad! So, here's the slideshow I sent out to honor him. He's really the best. (Note: you can turn off the music by clicking once on the little speaker picture at the top of the video).

In case this post isn't already long enough, I just have to share this silly Becca story - we were eating pizza for dinner a few nights back and part way through our meal, Becca says "eww! poop!".. then she picks off one of the little balls of sausage from her pizza and sets it to the side. You've got to be kidding me! She actually thought there was a little piece of poop on her pizza... and then, of course, she proceeds to finish eating her slice of pizza. If you found poop on your pizza, would you just pick it off and keep eating?