African Dwarf Frogs

Truly have you ever heard of African Dwarf frogs...they are about as easy to take care of as a goldfish!  The kids won two of them at the Carnival at Wellsvilles Founders Day Celebration.  Bills sister had an extra container for them that she gave us.  You keep a little water in the tank so they can gasp for air periodically, and give them a piece of food a day, and they basically just sit there all day!!  They've been a bit of a novelty around here, the kids take them out to play with them once in a while but I'm not sure how long they can be out of water so I make them put them back after about 10 minutes. I picture spongebob and patrick in Sandy's dome shriveling up asking for water!!!

Labor Day in Wellsville

Oops!! Labor day should have been before Abbie's birthday!!!  Oh well.  Not too many pictures this year just a few of the kids at the parade.  I need to remember to pull out my camera.  I think once I start getting really behind in blogging the camera has a tendency to stay put away...guilty!!!  Breakfast, the Parade, Sham Battle and carnival...same stuff every year, but it never seems to get old!!!  The kids love it!!!  We did get new pets out of the deal...check out the next post to see what they are!!!

Oh no, She's officially a teenager!!!

Lucky number 13!!!  Abbie is growing into such a beautiful young woman!!!  I am so proud of her and the choices she makes.  I think she's a great kid!!!  I've been pretty lucky, my kids seem to have pretty good natures!!  Everyone has bad days, and some days being kind is easier than others and getting used to figuring out hormones is a completely different story!!!  BUT... I love watching my kids grow, seeing them as they learn through trial and error and hopefully I am letting them learn the lessons they need to learn without always coming to the rescue, and saving them from a bad choice. Better to let them make mistakes now and learn consequences than after they're out of my house when consequences are a lot bigger, and you fall harder and faster.  I have to say getting older does make you wiser, experience makes all the difference in seeing the bigger picture.  I guess that's why we are what appears to the oldest, "easier" on the younger kids.  You realize the things you focused on and punished for are really insignificant and you should focus on battle strategy instead of just digging ditches!!!
For her birthday she had a little get together with a few of her good friends. Gpa and Gma Christensen came up to help us celebrate.

 Here's fun picture of Abbie and two of her friends Emma and Nikki at a football game.

 She also did a fall community Volleyball team...this girl loves V-ball!!!

Gotta Go Back...Back to School Again!!!

When I was a kid it was a huge deal to do back to school shopping.  The only time I ever got new clothes were at Back to School time or Christmas and maybe an outfit for my birthday. Although as my kids get older and stay the same size longer maybe shopping habits change and since I am remembering what it was like in high school maybe it changes.  It seems like I am always buying my kids clothes, watching for deals, buying on clearance and I just don't have the will power to hold it till Back to School or Christmas.  So I've never really done die hard Back to School shopping, I usually just buy them one new outfit.  Here are their 1st day of school clothes!!!  I love 'em!!!

 My middle schooler!!!

My 5th grader!!!

Knapp Family Reunion

You know Reunions just aren't Bills thing...its probably its because a crowd of people and noise is just not his comfort zone...oh he's great when he's there he works the room with conversation, and enjoys being there and seeing people he hasn't seen in a while and you would never realize that he's squirming and ready to run, but its something he really has to psyche himself up for.  Really any event that is going to have a lot of people and mandates that he has to speak to them!!! The last post was our week at Cub River, it was just me and the girls, Jesse had to work and Bill stayed in town with him.   It just so happens that Bill's extended family, most of them live up Cub River on farms and his uncle has a cabin that he built on his property a couple of miles behind his house.  The reunion was up there, so after coming home from there and unpacking, we turned around the next day and drove back!!! Had a nice visit.  His uncle has a fish pond up behind the house that the kids can go up and feed the fish.
All in all a pretty nice day.

 This is Bills mom, she had seven siblings and out of the 8 of them only 3 are left.

 Bill and his dad talking to one of Bill's cousins.

Christensen Annual Family Reunion

One thing that my kids look forward to every year is our annual Christensen Reunion...who wouldn't look forward to a cabin full of cousins, endless food and swimming!?!?  This year we went to a cabin up Cub River canyon just south of Preston Idaho.

My niece had just finished with nail tech school so she did my sister-in-laws toes and my toes...aren't they cute!!!  Nothing like a good pedicure!!!

 One of the days we went on a hike, it was only about a mile long or so, but it was fun to go with the family.  The hike starts in the Willow Flat campground and goes up the the head waters of the Cub River.  Pretty cool to see that hardly any water coming out can produce the flow that was at the bottom.  Nature is amazingly beautiful!!!  Definitely proof that God exists!!!

It doesn't matter where we go, the pool is always a big draw to the kids and it was fun having it so readily available.  The first few years my parents did this we went to a hotel where the kids could go to the pool at any time.  Then the next 3 years we went up Ogden Canyon to a couple of different places but the water/pool wasn't in the backyard.  Here they could pretty much be in it whenever they liked and they were!!!  The kids had fun with Jared (Heather's husband) throwing them in the pool and just talking and playing like cousins do.

Here are a few pictures of the cabin on clean up day and the adults hanging out at the pool.  The water that is in the pool comes from a natural spring and is a balmy 78 degrees year round...I am here to tell you that is not that warm!!! In the winter maybe but not in the summer!!!  That is 20 degrees below my body temperature and I only got in the pool once!!!   We also went down to Preston to go play tennis, but I didn't take my camera so there aren't pictures of that.  That was the down fall to this cabin....we think they should add a tennis court!!!  We'd never leave then!!!

 This is my brother Chuck with one of his grandkids...I loved this picture, my brother is awesome!!!

In the good ole summer time

Summer 2012

I am not always the best at getting my camera out when I should and sometime I forget it altogether.   I guess that's why the new smartphones have better cameras in them than most cameras!!!  A bunch of neighbors got together and went to Rigby Lake for the day and I got a couple of pictures of Cierra with the camera on the iPad. The other pictures were of a bunch of the neighbor girls out playing in the yard with Cierra with the hose and a tarp end up finding a snake and of course they have to carry it around and torment it a little before they let it go.

Jesse's Mission Call...Its finally here!!!

Jesse had his wisdom teeth out during spring break and all his medical stuff done by May, because that is when we thought he could turn his papers in.  We were mistaken and had to wait until July 10th, 120 days before his availability date!!!  It seemed like a long wait!!!  Well the Stake President hit send on July 10th and we received the call in the mail on July 28th!! We had been waiting, and thought it would come on Cierra's birthday, but nope.  When it didn't come on Thursday we thought maybe it wouldn't come till Monday.  Cierra and I had just pulled into the garage and saw the mailman coming. So we stood in the garage and watched him pull around the cul-de-sac.  We tried to look nonchalant, but he must have seen us because he stopped in front of the driveway and waved the envelope and asked if we were "waiting for this?"  I nearly lept out of my skin!!! YES!!!  I ran down the drive and grabbed it, then felt bad so we put it in the mailbox and called Jesse to let him know it was here.  He called Bill and went and picked him up from eating lunch at the sandwich tree.  I think the kids were on their way back from doing baptisms for the dead with the ward when I called him.  We called grandparents and my sister so we could get everyone lined up for the opening. A couple of our neighbors came over and watched Jesse open his call, Grandpa and Grandma McCammon were on the phone (we couldn't get Skype to work) My sister was on Skype and Gpa and Gma Christensen and Aunt Diane were on the iPad watching.
Elder Jesse William McCammon is called to serve in the Guayaquil Ecuador South Mission...where's a map!!!  We're so grateful that Jesse is worthy to go on a mission and serve the Lord in righteousness!!! What a great example!!!

Happy 10th Birthday

Cierra turned 10 this year. She's such a fun loving kid, so fun to be around.  She's hardly ever in a bad mood and if she is, it certainly doesn't last long! She's happy and brings a lot of joy to our home!

Cierra decided on the rainbow layer cake and Abbie decorated it.  She has been having a lot of fun learning to decorate cakes and practicing.

 Cierra loves the thought of having a fire and having a weenie roast...so that was what she wanted, it didn't matter that we were having 90 degree heat she still wanted it!!!  I don't think Grandma eats hot dogs!!!  Or at least she didn't get caught with the camera eating one, and Abbie had the camera!!!

 If you want someone to be happy when you give her a gift...no matter what it is...give one to Cierra!!! She loves everything...I mean it, it doesn't matter what it is...She loves a present!!!
I gave her a mini cotton candy machine, they had a lot of fun making the cotton candy, but it doesn't make very much at a time and seemed to take forever for just a little bit.  Maybe it takes practice. She also got a purse, a new outfit, a nerf gun, a bell for her bike and clothes for her Zhu Zhu pet.

Camping at Heise with Friends July 2012

I'm pretty sure I live in the best neighborhood in the world and I have the greatest friends!!! My dear friend La Tisha loves camping and her husband doesn't, that shouldn't stop anyone of course!!!  So she decided to get a bunch of us together to bring our kids and go camping!  So we did...well some of us did!!!  La Tisha and her kids, me and my girls, and our other neighbor and husband and kids came up and spent the night.  A couple other friends just came up and enjoyed dutch oven potatoes and dutch oven fried chicken for dinner and and evening of smore's and other yummy treats around the fire!

 After a good nights sleep we got up and went swimming at Heise Hot Springs.  The camping was great, but not sure I'd go swimming there again.  Way over priced for what you get.

Bicycles can be Dangerous!!! July 2012

This is probably the reason they tell kids to wear bicycle helmets and elbow, knee, and wrist pads when out riding bikes with friends!  Abbie and Hailey were racing and their tires got too close and Abbie bit the dust, well more like loose asphalt!  That's some serious road rash!

After reading this post and talking about it with Abbie and Bill I decided to add to it.  Bill ran to the store and bought band-aids, creams and sprays just to make her feel better.  He started doctoring her up, he bought what he affectionately calls "boo boo spray" he kept telling her it won't hurt and it will make it feel much better.  Well she finally agreed so he started spraying and she started screaming and crying.  Well a bit of banter ensued dad vs daughter, doesn't hurt vs. hurt like crazy!!!  A bit of irony...a few days later Bill cut his toe on the front porch and so we pulled out the band-aids and boo boo spray...guess who cried harder when the boo-boo spray was used!?!?! 

 That's a pretty sad face!

Let's Spelunk!!!

It was our goal to do a little caving this summer!!  We accomplished our goal...sort of.  We didn't make it to all the caves we wanted but the 4 we went to were amazing!!!  Well worth it!!!

First to the 17 Mile Cave...17 Miles from downtown Idaho Falls head west on Broadway.
Abbie took Hailey and Cierra took her friend Annika.

On another day we went to 40 Horse Cave - Up Wolverine Canyon
This time we took a crew! Abbie and Hailey, Cierra, MacKayla and Annika, then Michelle Farnsworth and her kids. It was a pretty steep climb and the shale rock made for slippery climbing.

 The older kids crawled up to another cave that was a little higher on the hill.  Inside they saw a bat.  Then they waded in the creek for a while and we had a picnic lunch!

Then in August we took a day and went up to the Civil Defense Caves and Rexburg Ice Caves. Not too hard to find and they were way cool!!!

 Again we went with Michelle Farnsworth she is now my spelunking buddy!! This time Cierra took Alivia.

 The inside of this cave was pretty cool.  There was a lot of graffiti on the walls...I think as long as people keep it relatively mild I don't mind it!

 This was at the Ice Caves....This road was absolutely miserable to drive on...only go on it if you have a truck...I think we beat the crap out of Michele's van and almost got her high centered a couple of times.  That being said...this cave was absolutely cool!!!!

 Some places you had to crawl or sit on your butt and pull yourself through...wish I would have taken snow pants we were kinda cold when we got finished.  It also wouldn't have hurt to have a pair of cramp-on's for your shoes because a couple of places were super slippery, even if you only had one pair and two people had one each just to help stabilize when helping others.

 .

At the end of the cave there was an ice hill that had foot holes to climb to the top and a little hill to slide down, the kids had fun sliding, but again we were super wet and pretty cold.  The middle picture is the hardest part, climbing down the rope and ice block to get down into the cave.  Michele's little one is the only one who had any trouble.

July 4th, 2012

Happy Birthday America!!!

 Jesse ran the 5K Fun Run earlier

June 2012 Girls Camp

I had the opportunity to go to Girls Camp with Abbie this year.  I was the camp cook so I was busy most of the time cooking and didn't remember to get my camera out enough. But luckily Michele was there to do the job!!!  Great pictures for a great time.

 Brother Ball showed the girls how to retire a flag...very cool.  Lyndi and I making our funny teeth from salt water taffy, Abbie and I grating cheese for dinner, Me slaving over the hot stove and us cutting some logs.

 Some really great group pictures of the kids.

 These are the few pictures I took of the kids having fun at the water front and our daily devotional..I think this one was the first day and introducing the theme.

 The Sondrups came up and did an activity with the kids called a trust walk...they gave the girls one piece of instruction...put the blind fold on and follow me.  So they did and then took the girls one by one and set them randomly throughout the wooded area we were at.  Then went down the mountain and started to play music.  As they sat there a few started to get up and walk, Lyndi was first and as she was finding her way she heard Abbie sniffing and thought she was crying so she sought her out, it was very sweet to watch her rescue my daughter.  They started toward the music but then the other girls started yelling hello so she took Abbie and they walked to meet the other girls. They didn't really talk to each other.  They had a couple of people banging sticks to distract or try to lead them to walk a different way.  One of the girls didn't stay with the group and started toward the noise.  I thought it was strange that they wouldn't talk to each other.  When the activity finished they talked about how when we are sent to earth its like the blindfold.  That's where I disagreed...the blindfold felt more like what Satan represents...through God we have the Holy Ghost to whisper and lead us....He didn't send us here blind to find our own way in the world even though that's how it feels sometimes.  The girls liked it though.

Here is some more pictures of Abbie and some of the other girls at the water front and a picture of the Service Tree...Whenever the girls saw a good deed or did one they were suppose to put it on the tree.

All in all it was a very fun week!!!  I love girls camp!!!

My Niece Heather's Wedding June 2012

Some pictures of my niece's wedding.

Jesse's Pick Graduation Trip 2012

We headed to Washington DC over the Summer and what a Trip!!!  There is nothing more awesome than viewing the amazing history that sits in our Capitol!!!  We loved the whole trip and there is no way we could see even a tenth of the amazing things there are to see there in the week we were there, but we sure tried!!!
Of the 400+ pictures I made 20 collages for the blog.  I will be making a book that is just our trip but here is a small portion of what we saw!  It was AMAZING!!!!

 Arlington Cemetary....the most beautiful place...it has such a wonderful spiritual feel.  I think I could have sat there every day and watched at the Tomb of the unknown soldier.  The bottom right picture is JFK's eternal flame.

 Our first day there we went to a Washington Nationals game very cool, our favorite part is the Former Presidents foot race. Hilarious!!  It was free Jersey day for the kids so the girls got one each!!

 A few pictures of the capitol building.  We even saw Speaker of the House John Boehner's Door!!!

 We went out to Arlington a second day (found the Jesse headstone) and then walked over to the Iwo Jima memorial.  Not sure what the big cat thing was the kids were sitting on.  The other two pictures at the bottom, the kids are standing in the very Center of the Capitol, and that brown dot on the leg is from a shooting that took place in the capitol they left it there.

 Jefferson Memorial...it rained while we were there so we stayed inside the memorial for a bit waiting for it to pass.

 The Library of Congress...completely disappointed in this tour, but an amazingly beautiful building. Our guide was crazy.  He'd ask questions, no one would answer and he'd sit there till someone did, then if it wasn't the answer he wanted then he'd point at you, yell no...and proceed to tell you what he wanted to hear.  We were also a little disappointed we couldn't go into the actual library part...You know, where Nicholas Cage found the Book of Secrets?  They wouldn't even let us take a picture from the viewing balcony of it.

 Pictures of us walking around the National Mall area...way bigger than it looks on a map!!!

 Pictures of us around the air and space museum and standing by our Chinese Zodiac characters.

 Washington National Cathedral...very cool!  It was a beautiful building, a lot of neat history inside.  Its taken 90 years (I think that's how many) to build it...they just keep building on.

 I hope I don't get arrested because I put this picture on here!!!!  Apparently there was a sign that said no pictures.  I knew on the inside, I didn't know you couldn't on the outside too!!!

 The Pentagon 9-11 memorial.  Such a neat memorial...for such a sad day.

 We went paddle boating around the Jefferson Memorial one day we saw a few helicopters flying around and we were sure one of them was Marine One!!!  The lower left picture was the Martin Luther King Memorial it was huge!!!

 Smithsonian Museum, the top left picture is a sunstone from the original Nauvoo Temple and Abbie was surprised to see the Golden Spike!!!

 A few Random pictures of us around DC.  The Koren War memorial are the top two middle picts.  The bottom right was our last day there and our feet were so tired (in my family growing up my dad would have said we were walking in pools of blood!) we are sitting on the steps of the World War I Memorial.

 The Supreme Court was a very cool tour and worth the wait.  Out side when we came out there was a huge protest (I can't remember what they were protesting)  The bell and the other two outdoor memorial were just random memorials around the city.

 Vietnam Memorial and the White House...waiting at the bus stop and I don't know what the first building was and the second building says Organization of the American States. I know they were by the White House because they were amongst the pictures on that days walk!!!

 More Pictures inside the Capitol Building

 Pictures of us at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  The girls are wish for the million in $10 bills and did you ever wonder how tall you would be in $ bills??? Knapp...a family name...wonder if we're related???

The gate at the metro to China town...Kids standing at Fords Theater and the building they took Lincoln to after he was shot and this is where he died.  The Hard Rock Cafe and our daily walk from our Hotel to this metro station.

The FDR Memorial...very cool.  As you walked they had things that represented the years of his presidency and on the ground said First Term, Second Term...and so on.  Interesting.