Goodbye Richi!

Our family is feeling a little sad, but proud. Our Richi is leaving us on Wednesday. Richi is like a brother to me and Mike. He was 12 years old when he moved into our ward. Mike was his YM's leader until our ward split over a year ago. I will miss playing games with him, teasing him and all the good talks we had. My kids will miss his relentless teasing and famous card tricks. We are so proud of him. He will be a blessing to the people in Guatemala. We love you Richi!

July 24th Pioneer Day and Fiesta Days

We had a fun 24th of July. We kicked off the celebration by going to the rodeo. Now... I love the rodeo (or Wrangler Butts.. I can't decide which.) JK. Anyway, I have to bribe Mike to go every year. But, he was a good sport this year. Tate was totally into it. He keeps telling me we need to go to the "Radio". He doesn't quite understand that the "Radio" is only here a few days of the year. Oh well! Brock did better this year. He was entertained. Payton likes to go for the clown acts only. He loved it this year. We then had are annual sleepout at Grandma Olive's House. Although, I think most of the kids ended up sleeping at Uncle Steve's house. I guess that's more fun. He only feeds them candy and lets them stay up as late as they want! We went to the parade that morning and fun seeing Grandma Cleo with her graduating class of 1957 and also Kaitlyn riding with the drill team. We had fun and enjoyed the nice overcast morning!

After the parade we went to Grandma Olive's for lunch. We had ribs and honey baked ham. The girls then went the craft fair while the kids wore themselves out playing at grandma's. We had a good time as usual!

Finally...Everyone's Better

July has been a rough month for our little boys. They've all had some kind of bug that's made them vomit. Tate and Brock had strange symptoms. They'd only throw up every other day. It lasted about 10 days. But, poor Payton... he threw up non-stop for 4 days. Here's a picture of him while he was sick. He spent 3 days in the hospital. He's doing great now and we're glad he's up and running around again. This picture was taken one week after all the baptism pictures... look at the difference!

Finally...Everyone's Better

July has been a rough month for our little boys. They've all had some kind of bug that's made them vomit. Tate and Brock had strange symptoms. They'd only throw up every other day. It lasted about 10 days. But, poor Payton... he threw up non-stop for 4 days. Here's a picture of him while he was sick. He spent 3 days in the hospital. He's doing great now and we're glad he's up and running around again. This picture was taken one week after all the baptism pictures... look at the difference!

The Changing Clayson Home

Since the ever rising prices of housing... we've decided that we're staying put. Over the last year we've really done some improvements. We put in french doors off of our dining area, we've put in wood floor, we've repainted and most recently we've added some new cabinetry in our kitchen, put in new carpet and the biggest project of the summer... THE HILL! Mike has been working really hard on it. We got sod last week for it. It's really turning out nice. We realize this project will probably takes us years... but we got the worst part over with. We bought a bunch of trees to plant on it this week. Now I'm getting advice from my master-gardner friend Angie Warner (at least in my eyes!) ... she's telling me all sorts of things that would be cool on the hill from moss to ground cover to flowers and bushes. It's going to be a lot of fun this fall and in the spring as we "dress up" the hill. I eventually want to be able to use the hill as my outdoor photo studio. Which... I think will be a lot of fun and a great tax write off!!! Yea! I thought I'd share some pictures of our summer's projects. The new cabinets, the new carpet, the new bead board and of course the hill.

Payton's Summer 2007

Payton's had an exciting summer already. He just finished his second season of Machine Pitch Baseball. I know I'm his mom... but he is the best player on the team! Payton has really improved this year. He can catch, bat and throw well. He's always been really coordinated and he's a great athlete! His team this year was the Nationals. They had red uniforms, which Payton wasn't real thrilled about. But he eventually got over it.

Payton also got baptized. He was baptized on 07.07.07. That should be easy enough to remember. He was baptized with his good friend in our ward, Jace Baird. The baptism went smoothly and Payton had a wonderful day.