Jana's liquid diet

Smoothies and percocets have been Jana's best friends. I have needed to monitor her pill intake especially when she starts slurring her speech and coming up with wild ideas.
I hope this is left over juice from her popsicles, and not blood from her wound!!!

The lucky and the unlucky

The first two weeks of July, lucky little Logan got to take swimming lessons! She absolutely loved it. I was so glad that she was not afraid. She is a natural! She must take after her mom! She only hated to put on sunscreen. Doesn't everyone? We found the fun continuous spray sunscreen, and that was better for both me and Logan!! She started out at the old pool, and then the new Payson pool was finished half way through her session, so she got to finish there. She was so excited to go to the new one! The new one is so much better! It's more like seven peaks, or the Scera pool in Orem. We are going to try to get there as a family, sometime this summer!





Logan shivering at the new pool! Getting ready to jump in.



She had so much fun, even though she didn't get to go on the water slides yet.

And here we are at the unlucky. Poor Autumn. She got quite the bad little cold, and pink eye, in both eyes. She was just purely miserable for 2-3 days. I didn't understand how bad it was until I got it a few days after her, in one of my eyes. On top of that, I know you are all sick of hearing it, but I got strep again. Yep. I know, I know, I never get strep. How unusual. Well, you should all know that I am getting my tonsils removed tomorrow. I hope it helps, I am just a little scared of the recovery and trying to deal with two kids. I've had a lot of sweet ward members offer to watch them, so I guess I will have to take them up on it!!

Brookes Bunch Facelift

Deedra (former next door neighbor) was kind enough to share her friends website for cute blog backgrounds. If anyone is interested, it can be found at: http://www.simplychicblogs.blogspot.com/
There are so many cute choices, it was hard to chose! Happy blogging!

Some of our 4th pics!

Autumn and Logan enjoying the festivities at our ward breakfast/ 4th celebration. We had a great time. We really love our ward, and have met so many nice people, since moving here!








The scouts started putting out flags in our neighborhood on certain holidays, and I just love it. It just makes me proud to live here, and have this wonderful reminder of the great country we live in!

Brookes Family Reunion

The reunion started out bright and early on Wednesday, June 28th with a hike up to Stewart Falls in Provo Canyon. It was such a beautiful day, and a fun hike. It was fun to get to the end and see the kids get all excited about it! The mist of the fall sure felt good!

This is the view looking away from the fall, where the water was running.

And the beautiful fall. I would recommend going for anyone who has never been. It was about 4 miles round trip, and took us about three hours. We stayed at the fall for probably at least 20 minutes, and we were hiking with around 16 or so kids, some newborns included, and 10 adults. It was a great time! Wednesday evening we had our monthly FHE together!

Thursday started out with us all going up to take a tour of Welfare square. Sorry, we didn't take any pics, but it was all very interesting and informative to see how the church has such a wonderful program in place to help others help themselves. It's just reminds me so much of the perpetual education fund, which I think is wonderful!
Next, we had lunch at a park in Provo, followed by bowling at Miracle Bowl, in Orem. We had a lot of fun. The kids all had great time too! We had to chase Autumn around quite a bit, now that she has learned to walk!



James was so proud of himself and wanted to prove that he bowled a 179!! Wow! What a man! Though, I was waiting for him to do the splits like he did when we were on one of our first dates! Don't think that's going to happen again!

Bowling was followed by a BBQ and swimming at Ben and Misty's (James' bro) house! It was so hot out that I was actually glad that the kids were splashing me!



Friday we went to see WALL E ! It was a pretty cute show, but maybe more for older kids. We had fun anyway.
Next was off to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point! To think that Logan used to be terrified of this shark, and now she acts like it's her best friend! I have been there with my parents a few years ago, and also with one of my neighbors. I really like it. It's got so many fun hands on things to do. I think it was safe to say all the kids had a blast.
After the museum, there was dinner and a game night and Dan & Janell's (James' sis) house. We had a really fun time there too!



Saturday was the big family reunion with James' Mom's whole family. It was a nice shady park, in Orem. We were in charge this year, so his mom wanted to do a carnival theme. It was really fun! We had a nice lunch, and then we had a bunch of carnival games set up for all the kids to play. There were also tickets and prizes you could buy with your tickets. They also had ice cream, popcorn and nachos! It took probably years of planning, and James' mom really did an awesome job. I wish we could have been more of a help. James' family is so creative and thoughtful, down to the last detail! It's amazing, and I am so glad to be a part of their family. Thanks for a wonderful reunion to all those that put forth so much time and effort in it's planning!

Happy 4th of July!

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We started out with a breakfast with our ward, and some games afterwards. We also enjoyed some shopping at a few places today. We had a nice time watching fireworks with a bunch of our neighbors, once it got dark. Everyone just lit all their fireworks off at the same place, so it was 10x the fun! We had a great day, and we hope you did too!
I have pretty much decided that the 4th of July is one of the longest days of the year! (it's a toss up between this and Christmas eve) I'm wiped out, so off to bed I go!