"Summertime"

By DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Summer, summer, summertime
Time to sit back and unwind
Here it is the groove slightly transformed
Just a bit of a break from the norm
Just a little somethin' to break the monotony

It was an amazing summer!  It ended all too soon!  Here are some of the pictures of this summer's highlights!

For my birthday we went swimming.  It was Melia's first time swimming and she LOVED it!  She's a fish just like her mommy.  Here she is all geared up for the pool!

We swam a lot this summer.  Here we are on the 4th of July.  Melia has sooo many hand me down swimming suits (5 to be exact, and the one above is #6 which was the only new one--I got it at a shower) and so we had to find occasions to wear them all!  :)  Here she is on the 4th in her patriotic suit!  :)

She loves the crab innertube.

Here she is with Spencer and his brother Garrett and two of her cousins Rachael and James in the pool at Bear Lake.

Lovin the water!

She even loves the bath tub.  Here she is her first time alone in the big tub.

At Melia's friend Jayda's 1st birthday party she had a lot of fun in the kiddie pool with Jayda and Crue. They're such fun little friends, and it's so fun for Aubrey and Shantaye and I to have kids so close in age!

Melia stayed in the pool long after the other kids got tuckered out.  She is such a fish!

This summer I also took Melia boating with my sister Kristy and her husband Ben and their kids.  It was so fun.  I was nervous taking such a little baby out there but she was absolutely in her element!  I loved it!

Mike isn't much for boating, or any water sports and it breaks my heart because that is MY element.  It makes me so happy to know that my daughter loves it too.  Don't get me wrong, Mike is willing to endure it sometimes for me, he just doesn't ENJOY it like I do.  It was so fun to spend that time with Melia.  She really LOVED it.  She loved the water and standing up on the boat and reaching out to touch the spraying water that was splashing up.

Just as a side note, for those of you out there with boats and jet skis, etc.  Keep us in mind when you go cause we'd love to join in.  Obviously we will never own such things and that really is when I am in my element.  I love it so much!  (And so does Melia!)

By the end of the day she was completely exhausted.  She just wanted to lay down and enjoy her bottle (I tried nursing a couple of times but it didn't work so well on the bouncing boat)!

Chief had a lot of fun this summer too.  We discovered how high he could jump!  :)

Spencer got really sick one evening at our house.  Chief would not leave his side and tried to take good care of him.

Spencer turned 9 years old this summer!  I cannot believe how big he's getting.  He's such a handsome boy!

He is so good with his little sister too and he loves her so much!  She adores him more than anything in the world.

No one can brighten her up like he can!

They are so cute together!  It's so much fun to watch.

Spencer is doing great in cubscouts and really enjoys it a lot.  He has earned a lot of merit badges too.

Here he is pinning one of the pins on his mom at the awards ceremony.

Here he is on his birthday with my dad and "the birthday bear" that my dad uses to sing happy birthday to all his grandkids.  It's pretty cute.

I love the look on my dad's face in this picture.

He really wanted a pogo stick for his birthday, and that's what he got from my parents.

He was so excited!

Here he is with my mom after opening it.

We sent him on a scavenger hunt at our house to get all his presents.  The hunt ended outside where he found his new bike.

Mike worked hard.  I love Mike and Melia in their matching hats.  My dad gave Mike the hat he's wearing (my dad is a major hat guy) and we got Melia her hat at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami.

For Memorial Day we went to visit my mom's parents' graves. 

In May Melia had her 6 month check up and got her shots on her thighs.  Poor kid!  She did really well though.  She came in at 75th percentile height and 25th percentile weight.  Tall and skinny.  It's so funny because so many people talk about how chubby she is (not so much now but they used to a lot) and then she's only 25th percentile weight.  She's a little marshmallow--light and fluffy!  :)  Plus 90% of her weight is in her cheeks!  Hehe!  For her 9 month check up she was about 50th percentile height and still 25th percentile weight.

Mike really needed a haircut and I always cut his hair for him.  Well this time he must've gotten sick of waiting for me because he got out the clippers and decided to try and help me out a little.  Wow...

Luckily I managed to turn the striped mullet into a somewhat presentable cut!  :)

We got to spend a lot of time with Mike's sister Heather's kids and it was super fun!  Nicole is sooo good with Melia and Mason and Luke are just adorable and adore her too.  Evelyn is just so cute and sweet.  It was a lot of fun to get to know them better.

I took the kids to feed the ducks at one of the local ponds.  It has been pretty overrun with geese lately--and not the pretty kind.  We were trying to just feed the ducks and not the geese but the geese kept trying to sweep in on us.  Luke took things into his own hands and decided to scare away the ducks.  Well they responded pretty well to him and he decided that he must speak the language of the geese.  Here he is "speaking geese."

Melia also spent a lot of fun time with her cousin Lydia.  Lydia is the daughter of Mike's brother Justin and his wife Sarah and they live close by too.  Lydia is only two weeks younger than Melia and it's so fun!

Lydia has some hair envy!  :)

Isn't Lydia GORGEOUS!  I am sure that Melia has some eyelash envy!  :)  They're just not as easy to grab as the hair is. 

I had the opportunity to watch my friend Jamie's little boy Tyson all day on Mondays.  It was soooo fun!  Melia had so much fun with Tyson.  He is just a few months younger than Lia.  I cannot wait to see them grow up together.

Already teaching what's good!  :)  (Gotta love Pepsi.)  Isn't Tyson such a beautiful little boy?  I adore him.

She really has fun with him--and always tries to steal his binkie.

He seems to be pretty enthralled with her too!  :)

We also discovered one of Melia's favorite things is chasing birds with Daddy.  You've gotta enlarge these pictures to see the look on her face!  It's classic!

Spencer had lots of fun playing at our Bear Lake condo.  He is so good at crossing the monkey bars.  When he was younger I told him I was the "Monkey Bar Queen" when I was in elementary school.  He decided then, that he wanted to be come the "Monkey Bar King."  He always tells me he is!  :)

I loved waking up in the morning and coming out to find Spencer reading his scriptures.  He is such a good boy. 

We all had fun playing at the playground.  Here are Melia and I on the merry-go-round.

Melia loves her daddy.

Melia ate lots of yummy new foods this summer.  Her favorite, though, is still green beans!  :)

She got super good at feeding herself.

All of her front teeth grew in over the summer too.  The bottom two were first, and the top two are still progressing.  I love this picture because if you look closely you can see her two bottom teeth.  They're so cute!

Here's Lia and her cousin Rachael at Bear Lake.

Melia loves to play a lot.  Sometimes she just gets tuckered out.  Here she is resting on the cute block that her 4 year old cousin, Lizzy, made for her.

She loves that block.

She is growing up so fast!

Melia is so mobile now and enjoys reeking havoc much more than laying on the ground and playing! 

But she sure has fun doing it!

She's so much fun!

Her favorite "toys" are not colorful baby toys.  They're things that Mom and Dad use like the remote, cell phone, sunglasses, etc.  Here she is with Daddy's spoon.

I love those blue blue eyes.

She loves to play with Chiefy.

French kisses!

Yuck!

Another one of her favorite things?  Swinging!  She LOVES swinging.  She laughs so hard and has so much fun.  Even when the swing is sitting still, she is content as could be.

She was pretty amused watching this little girl on the swings too.  It was cute.  This little girl reminds me so much of my little students in China.  I miss them so bad!

Then you put two of her favorite things together--she's ecstatic!

 

The four of us went to a Bees game and had a lot of fun.

 

Look at that adoration!

 

This picture is the epitome of the Morgan smile.  Those Morgans cannot keep their eyes open when they smile!  :)

Here are Mike and Spencer watching the game with their mitts at the ready so they can catch any fly balls!  :)

These are my 2 favorite guys!

Melia had fun at the game too--or atleast just being outside.

I love spending time with my little Lia.

 

We all had a lot of fun at the beach at Bear Lake.  We brought Spencer's brother Garrett and my niece and nephew Rachael and James with us.  Here's James showing off his Jedi skills at the beach.  :)

The boys dragged Rachael into the water.  (Pretty sure Garrett had a big crush on her even though she is 17 and he wasn't even 14 yet.)

Once they got her in, Spencer joined in the fun by splashing her.  :)

Spencer's favorite thing to do at the beach is to dig big holes.  I think he thinks he may discover something amazing! :)

Melia makes such a cute little beach babe!

She's my little angel.

She didn't really love being naked on the beach! 

But she's got such a cute little beach bum.  She is so sad in this picture--I love how cute she is when she hangs her head in sadness.  Am I a mean mommy?  She's just so dang cute, happy or sad!

She did let me get a few good pictures.

 

Believe it or not, this is not the end of our summer pictures.  August pictures are to come later!  :)