Monson Fonsons: July 2014

Food As Art

Well, if kids aren't supposed to spend their summer vacation arranging and photographing plastic food, then I just don't know what they are supposed to do.

I seriously love it when I find these little gems on the camera.

When he isn't swishing his bottle around in the toilet bowl or eating detergent out of the dishwasher, Spencer is leaving me little love notes everywhere in the form of paths of destruction.

Every day, people.

Every. Day.

The Lord sure knew what He was doing when he gave me a little boy for my last. Otherwise, this kid would have been an only child fo' shizzle.

Big K, Little K, What Begins with K?

You guessed it: Katie in a Kayak. K, k, k.

If you ever thought I was unadventurous, think again. I let Craig talk me into taking the girls on a kayaking trip down the Verde river at the beginning of June. (Groupon! Darn you!) Kayaking for the first time in a tandem kayak, down a shallow, mucky river, with a child who wanted to know why we were going so slow and Daddy was going so fast was definitely my idea of a good time. By the time we were almost done, the girls were holding an oar between our two kayaks and Craig was doing all the work. Next time, I think I'll just go with him and the girls can fend for themselves.

Hard though it was, and despite the heinous sunburn that I got on my leg, and the fact that I kept getting stuck and kept having to be rescued by our very nice tour guides, I'm really glad we did it. Craig is great at getting me out of my comfort zone and then still loving me even while I'm grumbling about it. I really would do it again. (I really would go in Craig's kayak, too. You know, so that he wouldn't have to hear me grumble from a distance.)

"I smile because I have no idea what I'm getting into."

"'Let's take the girls kayaking', he said.

'It'll be way fun,' he said..."

"I need a break. I've been helping Mommy."

"Wait, what? How do I steer this thing again?"

"No seriously, guys, am I supposed to be getting the hang of this?"

"Uh, yeah, we don't want to hurt your feelings,

Mommy, but Daddy's kayak was way funner..."

"Whew. We made it, Now let's go get cheeseburgers."

So We Gotta Say Goodbye to the Summer...

Man alive, where have I been all your life? More importantly, where have I been all of MY life? Well, first it was Flagstaff, then it was Utah, then it was Flagstaff again. But mostly I have been trying (pretty unsuccessfully) to find a quiet corner to hide from my very adorable, very loud, very cooped up children. (It hasn't been a complete failure though...the seven books that I have somehow managed to read this month can surely attest to that.) My desires to keep my children supremely busy this summer seem to have fallen by the wayside, as I feared they would, and we have spent much more time at home than I hoped we would have to. But alas, the fact that we are in the home stretch (school starts in less than a week!) makes everything feel just peachy, and I can say with lots of naive confidence that it will be a cinch to do lots better next year.

Are you dying to know what I've been up to? I thought so.

We let the kids miss the last two days of school so that we could go up to Utah for my niece Fantasia's graduation. (What kind of high school has their graduation on a Thursday, I ask you?) I cannot believe that my wonderful niece, who was a beautiful baby not all that long ago is now a beautiful 18-year-old high school graduate with college in her sights. I am so proud of her for not only what she has accomplished, but who she has become.