A Little Father's Day Gift

This picture is a little disturbing to me.....

....but not as much as this one! For Father's Day this year Isaiah really wanted to get Daniel a BB gun. They have both been talking about it for a long time but I have been dragging my feet on it. I decided it would be okay since Isaiah is going to cub camp this summer and apparently they shoot BB guns every day.


I am so glad that I have a husband that I can trust 100% with Isaiah's safety. He doesn't always show it on the outside, but every time we have done something potentially dangerous, Daniel is always the one to show and teach Isaiah the safety rules first. Thank goodness for that!

For family home evening the next night we decided to make targets for our activity. This had absolutely nothing to do with the lesson, but Daniel and Isaiah were pretty excited to see how good of a shot they were. Isaiah's target is on the left. He made points for each area on the target. My target is on the right. The bulls eye on mine is a credit card. If I hit my bulls eye I got to use it. No such luck for me though:)

It was hard to tell with the cardboard from far away. Daniel actually almost hit the bulls eye on the first shot! Isaiah and I were a different story. I found most of my bullets lodged into the fence behind the box.

Isaiah doing his happy dance after emptying a round:)

Consumer report: Good buy!

Next target: Pop cans.

Another Baptism!

There were five kids born in the same year in our family. Stephan was the second to be baptized. I am sad that I didn't get any of Connor:( Stephan is my third the the oldest sister Debora's, son. He asked me to give a talk on the Holy Ghost. I felt pretty special because we have a big family and there were a lot to choose from. He is such a sweet boy. He was so reverent and seemed as if he was taking it all in.

Afterwards was a whole different story! We have some goofy boys in our family.



















I finally got them calmed down for a good picture. Now I can say that we have some very handsome boys in our family as well!



















Isaiah, Ethan, Claire, and Evelyn waiting patiently for the baptism to start. Can you guess you the family clown is? She is always doing and saying things that crack me up.

This all happened the day after my little sister was sealed in the temple. Major thank you's to my mom for hosting both gatherings to follow in her home. She is always so willing to do what she can so we can all get together and enjoy these kinds of experiences. I am so grateful for my amazing family!



I stole this picture from my sister's blog of the whole family. I know it is small but I think you can click on the image to view it larger.....if you want:)

Family Time!

It has been a crazy two weeks! Two weeks ago my sweet little sister was sealed in the temple to her husband Daniel. Unfortunately I did not take one single picture of these two together on that day. Like I said it was a crazy time. My ENTIRE family was in town for several family events we had going on. That means 8 families with 22 kids which equals total chaos. Of course we did have a blast. We started the trip off with a sisters night out in a hotel. Nothing fancy just a Marriot Residence Inn stay on 185th in Hillsboro. We just wanted one night to play games and hang out and talk. The picture above was taken at about 1 in the morning. We were all getting a little loopy at this point which is why we started playing Indian Poker. My little sis posted the whole night. If you would like to view click here: http://monicavrtiska.blogspot.com/



The rest of these pictures are in no particular order. They are just pictures of my beautiful nieces and nephew that I love so much. From left to right: Claire 6, Ethan 7, Kate 3, Evelyn 7, and Isaiah 7.


This is my sister Mindy's little girl Kate. She is just about the cutest little thing. My mom says she looks exactly like me when I was her age so of course she melts my heart. She has the softest little voice and she is so lovable.
Left to right: Isaiah 7, Evelyn 7, Ethan 7, and Jack 5. They are all sitting on grandpa and grandma's bed playing. Growing up this is where you could often find my sisters and me as well. We loved being in my parents bed and I think it is so funny that now our children love it as well. Maybe it's because they have always had a water bed and kids think that's fun??

Here are some of the little ones. From left to right: Jeffrey 3, Christopher 4, Jarem 4, Joshua 3, Jack 5, and Dallin 5.

Isaiah playing a little soccer with his cousin Ethan.

Uncle Adam wrestling with all the kids. This is definitely a favorite with all the little boys and thankfully there were no tears this time.

Little Kate trying to pick up uncle Daniel. She loves him!

Highlight of the sisters night; trying to get our husbands to pose for a picture. I love how they all have there arms folded.

Getting a little more comfortable....

...maybe a little too comfortable for our cop Rich!

Now in complete submission to their wives whining. "Puleaaaaze do a pyramid for us!!" What a bunch of sweeties!

After a long day of running from place to place, eating, and playing, the kids were all a little tired which equals silliness.

Teenagers. Gotta love them. I do!

Sweet little Christopher adding his silly face.

Bear with me I have two more weeks of extended family posting to go!

We decided to head out and go fishing for Memorial Day weekend. We went about 40 miles east looking for a fishing hole along the South Santiam River. The Salmon were swimming upstream so it was supposed to be a great time to go. We found a great spot but unfortunately it was already occupied by some locals. The told us of another hole right down the path but we would most likely only catch trout. (I don't think any of us were really thinking we would ever catch salmon anyway. We headed down the path and there was this huge fallen tree in the way. I went first and crossed right over it. Isaiah went next but he decided he wanted to walk down it. Just as Daniel was saying, "Careful bud it might be a little..." and whoosh right off the log Isaiah went down the bank and right into the river. I saw it all out of the corner of my eye and two thoughts quickly crossed my mind. The first was I hope he didn't land on any rocks and the second was I am SO glad he is on swim team and becoming a stronger swimmer. He climbed right out and was fine but then started to cry because of the shock of it all, (I'm sure the water was just a tad cold as well:).

Here he is shivering a bit from the cold.

Daniel gave him his long sleeve shirts to wear. At first he was not too excited about looking like he was wearing a dress, but I think he felt much better once he was out of his wet clothes.

Now he has a fishing pole in his hand and ready to go!

We love Daniel! He always gets us all set up before he starts fishing. I mention this in my blog because I know that he really thinks we should be able to do this ourselves but he also knows I like it when he does it for me:) What a sweetheart huh?

After a few hours of fishing and catching nil, Daniel took a little nap. The sun was shining and it was so quiet and peaceful where we were.

Isaiah was happy to get to listen to my ipod. Not a privilege he gets very often.

I think I slept the longest out there. I love to fish but after an hour of not a single nibble I was done. I must say I had quite a nice nap. Isaiah and Daniel fished the whole time.

I was very impressed with Isaiah this trip. We got there at about 9am and left around 3pm. He never complained once about being bored and he even started fixing his own snags and tangles!

Great trip, no fish. Better luck nect time kiddo. Mom and dad just need to figure out what we are doing out there!