Forget-me-not

forget-me-not, click here to read the German legend about this tiny, beautiful flower

I love President Uchtdorf.  Don't you just love President Uchtdorf?  He has this ability to speak eloquently to that deepest hidden need at the bottom of our hearts.  His talk to the sisters tonight was inspired, and I was most grateful to sit next to some of the women I love the very most and share it with them (tissues, anyone?). 

"The Lord loves you...you are not forgotten."  Indeed.  He sent this message just for me (and you) by way of His holy apostle. 

Wordless Wednesday: My littles are getting big!

Random Video, taken 09.13.11

July in the Ellis Family

Are you ready for another installment of "catch up Rachel's blog"?  Here goes! Now you can see what we were up to in July, just click on the photo to see the post on that topic:

Independence Day

Learning to Slip n Slide

Katie Loses a Tooth

the Lake Trip

Isaiah, the Master Chef

Swim Lessons

Advantages to Having a Waterproof Camera (aka July family swim party)

Anderson Family Reunion

the Awning

Awning

It was quite a project, but we now have an awning over our back patio!  We are enjoying eating, sitting, and playing in the back yard even more than we have in the past, especially since Adam installed misters and we had a fan put in. 

It's made it bearable to hang out there in the heat this summer, but I think it will be downright awesome all through the fall!  The real challenge now is to figure out what more we could possibly do to our backyard to make it more fun...

Family Reunion

My mom was in charge of the Anderson Family Reunion (my grandfather's parents' children) this year, so because she asked if I would take some pictures while I was there I went to special effort to take some good snapshots (and a few posed pictures...but I wasn't super thrilled with most of them). Here are some of my favorite shots from the afternoon. 

These two hit it off and were as thick as thieves the whole day...this was in the first 30 minutes! 

My grandparents' generation

My parents' generation

Advantages to having a waterproof camera

1.  Taking the camera to the pool (for, say, a family birthday party) without the fear of it being ruined. 

2.  Underwater pictures (obviously)

3.  Handing your camera to a child to take pictures when you're too busy having fun to stop to take any more pictures (Katie, 5, took these shots...I think.  It's getting hard to tell for sure because she's getting so good). 

4.  Instant teething toy! 

Lily chewing on the camera in question.

One thing a waterproof camera won't do for you?  Despite its advantages, it won't take the pictures for you, even if you have the best of intentions...so there are still plenty of missed photo ops.  Oh, well. (At least I have these!)

Note: all of these pictures were taken at our end of July family birthday party at City Pool.  All except for the picture of Lily chewing on the camera at Sand Hollow Reservoir, which I stole off Shelli's blog and slapped in here to prove my point.

Swim Lessons 2011

This year is the first year of swim lessons that I couldn't get all the kids with their different levels in the same session at the same time, so I took the parent/tot class with Max in one session, then Adam took Katie and Isaiah to their classes in the next session.  This is also the first year that we didn't have any issues or things to work on--all the kids did really well and passed their levels! 
Here they are with their teachers:

Katie, level 2 Advanced

Isaiah, level 3

Next year we will probably have to split them into two sessions again because we'll have a parent/tot, a level 1, a level 3, and a level 4!