We went to Lake of the Woods on Saturday with our friends the Appah's and Garcia's. I have a feeling this is going to be a recurring theme of posts of pictures down by the lake this summer. 
I had this problem when I was a full time scrapbooker too, just how many pages of the kids at the zoo do you actually do (ha ha that rhymed) for one year? 
The answer I came up with was, as long as each time you tell a different story, you can do as many as you want. 
So here is the first installment of Chronicles of the Lake entitled Eat and be Eaten.
The eat part...
We ate.
Lots of chips, hot dogs and soda.
The eaten part...
We got bit by the thousands of mosquito's that were hanging out by the lake.
Remember next time: bring some heavy duty bug spray.
So, see? We learned a valuable lesson, that hopefully we will remember on Wednesday when we head to the lake again!
Now onto the picture portion of this chronicle.
Bekah with her sassy new haircut...
Bekah actually in the water, past her ankles-this is a huge accomplishment people.

Christopher's favorite part of the day was the soda-it's not a treat he ever gets, so he drank up.

He really really loved it.I'm not sure if Paxton loved anything there-he was in a bad mood, but I caught this sweet moment of peace-isn't he one of the most handsome little boys on the planet?
The bigger kids stayed in the water most of the day with their friends...

Zachary and Parker played with this log and pushed the girls out of their tubes, you know, just being obnoxious boys.

These 3 girlies are so pretty, no wonder the boys love to tease them!
And these 2 stinkers-

Porter had to be held constantly or he would eat dirt and rocks, and Chad caught a crawdad and brought it home...

For a pet...

To hang out with our goldfish.

I guess boys just never grow up....

So that was our exciting day 1 at the lake this summer, come back later this week for more water, sunburns, junk food and pretty much all the excitement you can possibly muster for such an awesome family activity.

So one of my moms favorite things to tease Chad and I about is when we were first dating, I was talking to one of my friends on the phone while my mom was in the room, (first mistake) about the new love of my life.
I was telling my friend that my dreamy hunk was short, (2 inches shorter than me-I was young and shallow, and I NEVER went out with anyone shorter than me...more than once), but then I said what will go down in history as the most used phrase by my mother when referring to her son in law, "But he has REALLY Buff arms."
Chad is a hard working man, always has been since I've known him, and he does...have really buff arms.
When I see him flexing those forearms, doing any kind of work...mercy!
Doing that work with a baby attached to his back...seriously!
Makes me want to make more babies with this man with really buff arms...

The Farm Girls Wedding

If I wasn't a full time mom, and wanted to work outside the home, and travel and do all those things that I probably won't ever do, but have come to grips with...
I would be a wedding planner.
I would be darn good at it too.
I have done the flowers for a couple weddings, and helped do the flowers with my friends for lots of weddings, I have helped my mom cater weddings, and have helped with many a reception.
I really think that I would be an excellent wedding planner.
People would tell their friends about the wonderful lady who planned their wedding, and that wonderful lady would be me.
Ahhh to dream the impossible dream...

That dream is what keeps my mind reeling with a running log of ideas for weddings and parties.
The other day I was making a salad, and was thinking to myself...
"Self, these vegetables are so beautiful, I think they are more beautiful than flowers, don't you?"
And of course me being myself, answered, "Yes, yes they are."
That's when the farm girl's wedding was planned.
She will be so excited, this imaginary girl in my mind that will someday say "Oh great wedding planner, what wedding is right for me, a simple farm girl?", and I will tell her I have been planning her wedding for years...
The sweet farm girl bride will carry a beautiful bouquet of lettuce as she walks down the aisle of corn... The bridesmaids would have beautiful bouquets of carrots-you know the kind that chefs like Jamie Oliver always seems to have in abundance growing in his garden with the green stems...
The flower girls would throw brightly colored cabbage leaves in their wake....
The bride and groom would stand in front of the big red barn and pledge their love to one another while the sun sets, as the guests wipe their eyes at the beauty of it all, while sitting on bales of hay.
Later on at the reception held in the big barn...tables would be covered in white with small wooden baskets of beautiful fruit for the guests to sample at their leisure.
All of the food would be grown there on the farm and it would be fresh and delicious, and the guests would marvel that they had never been to a wedding that even came close to the magic of this one...
Then they would all wave their white hankies as the bride and groom ride off in their pumpkin carriage.
....and when my wedding dialogue starts colliding with a bedtime story with a fairy godmother, I realize, I should probably stick to being a mom for now.

When I grow up...

I am in the Primary presidency in my ward, and we just had our quaterly activity. It was all about what the kids wanted to be when they grew up. They all came dressed up like something they wanted to be, and then they went to different stations to learn about different jobs. The kids all had resumes that I made up for them, and they went to each 'job' to get more experience on their resumes. Super cute and super fun. Here are my rugrats dressed up in what they want to be when they grow up... Bekah my ballerina...

Christopher, my little cowboy.

Then Ryeleigh-our doctor/nurse, who really wants to be a teacher, but we had funner doctor dress ups than teacher dress ups, which is really all that mattered anyway, right?

Bekah helping making dinner

We have our summer chore charts in full swing here at the Hewlett house. This year we are doing flags and the kids can earn stars each day to earn prizes each week. They have one assigned chore each day and then they have to pick a job out of a box of popcicle sticks. The rest of the jobs on the chart are things like getting dressed, reading, writing in their journals and doing service for their siblings.
Once a week Bekah is supposed to help me make dinner.
I love to have my kids help me in the kitchen, as long as I can prepare for it by making something that they can actually help with.
We had tilapia packets this night with sweet pineapple sticky rice.
Bekah made all the tilapia packets-and they were scrumptious!
The recipe is on the recipe blog....and your kids will eat them, at least all of mine did-even Ryeleigh who is a self proclaimed fish hater.

By the way...that adorable apron she is wearing...it was mine when I was little-Strawberry Shortcake was one of my faves, right after Rainbow Bright. The apron is still in perfect shape, and I remember wearing it all the time-so much fun to see my girl wearing something that was part of my childhood...she also wears my old t-ball shirt to bed sometimes, it is so cute!

How do I love thee Porter?

I can't even begin to count the ways!

Bekah's First Ballet Recital

Bekah had her first recital this past weekend, and she was beautiful! Both of her Grandma's were here to see it and a couple of her cousins too.She knows what she wants to be when she grows up now, and can't wait for next year. She was so cute about the whole thing. She took it so seriously. She was in a class of 4 and 5 year olds, this picture pretty much says it all. The rest of the class, cute little girls dancing an adorable dance in tutu's. Miss Bekah, serious ballerina.Every arm extension straight, every toe point perfection. Seriously, her being serious=too funny. She was expecting flowers, because "every ballerina gets flowers at the end of the show, don't you know?" Grandma Julie delivered perfectly with a dozen pink roses.

Her mom couldn't be prouder to be the mom of this perfect, beautiful little ballerina!

More pictures are on her blog, and the video is here on the family videos, if you care to watch, it's only a little over a minute long.

Not me. Well maybe a little. But this is about a literal baby hunger. Porter loves babies right now. He attacks them, knocks them over and tries to eat their faces. He's actually just trying to give them kisses, but the babies don't know that. They are scared for their lives when they see him coming...and once he sees a baby, he gets there fast. Yesterday when we left the park, leaving several babies covered in Porter drool with terrified looks on their faces, clinging to their disgruntled mama's a thought occurred to me, that hadn't before. Maybe Porter would like to play with a doll. I went through Bekah's baby stuff and tried to find the most masculine looking baby, and baby stuff, so Porter could play daddy. He absolutely has loved it! He feeds the baby bottles, kisses his face, squeezes him, pats him, gives him a toy, covers him in a blanket, and even pushes him around in the stroller. He's not walking quite on his own yet, but I think this will help get him there.

He even tried to give his baby a little mixed drink.

I'm hoping this will curb his appetite a bit for the real thing until some of those babies he loves so much get a little sturdier...so they can handle all the love he wants to give them.

Somebody Stop Me!

Do you know how when little kids see other kids do something, they see if they can do it too? I have the same problem. I read blogs and see crafty things, and I have to go right out and see if I can recreate it, but better, or at least more fitting to my tastes. Well it seems like lately everywhere I look, I see mama's who are using cloth diapers. I know! Somebody tell me that I don't have to do everything that these supermom's do! Well like I said, I have a problem. Porter is now in cloth diapers. It's humorous to a point...the puffiness coming out of his shirts, the wrestling him down long enough to put one on him, the comments Chad makes as he tries to wrangle the baby and take care of the diaper afterwards. But really...it hasn't been bad for me, I was a little apprehensive at first, but the past 3 days have been fine. The reasons for me to do this, obviously weren't just to say "If they can do it, I can too", but it didn't help... The real reason was money. Of course it's laughable to say we are short on money. We are the definition of starving students at the moment. This will save us money...a lot of money actually, so to me it just seemed like a great time to give it a try. The only problem is the selection we have here in Klamath Falls. It consists of what I can find at Wal-Mart. I ordered a couple things on-line, but everything is sooo expensive, so unfortuately he will have to wear these until we can get some of the better, cuter options they have out there.I do have a chance to win some of the better, cuter stuff here on simplemom.net, who had a whole week dedicated to cloth diapering. If anyone else is considering the change, I suggest you read the articles there-they answered all my questions and convinced me to at least give it a try!

Why we don't have TV

Allow me to get on a soapbox for a minute or two.

I'm pretty positive that most of you don't, or won't agree with my ideas on TV and kids.

Please know that I am not saying that any other way of handling the TV issue is wrong, this is just how and why, I do, what I do.

It's just me, and really just me, I mean Chad will probably be rolling his eyes reading this more than the rest of you.

I just want to let you know why I feel this way, and if you don't want to know, allow yourself to be distracted by my cute kids. They are the real reason I choose this so-called sheltered little life.

I am not the "Kool-Aid mom."

My kids don't even know what Kool-Aid is.

There are a lot of things my kids don't know about that most kids do.

Then there are a lot of things my kids know about, but wouldn't know about if they didn't have a Grandma Julie, (i.e; McDonalds, Ding Dongs, Sponge Bob and commercials...out of spite I tell ya!).

Chad and I have been married for nearly 8, wonderful, years.

In that time, we have never had cable, dish or even local channels like PBS.

That's right, I didn't watch a single episode of American Idol this year. Gasp.

And you know what, we haven't felt like we've missed a thing.

This was a decision we made before we were married, to not have TV in our home.

We own a TV, and literally hundreds of movies, but never had channels.

The reason for this decision started out because of Chad's kids.

They were TV junkies.

They asked for everything that they saw on commercials.

They would stay up late into the night watching the tube, (I'm talking wee hours of the morning), a trait inherited from their night owl father.

I couldn't deal with that.

I need my sleep, and I was never one to waste my days being a couch potato as a kid.

I wanted more for our family life when they were there, more structured family activities and less zoning out.They did not , and still do not always deal well with this.

Every summer, it is like pulling teeth to get them to stay outside and play like I did as a kid.

I know times have changed, that video games and tv are more enticing then having to use your own imagination, I get that, I can't go a day without using my computer.

So we have screen time.

It is not a set amount of time, not yet anyway.

They can either watch one movie, (educational (not documentaries or anything, but shows like Blues Clues, Little Einsteins or my kids favorite The Magic School Bus), or a Disney type movie with a good meaning-(anything that is not what I call useless, like Spongebob, that teaches my kids to repeat words like 'stupid' or 'duh')) or play for a little bit either on the Wii or on the computer.

I know that there will be time for my kids to fill their heads with useless TV and movies when they are older.

I'm not going to lie, most of my favorite things to watch are completely useless time wasters, but I think as a kid, your brain can soak up so much good, why waste it!

As a kid, I watched TV so minimally, I mean like Saturday morning cartoons, and that is only if the sun wasn't a shinin'!

We were outside at sunrise and my mom had to bribe us to come back inside, long after sunset.

We took our meals outside, and ate them on the run.

We played in the sandbox, we jumped on the trampoline, we rode bikes.

We made up elaborate 'house' like games using my moms old pattern books, choosing our outfits, our husbands, our kids, our bridesmaids, and could entertain ourselves for literally days, just stopping to sleep and resuming where we left off in the morning.

We would have 'carnivals' in our backyard with all the neighbors and have different 'booths' with different games that we paid for with rock tickets and win prizes, like flowers (dandelions), and happy meal toys, and we would always have a trophy to give to the biggest winner of the day, just to hold and admire my plastic 'BigBoy' piggy bank.

I want my kids to have that kind of childhood.

The kind that has so many memories attached to it, that you could write novels about the games you played, and the things you thought up.

The kind of childhood that makes you think of your siblings as your best friends.

After all, they were the ones that you went to the moon with, walked down the catwalks in Paris with and were there the day you became the first 10 year old President of the United States, and the next day when you became the first Queen or King of the whole wide world.

I want my kids to always have popsicle grins, dirty knees, freckled cheeks and sun kissed hair.

I want them to be able to get wet with the hose in a 100 different ways, climb trees, hit a homerun, throw a frisbee, make a million dandelion wishes and gain a complete appreciation for the outdoors.

I want my kids to come in at the end of the day so exhausted, that they can't wait to sleep, and dream about the adventures they will have the next day.

In the winter, if they can't be playing outside, they can read, or play with toys, or work on one of their countless art projects they have thought up.

I want them to use their imaginations while they are young, I want them to just be kids.

So that is why we don't, or won't get TV at the Hewlett household.

Now excuse me while I go watch some re-runs on Hulu.