Trip to the mountains

September has flown by! The girls have a new piano teacher and seem to be progressing well. Emily has started flute and is doing really well. Sarah hopes to start violin soon. Rachel continues with harp and still practices harp with one hand. Her splint came off earlier this month but she still has to keep her broken finger taped to the finger next to it until the end of the month.

Rachel has also started a school choir that meets after school once a week, she loves it! Rachel didn’t pass her eye exam at her well child check and was referred to an eye doctor. She is so excited to need glasses. She picked out her frames herself and can’t wait until they arrive.

Sarah and Emily started activity days and feel so grown up. Last week they made meatloaf and it was very yummy. I put the recipe on the recipe blog that Krissy started.

I have been taking a lot of high school senior pictures. I also started singing in a women’s choir called Triple Trio. It is made of up women from several different wards that meet once a week to sing, we perform at nursing homes and ward and city activities. It is so fun to sing in a choir again and make some new friends. I was called as the new ward choir director last week and I am excited and nervous about this new opportunity.

We went to the mountains to see the Aspen leaves changing. The leaves had just started to change and it rained a lot. It was still fun and we stopped along the way to take pictures. On the way home we saw a double rainbow and you could see the whole double arch across the sky, it was beautiful.



Our treasure at the end of the rainbow.

The month of August had been a busy but wonderful month for the Turner family. Sarah and Emily turned 8 and on August 2nd were baptized by their father and confirmed by Grandpa Crandall. It was a wonderful day and we were thankful Grandma and Grandpa were able to be here with us for such an exciting event.

Rachel, Sarah and Emily all participated in horse camp for a week. They learned a lot and it was fun to see the progress they made. Rachel rode Jack, Emily rode Joey and Sarah rode Legend. They talk about “their” horses and how much they miss them and how they can’t wait until next summer. Rachel turned 10 and had 2 friends over to have a Harry Potter birthday party. My mom made pioneer dresses for the girls and their dolls, they love them and wear them often.

The reunion was so much fun and it was wonderful to see all of my family. At one point we returned from the cabin and I unbuckled Laura and she got out of the van and before I could stop her she fell into a big puddle of mud. She was bawling and of course, being the comforting mother I am, grabbed the camera. What a pitiful picture.

The girls missed the first 3 days of school but seem to have adjusted well to their classes now and love their teachers. The church had a Family Carnival on Saturday and Tim juggled for one of the entertainment acts. He is actually pretty good, the girls love to see him juggle their tutus from ballet and I like to see him juggle soccer balls. He used to juggle eggs in the kitchen but after several messey accidents he has moved on to less breakable things.

Last Sunday the girls were upstairs playing after church and all the sudden I heard Rachel screaming and crying in a way that I knew something was wrong. Apparently one of her sister’s had accidentally stomped on her finger with her chunky heeled Sunday shoes. It turned out that her middle finger was broken and will be wearing a splint for 3 weeks. Life is never boring in the Turner home.

Baptism

Hey, check me out, a mid-month blog update. It was a special event and deserves a special update. Sarah and Emily turned 8 years old and chose to be baptized. They were both very excited about being baptized. Tim baptized Sarah and then Emily and my Dad confirmed them both. It was a wonderful day. I barely finished Emily's dress in time, those darn zippers. I included a few pictures I took of the girls in their white dresses. We are so thankful for the gospel and for the girl's desire to choose the right.

June

This month Rachel, Sarah and Emily had their ballet performance. They all did well and we enjoyed watching their dances. The girls love to dress up in their costumes and dance to classical music, even Laura joins in the dance. The girls have been taking swimming lessons for a couple weeks. They all did well and they will all be moving up a level in their next session.

Tim celebrated his birthday and the girls loved helping Daddy blow out the candles. Tim has been working a landscaping wall in the front yard. He has also been busy with sprinkler zones for this area and for the garden. The garden is doing well and the girls were thrilled to eat a radish that they helped plant. They said is tasted spicy.

We went to the Denver Zoo and by 9:00 in the morning it was already 85 degrees and it continued to get hotter. But it was a fun trip despite the heat. Laura would not stay in the stroller and she wouldn’t let us hold her; she finally compromised by holding onto the empty stroller as I pushed it all around the zoo. She is definitely coming into those terrible twos.

I have been very busy taking pictures and hope to have enough saved to buy a new camera lens soon. I enjoy taking pictures and learn something new every time I do. One friend of mine was happy to swap haircuts for my girls for pictures of her kids.

Rachel has finished reading all the Harry Potter books and she writes Hermione’s name all over everything. She has now started on Nancy Drew books and the Chronicles of Narnia series. She still takes harp lessons and is learning new songs all the time.

The girls have been going to the school once a week to check out books as part of a summer reading program. They get prizes for reading 20 minutes a day and Emily even won a stuffed animal in a drawing.

Laura scared us with a bad fall that ended with a trip to the ER. I have never seen a hematoma before and the bump was so big it looked like an Easter egg was growing out of her forehead. The ER bill was worth the comfort of knowing that she was going to be okay.

typo

Okay, I see it. The storm "passed" not "pasted."

Tornado warning!

On May 22nd we had a tornado warning. The girls were at school and they each had to go to their designated tornado areas. For Emily it was a girl’s bathroom and she thought it was so funny that even the boys in her class went in the girl’s bathroom. Rachel was the most scared and was crying for a while. Laura was upstairs taking a nap and it started to rain very hard. I was watching the storm when I saw the biggest hail I had even seen start bouncing off the ground and then the warning sirens went off I grabbed Laura and went to the basement. It was scary for a while but the storm soon pasted.

A big tornado did touch down in a town called Windsor which is about 30 minutes north of Longmont and did a lot of damage there. One person was killed and many homes were destroyed. Tim went with the church to help in the clean up effort and he was surprised by the extent of the damage. We were thankful to be safe and pray for those families that lost their homes.

I included a couple of pictures to show you the hail I collected from the backyard. I put a quarter in one picture to show the comparison is size.

April

We went to Colorado Spring for spring break. We stayed in a small cabin and we had so much fun. We went to Cave of the Winds, Seven Falls and Garden of the Gods. We played games in the cabin at night. The girls said their favorite game was Upwords and Rachel and Mom spent hours on a 1000 piece puzzle.
General Conference was wonderful. There were so many talks that seemed to be written just for us and we hope to follow the counsel given. It is always so uplifting and we are so thankful for a prophet
Rachel had her Royal Academy of Dance test in ballet. She was very nervous but she did great and graduated to level three. Sarah and Emily have had several fun field trips at school. They went to the aquarium in Denver and talked about sting rays for days. Laura is talking up a storm. She really wants to do everything herself even though she can’t. She gets so upset sometimes that she throws herself on the floor and squeezes her eyes shut. She loves to play in the backyard with her sisters and usually comes in with dirt in her hair, shoes and diaper. Tim and I ran in a 5K race around a lake in Longmont. Well, maybe I should say we jogged a 5K. It was fun but the cold wind made the beginning of the race really difficult. We also took a swing dance lesson. It was fun and we plan to take some more classes.