my friends have cool houses

and I want to live in them. But I have a kind of medium cool house (in progress) already so if you would like to join our cool house club then rent this house in Lehi:

or buy this house in Orem:

around the house

A few random photos from the last couple weeks. It's so rainy it's really bugging me. I feel lathargic and blah when I wake up to another rainy day. But most days we try to do something fun.


We'll start with my favorite. They are listeining to a song called "Gummi Bears Techno Remix" over and over and over....


Picking strawberries again with our new friends, the Hills. Pictured are baby Dana, Cody, Ellie, Ellie, McKay and Levi.


Ellie with her new friend Ellie and her little sister Clara. We call them Ellie Peach and Ellie Pie to keep them straight. And together they make Peach Pie! They think it's pretty funny. Aren't they the cutest little girls?


All our many kids. I think there are quite a few missing in this picture too. The majority of the kids are two years old. Which makes for chaotic play-dates. They remind me of the seagulls in Finding Nemo: "Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!" What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine too right Cody, Kelty, Levi, Luke, and Tanner?


Mornings are usually the sunniest and warmest times of the day.


My sis-in-law Ashley told me about Peanut Posh. I ordered two ties for Cody and so I wanted to show her a picture. Like it?


View from our family room/kitchen. I watch the sunset as I make dinner every night (unless it's raining - so usually not).

favorite find

These are three small prints I found at a garage sale in Ocean Grove. They were being sold by the artist, Robert Savel. Apparantly, Williams Sonoma used to sell his prints. I think they will look nice in my kitchen in Utah.

ride 4 autism

A great day! Ellie and Cody got to play all morning with their new friend, Jessie (their babysitter) and I got to go on a long bike ride. The kids and I are starting to get on each others nerves from being around eachother 24/7 so I finally got a babysitter twice this week (thank you Shana and Jessie!) I found out about the Ride 4 Autism earlier this week and decided it would be a great way to do a longer route in an unfamilar area. You can choose different routes from 7 miles to 100 and I decided 55 would be good yet doable challenge. Any longer and I need a friend to help to draft (as if I really do longer rides, ha!) I was able to ride a couple times with some big groups which was nice - drafting is so wierd to me how just having one or two people in front of you actually can feel like a vacuum. You hardly have to pedal!


The ride was mostly farm and small towns. This was a simple little barn but one of my favorites, not to metion the Porche framed quite nicely in the doorway.

u pick!

The next best thing to picking fresh produce from your own garden is picking it from someone elses (maybe even better, actually). Can I even begin to describe difference between these strawberries and ones from Wal-Mart or Costco? I think not. Just try to imagine what fruit might taste like in heaven. At home, we put the crate of strawberries on our dining room table to pop into our mouths as we walk back and forth in the kitchen and our entire house smells like sugar for the two days it takes us to eat them.

the bankhead girls! (half of them, at least)

Last week Grandma Jannie, Ashley and Court came for a too short visit. The weather was fab and I think my favorite part was not having to cook for 4 days! I kept meaning to make dinner or lunch, but after cooking every meal (including 2 dinners, one at 6:00 and one at 10:00) for the past 2 months I was ready for a kitchen duty break. We ate at some really yummy places, shopped, played at the beach, went on a safari, and took lots of naps.

Ashley, Jann, Courtney





Making the most of yet another windy day.





We went to the Wild Animal Safari at Six Flags. We were too scared to let the giraffe put his head in the sunroof but they tried! As you can imagine Ellie and Cody got a kick out of all the animals.

Ash and Walker, waiting outside a fun burger joint in Ocean Grove.

Ellie, Cody, Kelty

Homes in Ocean Grove. We went back last week for a city wide garage sale, wahoo!

After many attempts at a cute after church photo and this is the best I got.

Red Bank, another neat town with amazing multi-million dollar homes.

Bobby's Burger Palace! Owned by Bobby Flay