Wow! Time Flies!

First things first... Pictures from Camille's Baptism...

Well, here I am looking at a calendar thinking, "Where did my summer go?" It is quite a depressing thing to realize that my time home with the kids is coming to an end, and as much as I do enjoy my job, I am going to miss the little stinkers! Our summer has been full of ups and downs. Some of the ups include our latest addition, baby Emilie, healthy kids, and time with family. The downs pretty much all have to do with our struggling economy and our involvement with everything that seems to be struggling the most. It is times like these that we realize how important family and faith really are, and are grateful to have both in our lives.

Baby Emilie is great! She is seriously the easiest baby, and we feel so blessed to have her. Spencer adores his "Lou Who" and I love watching the tough guy smoother her in tender kisses. Of course, she has to have a family nickname as all my kids have had as a baby. Hers is Emmy Lou Who. Hence, Spencer calling her Lou Who. I may finally have a kid that doesn't have dark brown eyes too, we'll see how that develops. She loves to move around (as I believe she has been accustomed to as the fourth kid-- she just moves around with the rest of the gang). She sleeps really well at night, which is a good thing, because naps are a thing of the past in my life. I am going to miss being with her when school starts. The verdict is still out on who she looks the most like. You'll have to decide.

Spencer turned into quite a "terrible two" right before Emilie was born, but has settled down a little. He is still quite a tough little guy who is all over the place. He hates that he can't go out with his sisters to play with their friends, but is easily distracted and seems to be content with whoever wants to play with him. He is kind of destructive though, and we have to watch him carefully. He ate a bunch of Camille's flouride last night, and we had our first call to poison control as a family. He is doing great, and I sure had a great time cleaning up all the puke. Spence took one session of swimming lessons and loved it. He will start again next summer. In the meantime, he is loving spending time with Grandma LeBras who does exercises, teaches him his letters, and plays with him every morning while I am at work.

Katelyn has grown quite a bit this summer! She is eating more, and has grown a few inches. She has spent the last 7 weeks (literally) every day in the pool, and is officially water safe! YEAH! She is starting to swim the short length of the pool, and is getting all geared up for swim team next summer! She also figure out how to ride a two-wheeler on her own this week. She is quite a smart little spit-fire and if you want to hear a really funny story about her, you'll have to ask me about it. All I have to say is that kid is very observant, and picks up on everything. Be careful what you say and do around her! :)

Camille is a teenager in a little girl's body. I am nervous for what is to come. She has been swimming everyday, and is quite a fish. She is becoming a breaststroker, just like her mama. She has had a great season, and I like hanging out with her around the pool. She has a following including one little boy who loves to talk to her everyday. She also found out this summer that she made Jr. Company for dance. This was a fun surprise, because it is a level higher than what she auditioned for. She loves to go to dance and especially loves to wear her costumes. We weren't planning on dance this summer, but making this company required some extra classes and a choreography camp, which she was delighted to attend.

We are plugging along working on lots of different projects, hoping our economy picks up a bit, so we can hang on. We are grateful for the work Cameron has been able to get, and are grateful that I have a job. We are excited to see cousins in a few weeks, and try to get our house in order before school starts.

For Angela

Angela has been so patient to wait for these Parade Home photos... Enjoy!




Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Master Bedroom Angle 2

Playroom Entry

Hand-Painted Playhouse

Girls Room 1



Girls Room 2

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Laundry

Mantle

Baby Room

Boys Room

Family Room

Front Room

She mde it!

Well, we are happy to announce that little Miss Emilie arrived on June 8th and is healthy! With the parade of homes being so crazy and all, I asked the doctor to push back my induction date. He said I couldn't do it over the weekend (which for our schedules was ideal-- the show is closed on Sunday and Monday) so I was going to be induced the following Tuesday. I was dead set on Sunday morning though, and I WILLED it to happen. I'm sure sweeping and lifting all the stuff to clean up the parade Saturday night helped it along a little but Emilie was just so aware of her mom and dad's stress, that she tried to help our lives out a bit. She came on her own and everything except the Epidural not working, went well. Over-all the recovery has been better physically... now if I could just catch up on my sleep and work, things should be okay. Needless to say that having a baby and trying to finish up the Parade has taken it's toll on our poor little family, but things should be getting back to normal this week (I hope!) We are so lucky to have so many people help us out during the last month or so. Anne, Nathalie, Caroline, Jolene, and Grandma Nola all came and helped with the kids, house, and parade this week, which we were SOOO grateful for. So far, Emilie has been a great baby. She sleeps a whole lot, and tolerates lots of holding and kissing from her older siblings. She has done great during the night, only waking up twice and going right back to sleep. The older girls LOVE being big sisters and love to hold and have "fun time" as Katelyn calls it with baby Emilie. We're not quite sure who she looks like. I think she has totally her own look. These are some pictures I stole from Caroline's blog because I haven't had time to get our stuff downloaded. Thanks again to everyone who supported the parade. We had LOTS of great comments, and are now just praying for that perfect buyer to come along.

BUSY!!!

Well, the Parade of Homes officially kicked off, and in the first two days we have already had around 625 people come through the house. It has been absolute chaos trying to get through these last two weeks to get ready. It's times like this that we are so grateful for all those around us who love us and help us get by. I just wanted to thank them all... Mom has been taking the kids, picking up the girls from dance, feeding us, and buying us lots of frozen food in preparation for HER departure to France. Nathalie has been here almost everyday watching the kids, sleeping over so I could help Cameron in the late night hours, picking up and dropping off kids, and working at the Parade taking tickets and popping popcorn. Anne has driven down numerous times to paint the playhouse in the playroom, landscape, and watch the kids for me (Brandon came down with her a few times to help out too!) Angela keeps in contact to offer advise and support and John and his family were lifesavers and helped get the landscaping done just in time. Caroline's portraits of the girls turned out great, and we've had a lot of comments on them. Casey and Ryan (Cam's employees) have worked a lot of overtime getting things ready. Betsy has been my chauffeur (with Cameron's car still out of commission) and babysat the kids for us. And... our poor kids, who have sacrificed time with us, stayed up way too late at night, even landscaped and cleaned the house to get things ready. We are so grateful to have so many great people around our family. Anyway, we are up and running, we hope that this parade brings Cameron lots of business and sells the houses we have available for sale.

We also officially finished the school year! The girls both had a great year, and enjoyed the new friends they made. and especially their teachers. The are also done with gymnastics, and after next week, dance is over for the summer. They have their big recital next Tuesday! I graduated all my 4th graders, who I sent on to the fifth grade teachers. My room is still a mess, but I told the school, it would have to wait until after the baby, cause things were too crazy.

And... we are planning on having our new baby sometime in the next seven days... ready or not! There is not a thing ready for her here right now, but we did manage to get the bassinet and car seat, so we'll be fine until after the parade. Oh yeah, and swim team starts tomorrow!

Camille

Camille has had a busy month! She turned 8 last week, and had a great birthday. She brought her favorite Krispy Kreme donuts to her classmates, and got to take her good friend Sarah with us to Brick Oven and to a movie the night of her birthday. This week she had a bunch of friends over for her birthday party. We took the whole lot of them to JUMP ON IT where the kids jumped themselves silly. Yesterday, she was baptized. We were so happy to have so many great family and friends come to spend this special day with her. Angela and Kennan came out from California, and Mike and his family came from Arizona. Cameron also did a great job on his official first baptism and confirmation. He was a little nervous, but he made it through, and it was very special for both Camille and Cameron. I have a bunch of pictures, but I will post them later! Again, thank you to all who came to support our family in this event. We are so grateful to be surrounded by good people who love our family!

Finally... the awaited Spring Break Update!

Life never ceases to amaze me... Things can get SOOO crazy, but we truly enjoy every moment we have with these crazy kids of ours. We went to Southern California for a MUCH needed break a few weeks ago. It was awesome to finally have a long vacation from school, and we used every minute of it hanging out with family and trying not to think about any stresses we left behind. I think we managed fairly well. Here are some of the pictures. ENJOY!

Spencer nose-to-nose with Nemo (or his dad) during a Disneyland parade!

All the cousins (except I think sleeping Ezra) at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. How fun it was to have ALL the LeBras cousins together for this outing (this does not happen very often)? My cousin Thi-Anh even came with her cute little girl, that was a fun bonus!

Spence and Brigham hanging out in the Stroller at Newport Beach! These two little guys had a lot of fun playing in the sand!

This is my happy boy! He especially enjoyed throwing the muddy sand balls!

Katelyn loved hanging out at the pool!

Definitely a highlight was going into downtown LA to watch the play Wicked! It was sooo awesome! You'll even catch Cameron singing the songs! The girls were absolutely mesmorized! Thanks to Angela for getting our awesome seats way back!

How fun to have cousins the same age? Camille and Kennan loved messing around together!

Look how Spencer would not let go of Mickey's hand! It was so cute! Spencer was so excited to see Mickey, he kept hugging him and giving him high fives. Definitely a highlight for Spence.

It was fun to see Spence with Winnie the Pooh too. He kept looking at him saying hi and bye.

The three cutest kids ever! Thanks for the cool sunglasses Jolene!

These two buds had fun messing with the girls during the "Bug's Life" 3D movie. Spence was fascinated, the girls were screaming.

These two were too short for the big rides, so while Daddy took Camille on Grizzly Rapids, I took these two to meet Kenai from Brother Bear.

All in all, a great trip, definitely too short, but we made lots of memories. We hope to do this again sometime. It was fun to hang out with so many family members and enjoy watching the kids play with each other. These are the kinds of trips they will remember! Thanks to all those who were there!

Count-down to Spring Break

I don't have any new pictures, but felt that a little update was needed. We are officially on our count-down to Spring Break. This is a much needed vacation for us all, and we are so excited to be able to hook up with so many family members in California. The kids are excited to spend time with cousins, and I am looking forward to catching up on SLEEP. I stayed up almost all night last night to finish my National Board certification papers, and I actually made my goal of mailing it TODAY! Hooray! We are also done with Cameron's company taxes for 2007, and now just have one more large task looming. The huge and detailed executive summary that is needed for our condo project. We are feeling optimistic after completing the previous large tasks in the last week however. The kids are doing well in school and their other activities. The Parade of Homes House in Provo is looking great, and now we are getting to do the fun decorating parts. We are excited to showcase Cameron's work. We hope the market recoops for the Spring and Summer and that we can sell all our homes. We do feel so blessed to be able to continue working though through this crazy time, because we know (from seeing our friends and Cameron's associates) that things could be much worse. Anyway, hope everyone has a great break and that you all travel safely!