july: church stuff

July was pretty church-y in general, so that's probably a good thing, right? ;) 

I jumped right into my new gospel doctrine calling and my kids jumped right into snuggling with me on various occasions whenever I busted out my lesson to study... possibly I should have chosen somewhere besides my comfy bed to work... hmmm...

 Ward Temple Night with Chuck. I beat him there (he was just getting off work) so I sat outside and enjoyed the flowers and crazy blue sky and beautiful spires!

 Sabbath day activities: puzzles, looking cute, Sorry, Boggle, more cute smiles, Clyde crunching corn flakes for chicken dinner....

 Okay, this made me laugh. The boys were doing some project and first set up shop in the playroom chair, only to move to the living room chair a few minutes later... but still in the same formation? Minus the Thor mask; it must have served its purpose and been let go.

 Ward 4th of July breakfast! This was the morning after we got back from our Utah trip, so Chuck was at work and the rest of us were an odd mixture of tired and ambitious - so we rode bikes to the breakfast and then lazed away the rest of the day. The primary/Activity Day girls did a cute program about the history of American flags and we got to see the Duffys, so it was a great morning!

Couple other temple dates throughout the month with Kautri and Maren! 

Ohhh man. My absolute favorite Sister Murphy scared us all very thoroughly in July. Her sweet daughters (who are also my favorites!) Penny and Kiska came to town to stay with her because they're amazing. I got to visit Dee a couple times which helped reassure me that she was in excellent hands and all would be well. Kiska and I looked pretty sharp in our matching yellow protective gear, if I do say so myself ;). My kids all painted 'get well' pictures too - we all love Sister Murphy SO much.

Clyde and Will suited up in cute matching shirts to go to Cub Scout Day Camp in mid-July.  Clyde's favorite was archery and Will's favorite was leather-making and my favorite was these cute brother pictures.  

Chuck suited up to go to Boy Scout camp at the end of July! It was a bit of a last minute recruitment, but blessedly he could get the time off and head up there (and blessedly it was the same week that our niece Mallory came to town to hang out with me and the kids ... more on that in a future post....). I think this was Chuck's 6th consecutive year going to Boy Scout camp (insert high five emoji hahaha).

And here are the cute boys he got to keep an eye on during the week: five boys from our ward and three boys from... Europe? the Alps? who were adopted by our troop for camp. 

I enjoyed the random pictures Chuck texted me throughout the week or that I pulled off his phone later, including these pictures of deer running through the shooting range which seems alarming! 

More pictures from camp, including Brother Murphy, who spent most of the summer there teaching the cooking merit badge. His intention was to ignore Chuck's attempts to take his picture until Chuck pulled Brother Murphy's own trick on him to get him to smile... a trick that is probably not appropriate to share in a 'church stuff' post hahahahaha.

Chuck sent us letters in the mail and we were able to text and talk on the phone so we did pretty well during the week without him buuuuut we were still thrilled to have him home, so we put lots of enthusiasm (aka paint) into our "Daddy's home YAY!!!" sign:

Aaaaand that was July's church stuff, good times!