Scout Camp

Oh the fun of scout camp!  Mike spent a week with his crazy scouts at camp, and they all came back in one piece!!  Well, mostly, one came back with a cut finger from his knife addiction.  Did you notice Mike's awesome mustache from his week ruffing it, he started doing the scruffy thing at Lake Powell and this is the great result.  We hung out with my family a lot and tried to have fun while Mike was away.  The kids were very happy to have their daddy back, this is the Sunday after he got home.  I can't believe Ben can still fit on Mike's shoulders.

So the same week as Scout camp we had our annual campout at my parent's house.  I hung out with everyone, but took Eliza home to sleep in our nice cozy house.  I did leave Ben and Hailey to sleep there and they had so much fun!

Brighton Hike

True weekend warrior fashion, after the Tour de Donut we headed up the canyon to do the Lake Solitude hike.  We picked up my cousin Amanda, who came with us for fun and to also help with the kids.  We met the Bower family and had a great picnic lunch before we started the hike.  Amanda and the girls (Hailey and Caelie) hung out most of the time and were great hiking buddies.  I was amazed at how great the kids did on the hike!  I thought Ben would be too worn out after his race, but he cruised up the mountain like all the other kids.  Eliza enjoyed hiking, and Mike and I took turns carrying her so she didn't have to walk the whole time.  Jon and Lynette took turns carrying cute little Simon who was only a couple months old.  The kids enjoyed running after squirrels when we made it to the lake.  It was a great day!!!

Tour De Donut

Ben's 1st 7-mile bike race!  Last year we cheered Mike on for the Tour de Donut, and this year Ben joined in on the fun!  Mike and Ben did a 7 mile circuit race. The other riders were cheering on Ben as he went around the course.  There were other kids in the race but most of them were picked up somewhere along the way.  Ben was determined to finish and did great!  The race course is full of pot-holes that they mark with spray paint.  Ben did really good at avoiding all the pot-holes that were marked, but unfortunately hit one that wasn't marked and went down and hurt his knee.  But, he got back up and kept going!  Ben was the first one in the kids division to finish the race, so he won a first place trophy!!!  And, best of all was the chance to enjoy the delicious donuts! (Ben was riding his super fast bike that he had saved $135 of his allowance for!  Ben is amazing at saving his money to get what he wants, and he saved a long time for his bike.)

A few days before this race, Ben was wondering why the scriptures didn’t mention dinosaurs before people. And where did Indians fit into the whole picture of history?  We had to have a long talk about when dinosaurs lived and who exactly Indians were.  Luckily I took a Native American class in college.  You never know when such things will come in handy with kids.

Lake Powell

Oh the fun of Lake Powell!  There was supposed to be a big group going down to Lake Powell to Mike's family's houseboat.  But last minute Mike's sister Nikki and her family and Mike's brother Tyson cancelled.  Eliza and I  also decided not to go.  I started feeling sick the week before we were supposed to go, and it didn't sound like that much fun to go to Lake Powell sick with a 1 year old.  I was dizzy, nauseous, and extremely fatigued.  I went to my Dr. and they ran blood tests but found nothing so I ended up being sick for a total of six weeks, no fun!

Back to Lake Powell. Mike took Ben and Hailey and they had so much fun!  Mike's parents, and Becky and Justin, with their boys, were all there.   Hailey was brave and learned how to knee board, she was great and hung on like a champion.  Ben also enjoyed  knee boarding again for his third year.  These pictures are from their adventure to the Indian ruins.  They went swimming in canyons that had 200 feet deep water.  They collected rocks, bbs, shells, shot Mike's bb gun, jumped off mini cliffs, went on a hike  and dug up crystals.  The kids shot fish with marshmallows out of a homemade blowgun.  Ben jumped off the boxes on the back of the houseboat, and Hailey jumped out of the deck of the houseboat.  Ben was disappointed that Mike wouldn't let him jump off the roof!  Next year.  The pictures of the kids eating on the rocks were one morning when they woke up before everyone else, so they went on a little hike and ate breakfast on the rocks.  Ben a Hailey had an amazing time!

Fourth of July Weekend

What a weekend!!!  It all started with a great bbq at my parent's house.  I love my parent's backyard, it is the best for summer bbq's and fun.  The kids had a great time slip n' sliding down the hill, then we had a great meal as always.  My cousin was married the previous day, so my dad's Aunt Connie was in town along with the parents of the bride (who were from China).  This was a normal crazy bbq for us but our visitors were a little surprised by some of the fun things we did.  Aly  had made some cupcakes that looked like corn on the cob, and they had no clue what they were or how to eat them.  We also made smores in the fire pit and they had never seen those before in their lives.  We showed them all great things American I guess.  We ended with a great firework display from the fire pit and had a great time!

The next day we headed out for some camping and motorcycle riding with Mike's family.  His brother Cory was there with his family, along with Mike's parents.  All my kids love riding along with Mike.  I love motorcycle riding also, but am not brave enough to take the kids.  Ben did great riding on his own, but there were lots of kids that wanted to ride the smaller motorcycles so he mostly rode with Mike this trip.

And the fun weekend continues!  On the actual 4th of July our neighborhood did a great parade and breakfast!  The parade went down the street to the church and was led by a firetruck.  Ben thought it was a race so he cruised out ahead of us to beat all those slow parade goers.  Breakfast was great and the kids even got a turn to spray the water from the fire truck's hoses.  After breakfast we decided we might as well use our pass of all passes and headed to 7 peaks.  We thought it would be busy but it was mostly empty.  We had so much fun and got to go down all the slides we wanted.  Ben's big goal of the summer was to go down the shotgun falls, which is a slide with an 8 foot drop at the end into a pool.  He had to learn how to swim across the pool on his own before he could do that.  I had Hailey and Ben in swim lessons and we had gone to 7 peaks before this.  We told Ben if he could swim across the swim pool on his own he could go down shotgun falls the next time we went to 7 peaks.  We never imagined he would actually be able to do it any time soon.  Sure enough, the next swim lesson he swam across the pool on his own.  So, he got what he wanted and we went down shotgun falls multiple times.  He did so amazing swimming on his own!  I was surprised how many rides Hailey and Eliza could go on.  Mike took Hailey and I took Eliza on my lap and we went down almost every tube ride.  I thought it would scare Eliza, but my little crazy thing loved every second of it!  We ended up going to 7 peaks about 6 times during the course of the summer