Summer Time

This summer was BUSY! We started out with a trip to the Green River up at Flaming Gorge with my parents and most of my siblings. Dave's boss has a cabbing up there and he let us stay and borrow his 12 man raft to enjoy the river. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins.

Brooklyn and her cousin Petra were enamored with the horses that were on the land beside the cousin's hotel. They made as many trips as possible to visit and feed these guys.

This summer was crazy busy with church stuff. I'm working with our congregation's teenage girls and we had a girls camp, a youth conference, hosted a carnival for neighborhood kids, and weekly activities. It was a ton of work and I finished the summer completely exhausted and ready to ask for another job. But I hung in and am hoping that I will have more energy with everyone back in school. Hopefully after the first few weeks I'll be able to catch a few quiet moments to rejuvenate.

My friend Tenille came and visited us a few times. The kids enjoyed messing around with their bonus auntie. She always brings a million projects for them (and me) to work on.

We took Tenille to the Upper Provo Falls for an adventure. It's not a tough hike down to the water, and from there you can go up or down stream. trek through the water and enjoy several water falls.

It's a little bit of a drive, but totally worth it a few times a year. The kids loved getting wet and sharing the hike with Tenille.

The boys decided they wanted to take on sewing plushies this summer. They sewed the facial features on by hand, picked out the colors, and I sewed it all together. They each made a stuffed animal, then they made this penguin to give to our friend's baby for his first birthday.

We also hiked up to silver lake a few times. The kids love scaling every rock they can for the entire hike. They always enjoy this hike, but unfortunately the stream they usually damn up was dry due to the drought. That was very disappointing for them, but hopefully we'll get enough rain this winter that it will be back next summer.

Every summer we also go to the library to make Harry Potter crafts. This year the kids enjoyed making a time turner, golden snitch (out of chocolate), some flying keys, a notebook with a Hogwarts logo on it, and a quill. They also got to play wizard's chess with some other kids at the library. They kicked the other kid's butts! Logan's been practicing his chess and the bigger kids were a little put out that little kids were beating them.

The weekend before school started we did a 2 night campout with a family from the neighborhood. It was so nice to get away from the city and just enjoy nature. 

Right behind our camp site was a stream that the kids had a blast wading in and floating things down the river. It was the perfect temperature and we saw a few animals (squirrels, a moose, a snake...).

The kids went with me shopping to get the food for the trip and BEGGED me to get a monster tub of cheetoes puffs. They decided they tasted best roasted over the fire.

We also hiked up Doughnut falls with our friends. It was fun to hike with friends, and although Logan got stung by a wasp, it was a great adventure. It's been a bad year for wasps here! Dave also got stung, and Brooklyn had 3 stings earlier this year!

Over all it was a good summer. Busy, and over way too fast, but we had a lot of fun.