Seven Peaks

Knowing that we wouldn't be doing much in terms of summer vacation this year,

I decided to invest in the "Pass of all Passes".

I spent about $32 a person on them, but they also each came with a $20 gift card.

(We got one card to Target, one to Wal-Mart and two to CostCo.)

So really, we paid just over $10 a piece.

The card is issued through Seven Peaks, which is a water park.

But it includes lots of other venues.

We have loved attending various sporting events.

The guys even went to see Motor Cross one evening while I was studying for finals.

We have been happy to find that the passes have more than paid for themselves many times over.

And with all the use we were getting, it wasn't going to hurt my feelings if we never hit the water park.

For some reason I was really scared to take my kids there.

Neither of them are super strong swimmers and I just envisioned inevitable drownings.

Then I got lost in a world of morning sickness, and it wasn't really a consideration anyway.

And just as I started to feel better and think about the possibility, Ammon got stitches and couldn't swim.

But I finally decided it was time for us to try it out.

I wasn't brave enough to take the boys by myself, so I asked Andy to take a day off work.

And it was SOOOO fun!

I felt like the boys were really safe the entire time.

The only place that makes me even a little bit nervous is the wave pool.

And only the idea of them going into the pool without a parent.

We hit the kiddie pool first.

Then took our first turn in the wave pool.

From there we spent a good hour in the lazy river.

The kids just wanted to go around and around and around.

Finally, we headed out for some of the slides.

Andrew, Ammon and Peter got a triple rider tube and went down together.

It was such a great way to spend an afternoon.

I am looking forward to going back!

Family Baking

Lately I've been spending a night a week with each child, teaching them how to cook a meal.

They decided they were interested in having cinnamon rolls for dinner.

Obviously, that wasn't going to work.

So on Sunday evening we decided we could make a treat.

But summer is starting to drag on.

We are starting to get some restlessness at home.

So by the time we were ready to bake, Peter and Andrew "helped" by staying out of the way.

They went outside and had a marshmallow gun fight.

And Ammon and I got to work.

I traditionally make cinnamon rolls at Christmas.

And we make a lot!

I decided to experiment by cutting the recipe in half.

It worked wonderfully!

We ended up with 16 cinnamon rolls.

(Which was still enough to over-indulge even after sharing with my parents and grandparents.)

Boy are the delicious!

Three cinnamon rolls later, I now remember why I only make them once a year.

They are irresistible.

Shave Ice

The name "shave ice" drives my husband crazy.

Why isn't it shaveD ice?

But either way, the boys LOVE it.

We had a chance to enjoy some at an open house for Peggy's work.

It was bright, colorful, huge and delicious!

A perfect summer treat.

Visit From the Toothfairy

Peter spent the school year watching his peers lose their teeth.

It was always a special and exciting event.

Their teacher would always recognize them and give them a special box to take their tooth home in.

On occasion, Peter would sadly wonder when his turn would come.

His teeth weren't even lose.

Then, out of the blue, he came running out of the bathroom and showed me his tooth.

In his hand!

"Peter, what happened?  Did you even know you had a lose tooth," I asked.

(Because I sure didn't.)

He explained,
"My tooth started to hurt so I decided I needed to brush it.

When I started brushing it, it just came out!"

And that was that.

He was SOOO excited for the Tooth Fairy to come.

At bed time he promptly tucked himself in and was asleep almost immediately.

He even made sure to clean his room in preparation of her visit.

The world felt a little more magical that night,

and I was grateful for the influence of a six year old in our home.

4th of July

We spent the morning of the 4th of July catching up on some much needed yard work.

The boys felt like they were being tortured.

The parents felt like the children weren't working hard enough.

We thought we were going to have to cancel anything fun.

But we eventually got the work finished and headed out to join some cousins.

We had wanted to go to Riverton's "diving for dollars" that they do each year.

We have never made it and with Andrew being home from work and us living so close, I thought this would be the year.

But then Ammon got stitches and couldn't swim.

Guess we'll try again next year.

As it turns out, my sister and her family, who go EVERY year, slept in and missed it as well.

(That made me feel a little less bad about not being able to do it this year.)

But what we DID do was have a great time at the haystack dive!

It is kind of like a 4th of July Easter egg hunt.

Candy and toys are distributed throughout the hay and the kids get to run through it and grab what they can.

It is divided into age groups.

Peter and Isaiah went first and had a great time.

A little while later it was Ammon and Kylie's turn.

The kids were all really cute about sharing their prizes.

Different kids had different treasures that they wanted.

The older kids were sure to deliberately pick up some things for the younger kids.

And the younger kids ended up with some items that the older kids wanted.

I love how well these kids get along.

We spent the evening with my parents and grandparents.

We had a nice BBQ and enjoyed visiting with them for several hours.

We even joined my dad in his traditional 4th of July viewing of  A More Perfect Union.

Then we went home just in time to climb up onto the roof and watch fireworks.

(Well, everyone else did - I was too scared.)

My sister and her family joined us.

Fireworks were shooting off in every direction.

It was a beautiful view.

Phone Pictures

I use my camera less and less lately.

I get pictures on the camera.

But I haven't been good about figuring out how to blog them.

I still don't know how to turn them into collages.

So here is a massive picture dump.

The first pictures are the most recent - they get older as you go through this post.

On this particular Sunday, I woke up to people screaming.

But we ultimately got ready for church in plenty of time.

And the boys played happily until it was time to go.

Then, we came home and the boys got in such a big fight, they actually hit each other with PVC pipe.

They really do get along so well MOST of the time.

But like all families, we also have our moments.

We ran out of propane while cooking our Father's day dinner.

It took us a MONTH to get it replaced.

This was our first meal with the new propane.

Welcome back, grill!

We missed you.

Grandpa went to the hospital for several days.

He had pneumonia.

Grandma brought him home against medical advise.

They wanted to release him to a care facility for further recovery.

It's been a rough recovery and we are still trying to figure out what he needs.

But he has his good moments too.

Peter had fun showing Grandma a game he likes.

Of course she was more than willing to download it onto her iPad for him.

Andrew had a chance to go spend a day with Ammon at Scout Camp.

Peter and I took that opportunity to have lunch at Brick Oven with a coupon he had brought home from school.

It was good food and excellent company!

I love having dates with my boys.

We had a chance to attend an open house for Lone Peak Hospital.

Gramma Peggy is working there and they are getting ready for the hospital to open.

The shave ice was amazing and HUGE.

The boys were in heaven.

We've had fun hanging out at my parents new house.

A lot of us have been in and our - almost more than normal.

Between guys going over to help haul some big items that are still getting situated,

and several of us checking in on Grandpa, it's been fun to see everyone so often.

My hair was getting too LONG and TOO thick.

I decided it was just "pregnancy" hair and I couldn't stand it anymore.

So I called my friend, and she took care of me.

I'm loving my new hair cut.

On July 5th we went out to a BBQ at my sisters house.

We stayed up late watching fireworks.

When we got home, we saw this iron mark in our carpet.

The iron was still plugged in and laying face down on a cheerios box.

Quite frankly, we are amazed a fire didn't start.

It was a scary sight to find and realize what could have happened.

Thankfully, this burned carpet is the worst of it.

(And just for posterity's sake - Ammon was the culprit.)

Here is Grandpa the night he came home from the hospital.

He hadn't slept for about three days.

Sadly, his not sleeping didn't improve at home.

We have had lots of crazy rain storms.

It goes from a hot summer day to insane amounts of rain.

This picture was trying to capture the flowing water racing down the streets.

You can also see the white in the bottom left corner of my lawn.

That is the hail.

On the 4th of July we had fun meeting the Hansen cousins for the Riverton haystack dive.

We've done this with them a time or two before.

It's turning into a fun tradition.

That evening we invited them over to watch fireworks from our roof.

I couldn't handle being up there, but everyone else loved it.

We've been having "cooking" lessons once a week or so with each boy.

Peter has made biscuits and gravy and bagel pizza.

Ammon has made chicken nuggets with french fries and spaghetti.

It's been fun.

Now I just need to be better about helping them think of new meals.

On the day of my parents move, we had a fun time playing with cousin Allister.

Technically I was babysitting, but between my boys and my sisters girls, I hardly even held him.

We had several different days of helping with the move.

After one of them, we took the boys to the park and had pizza.

It was a fun finish to our day.

Here is our first picture of our baby.

I am dying to find out the gender.

(Well, we *think* it's a girl, but we want to know for sure.)

I just have a hard time feeling like this is real when I don't know if I'm having a boy or girl.

We won't be disappointed if it's a boy.

But it just drives me crazy that we are so convinced it is a girl without really knowing.

Five more weeks and then hopefully the mystery will be solved.

This was when Andrew worked on some leaks in the swamp cooler.

The boys got up on the roof with them and they decided that they would go up for the 4th of July.

Before I knew my summer was going to be spent feeling deathly ill, I planned a "summer school".

We had eight "students" in total - my kids and several of their cousins.

It was a nice idea, but in the end, it fizzled out.

I just didn't have the stamina to keep up with it, and never really got it properly organized.

The summer started out with some fun game playing.

Our peach tree is producing like crazy.

We really need to go thin things out.

The peaches are growing too close to each other, there are just so many!

Manti Pageant

I started seeing Facebook posts popping up about people being down at the Manti Pageant.

I was disappointed that life got away from me and we forgot to plan to go.

We were engaged at the Manti Pageant on June 16, 2001.

The week of the 16th was over and we had missed our chance.

I wasn't thinking straight.

Yes, we had missed our anniversary weekend.

But the pageant runs for TWO weeks.

We still had time to go!

We turned it into a fun weekend getaway.

In a not so smart move, we started our "weekend" with a family sleep out on the trampoline.

That means that the adults headed to Manti on very little sleep...

We are definitely feeling our age these days.

The trampoline did not agree with us.

But it was fun to know we all slept out as a family.

The first stop we made was to see the Payson temple.

It is currently under construction and we could see straight through it in some points.

We were amazed at how big it is.

Next, we stopped in Nephi.

We had lunch at Wendy's and then played at a park.

In the future, we might try to remember the fun water park we saw.

But we didn't want to spend the extra money and we didn't bring swimming clothes anyway.

We got to Manti around 3:00.

I think we were practically the first people to get to town.

In the future we'll probably aim for closer to 5:00.

Just as we were getting out of the car, there was a huge thunder.

Andy insisted that he had checked the weather tons of times and there was ZERO chance of rain.

I argued that the clouds overhead seemed to disagree.

Almost immediately we were feeling drops of rain.

But they were few and far between.

We explored the temple grounds.

The boys looked down at the graveyard and wanted to know what it was.

We took them to it and they were completely fascinated by the tombstones.

But then the rain REALLY started.

It came pelting down in sheets.

We ran to the pavilion for cover.

The storm probably didn't last more than about ten minutes.

It was a fun adventure and cooled off the day just enough.

And eventually our blanket dried out...

After the storm, the boys wanted to go back to the graveyard again.

Then we spent hours waiting for the pageant to start.

(It begins at 9:30 PM)

We played games, at the food we brought for dinner, and took naps...

The boys loved the pageant, though Peter got tired and fell asleep before it ended.

Afterwards we raced to our car to try to get out of town before the gridlock hit.

It took us about ten minutes to get out of town - about eight of those minutes at a stand still.

I think the traffic out is the one thing that makes me not want to do this every year.

That, and just how late at night it is.

But we had a great time and were so glad we went.

The other thing that was nice is that we only had to drive half way home.

We had arranged with Andrew's sister to spend the night at her house in Spanish Fork.

We got there around 1:00 in the morning.

She had prepared bedding for us, and we went straight to sleep.

The next morning the cousins had lots of fun playing with each other.

We were there until well into the afternoon and the kids still didn't want to leave.

It was a fun visit.

(But we were SO glad to be back in our own beds that night!)

Some June Highlights

My mother-in-law surprised everyone by buying herself a new car.  She was happy to show it off and even let people take it out on test drives.  Not being a car person myself, I was happy to send the boys with Andrew and Grandpa to take a ride.  But when they got back, Andrew insisted on taking me out as well.  I originally told him to take a shorter route then they had previously done, but I quickly changed my mind.  It was a fun ride!

We had a great time going to the Bee's game as a family.  As per normal, I was feeling pretty crummy and really debated until the last minute whether or not I would go.  I finally decided that I could be sick there just as easily as I could at home.  That was almost true.  We had a fun time, but I had a hard time making it back to the car.  We ultimately ended up having the boys and me sit along the side of the road while Andrew went and brought the car to us.  But I'm glad I went.  The seats were great and it was a fun way to spend the evening.  The boys enjoyed learning more about baseball.

My sister-in-law bought summer movie tickets.  Once a week she takes her kids to a Wednesday morning movie.  We have been invited to join her a couple of times now, and it's been a great way to get out of the heat.

We had another baptism.  It was a lovely morning at the church followed by a fun afternoon back at their house.  Andrew's brother introduced everyone to a team game where they all logged in on their individual i-pads and then had to shout out commands to each other to perform certain game-specific tasks.  It was pretty hilarious to watch!

I think that the most memorable June event for us was Ammon getting stitches.  We were helping my parents move and Ammon managed to walk right into some metal that just ripped his foot right open.  He has had stitches once before, and was terrified at the possibility of going to the doctor and getting more.  Carolyn jumped in and saved the day.  She carried him to and from the car, kept him distracted with interesting conversation, and really cheered him on.  Ultimately he ended up with eight stitches.