The Three Amigos

We had Ethan, Michelle and Nick sleep over this week.  We borrowed Grandma and Grandpa's Kayaks and headed up to Tibble Fork.  We got started pretty late, but had a blast. 

I told them to do something funny.  They had me laughing!

Simone's Stunts

Did I mention Jared has a thing against cheerleading?  We may have to make an exception for Simone.  When I ask her if she wants to play basketball when she is bigger, she says no, she wants to do "dance and cheerleading, just like Paige."  Paige is her sweet babysitter and friend that used to live across the street.  Simone pretty much stalked Paige.  She would watch her from our windows.  LOL.

She decided to try out some of her splits in mid-air a few days ago.  Looks like she's already practicing for cheer.

Fourth of July

Highlight of my Fourth of July was Miles selling this year.  He had his great big hat that he refused to sell for any price (he got lots of offers!).  He was quite the hustler.  Some of my favorite Miles quotes from the night:

"I hate it when they just walk by!"
"Get your glowsticks, totally awesome glowsticks, you know you want some!"

He made sure that everyone read the disclaimers about the light saber swords--"you can't fight with them or they will break, and you can't have your money back!"

He was really excited to be a part of everything this year.  Our friends the Harward's helped out a ton this year and it was so fun to have all their kids to work the booth too.

Elise and Noah have been friends since they were babies.  Noah sold more than any other walker we've ever had.  Super impressive!

Soren was a little dream baby and was so good!  Simone was also just played under the table and helped in the booth.  We were all exhausted the next day.  But it was fun as always!  We missed having Elise there since she was at camp.

Soren in awe of the fireworks!

BYU Basketball Camp

Elise had her dream week of all-you-can-eat food (fried mac and cheese was a favorite) and basketball all day long.  She was roomies with her friends cousin from California, Annie.  From what Elise says, Annie is an amazing basketball player, and her team knocked off Elise's in the tournament finals. They had a great time and Elise was super sore and tired when we picked her up.

She got to meet lots of new friends and enjoyed staying on the BYU campus in the dorms.

Soren giving Elise a goodbye snuggle before we dropped her off

Elise and Annie in front of the dorms after their tournament game

Blessing Day

Soren was blessed at home on July 1st.  It was a special day.  We decided there were a lot of great reasons to do the blessing at home in the evening instead of at our super early 8 am church.  It was so fun to have so many of our family members in town to celebrate Soren's special day!  Michelle and Brent were out visiting from Chicago, Cam and Chandice from California,  Bekah and Matt also happened to be in town.  We had ice cream and dessert, and all the grandparents came early for dinner.  Miles really, really wanted Soren to be blessed in the same outfit he was blessed in.  Soren was so good and was so sweet.  I loved seeing his cute big smiles at the end of the busy day.  We love our baby!

Horses

 

We had a fun FHE with some friends a couple of weeks ago.  They invited us to ride their horses.  My kids were thrilled, since they love animals.  Miles felt like he was already a pro since he had ridden horses before.  The cute little sheep, Millie, tried to eat some of the popsicles in the cooler.  And Elise had Soren laughing out loud.  It was a really fun night.

Lemonade!

Monet and Natalie had a blast selling lemonade and cookies.  They were excited to get lots of tips.   They had some great marketing and signage. 

Snowbird Mini-trip

We had a fun few days in Snowbird a couple of weeks ago.  Daytimes were filled with hiking, swimming and the fun playground.  It was so fun to be together and to have so many fun things to do.  I loved that Soren slept so great.  At night we went to dinner, watched movies and the Olympic time trials, and played solitaire on the iPad. 

We stayed in my parents timeshare at the Iron Blosam.  I have great memories of Snowbird from when I was little.  Each year, we had the same room and the same week.  It was funny to show the kids where I wrote "Rebekah is Dumb" on the cement wall behind the curtain.  It is still there in very faint red crayon.

I made a little bed for Simone out of the two chairs, just like I loved when I was little.

Our hike was pretty funny.  I thought we'd do a short little mile hike to Cecret Lake.  However, the road was still closed.  So we asked some ladies with a bunch of kids how long the road was to get to the trail.  they said it was a half mile.  Totally doable since we'd just done about four miles roundtrip with the kids to Stewart Falls.  We didn't want to burn them out on hiking with another longer hike than they were ready for. So we set off thinking it would be about three miles total.  The road seemed pretty long though.  And at about the halfway point I realized we were still a long way to the trail.  But everyone was doing pretty good, so we kept going.  We found a fun little place to rest and overlook the beautiful canyon.

Soren may be grow up thinking he has a few little mothers

Simone is all ready for her hike!  She is really excited to be wearing the fanny pack. 

We all got a good laugh from this one!  Simone is so funny.

Jared found a women's cowboy hat along the trail to shade his head.

This is Miles refusing to go one more step

This is Miles getting upset when we started taking pictures of his pouty face.

This is his fake smile

While Simone was very disappointed that we did not see a moose, we at least saw this marmot.

Finally we reached the trail to the lake.  Miles was already done at that point, but the sign said four tenths of a mile away.  There is no way it was less than a half mile.  The dialogue was pretty funny.  The pictures describe how much fun he had ; )

At the top, we learned that our "half mile to the trail" was actually 2 miles.  Making the trek six miles roundtrip because we'd been given wrong information.  Thankfully we found a different way back that was much shorter than the winding road we took in.  It ended up being a four hour hike.  Sorry kids!  I kinda felt bad for telling Miles to tough it out when we really should have turned back.  By the end, Jared's knee was killing, Simone's foot was hurting her and everyone slept great that night.

Twinners

The chipmunk that kept getting WAY too close to me and even jumped in my bag to look for trailmix

Soren loves Snowbird!  And you'll be happy to know, that I did finally realize that I could cut his crazy hair.  It is much better now.