July 2017

 July was a great month. I just kept thinking throughout the month how nice it was to be home. We were gone most of the summer last year. I have lots of pictures of my friend Ang with my kids. She's been around from day one and they sure love it when she comes over. This picture is Abby  pretending to be a reporter with her Barbie camera and interviewing Ang. 

I love the sunsets from my house. We seem to have beautiful views in every direction.

 

We officially celebrating Darren's 40th birthday. His birthday party was going to Canada to bike in Whistler. But the kids insisted we have some candles which we stuck in play dough since we ate ice cream.  

Fun  pictures of Darren when he was little. I see a lot of my kids in these pictures.  

Fun hike with cousins and Melchoirs to the Suspension bridge in Draper.  

The boy cousins went to the cabin to help Grandma with some projects.

Slip and slide got pulled out a few times.  We made it to a bees game and saw fireworks.

Ella spent some time with Victoria. 

Kirsty Barnes came in from Tasmania Australia.  I got her up on the wall to do a little climbing.  

We meet Neti Call from Seattle downtown one day to see a fun museum.  We had the Bailey girls with us too... and I ran into my cousin Cressent Nielson who was down here from Cache Valley.

Ella is super excited about her new tumbling place.  Trampoline and Tumbling.  She got her new outfit.  wow.  lots of sparkles!

Climbing Kings Peak - Day 1

31.6 miles in four days

Start at Henrys Fork Trailhead early Monday morning. The first 3.2 miles were hard.  Everyone adjusting to their packs and carrying heavy weight.  

  

Then we got off the main trail and went a few more miles to Bear Lake.  We found a beautiful spot to camp.  Those last couple miles were really really hard for everyone.  We had taken the longer loop to be more scenic and pretty... and everyone just wanted to get there and be done.  But it was amazing once we got there

We filtered a lot of water and were all so ready for bed.  Darren wasn't with us yet so the kids and I had a lot of work to do.  

Nellie and Jordan in town

So fun to have Aunt Nelly and Jordan come to Utah. We sure tried to pack as much as we could in. Since I work at momentum we got everybody in to practice climbing. I told Seth to be open to the idea of climbing because he shot it down at first thought. But we were pretty happy  when he got on the wall and climbed 

We took some paddle boards out to a little lake in Alpine. It's fun to see my kids grow up and do cool things

Corie hosted us for a wonderful dinner. She's always so good.  The kids made up a play with tricks for us to watch. And we played some fun games. 

Tyler's wreck

 Tyler and Darren headed to the bike park one night. They decided it would be a quick trip and just put on Tyler's regular helmet instead of his full face helmet. They were practicing some jumps when he crashed. I came home from a meeting to see Tyler pretty banged up.  He lost one tooth and has some pretty good scars. We're still recovering from the damage to his teeth. He had terrible pain for about two months before we realized that his canine had cracked all the way through. After a root canal and taking off all of his braces and planning to get a crown on in the future… I think we're finally recovered from the bike wreck. 

Balls cousins for the weekend

 July 14 and 15th....We sure love having our Balls cousins over anytime. We did a few fun things  well Nolan and Corey enjoyed our weekend getaway for their birthday. The boys were eager to help pick the garden. We watched 24 July parade. We planned on doing fireworks so Marshall and Abby had to take a little nap. 

 We went to a fun park and had breakfast while the kids played in the sunshine.