Sunset Peak

We had some time after Kate and Sara went back to school and before Matt did and Abby had some summer fun at her preschool so Matt and I took advantage of it.  We wanted to hike up Sunset Peak so we did.  The weather was great and we had a ton of fun.

We saw a huge moose just a ways off the trail.  That was pretty cool.

We stopped just up above Lake Katherine.  And then kept on going,

Sunset Peak is one of my favorites because it's not too hard of a hike, but the views from the top is pretty amazing.  Matt is really fun to hang out with.  We had an awesome time!

Happy birthday, Kate!

Kate was so excited for her 11th birthday.  It's a big one in our house because Matt got an ipod on his 11th birthday so that became our minimum age for having one.  The deal is you have to have shown that your responsible and you have to pay for half of it.  Kate had spent some of her money so she'd been working hard to have enough.  It was close!

She wanted to stay home all day and play her ipod but she decided to go to school in the morning so she could take a birthday treat to school and see her friends.

So I checked her out at lunch.  We went to In-N-Out and then she played on her ipod the rest of the day!  I can't believe Kate is 11!  She is growing up so quickly I can't believe it.  I am so proud of the girl she is.  She is really good at going with the flow.  She's a little scatter brained but doesn't let that bother her.  She just keeps on keeping on! I love that she loves being outdoors and that she's not afraid of an adventure! She is so much fun to go camping and hiking with.  She's a tough little monkey and even though sometimes she forgets that, when she remembers, she's a rock star!  She is full of emotion and sometimes that can be rough to handle and it makes her unpredictable which adds to the fun! I love her so much!

She didn't want to have a birthday party, just a stay late with a bunch of her friends.  They had pizza, played outside, painted nails and giggled.  A lot.  It was fun for her!  Happy birthday, Kate!

Kate has started the orthodontic process.  She had to have an expander and it took a long time to get her mouth right.  And then when her orthodontist was happy with her mouth she had to leave it in for three months.  She got her top braces on with it in and had to wait a couple of months before she was ready for her bottoms.  It's quite the process, but we can already see some great alignment.

Snowbird

Jerry visited his dad one weekend, so the kids and I headed up to one of my favorite places.  We hiked, we watched the storm come in, we played heads up, we saw a leopard...

Back to School

It was so hard to face the fact that Kate and Sara had to go back to school in July.  We were all complaining.  This is when I really hate year round school.  It's so hard when we've played so much all summer long and we want to keep staying up late and sleeping in and playing outside.

But there's not a whole lot we can do about it, so we went back to school.

Sara was actually excited to go back to school.  She loves it.  I loved that she wanted to wear her poison spider bike shirt.  And then I really loved when she came out of the bathroom with purple and pink streaks in her hair.  I think they look really cute on her.  3rd grade.

Kate was not excited about going back to school.  She wore flip flops to school which is against the rules.  When I mentioned that she said, "I'm still on summer break, mom."  I totally wish we were!  6th grade.

Causey Reservoir

Causey Reservoir is one of our most favorite places to go paddleboarding.  It's not big enough for boats so you don't have to worry about that.  It gets pretty packed with other paddleboarders and kayakers and stuff, but they don't cause much of a problem.  We had a great day up there with the kids, one of the top five of paddle board days for sure!

Not a bad picnic spot!

This time we paddled up to one of the inlets.  We did that when we first got there, before the wind picked up too much.  It was still a tough paddle.  Matt and Kate were working together and they had to work hard.  They did great though!  Matt's almost as strong as me and getting more and more mentally tough.  It's great to push him and see what he can do!  It was truly a beautiful day!

After we paddled to the inlet, we came back to the main area and met some friends.  We messed around on the boards and had some other fun.  Abby got in the water and didn't want to get out at all.  She swam around for a long, long time and had so much fun doing it.  She'd just stay close to our board but she didn't want any help.  It made me happy to see her so comfortable in the water.

We also had a little fun cliff jumping.  Matt had the most fun with it.

Swimming lessons and bike rides

The girls all had swimming lessons this summer.  They did well.  Abby had the most progress because she didn't want to do much of anything at the beginning, but by the end she was much more comfortable in the water.  It was fun to see her improve and feel proud of herself.  She had some great teachers who were very patient with her and also pushed her when she needed it; they dunked her a few times so she'd get over being afraid to put her face in the water.  It didn't really work, but it was a nice try!

We also spent a lot of time riding bikes and having fun on the long boards.  Abby is getting pretty good on the strider bike!

Bloods Lake

We heard about this little mountain lake called Bloods Lake and Jerry and I decided to hike in our paddleboards.  It was so fun.  It wasn't a long hike but enough to get away from people.  There were other people on the banks of the lake but no one else was on it.  That was fun.  Also, it's not in a watershed area which is rare so we could bring dogs here.  We didn't bring Tulo this time, but I totally want to.  It was a fun evening out with Jerry.  Can't wait to go again!

I love trying fun things on the board.  Right now I'm working on standing on the back edge so that you can turn fast.  I really didn't want to fall in this time because the sun was going down and it wasn't so warm and I managed to stay on the board!  You can steer it better standing back like this, but it's harder to balance.  Fun though.

Aim High

I had to spray paint some things for our upcoming Girl's Camp so I decided to spray paint some other things in our backyard.  Sara helped me and she had so much fun doing it.  She said to me, "When I grow up, I don't want to be a teacher anymore.  I want to be a spray paint artist.  I'll even spray paint people's houses if I have to!"  I almost died laughing.  It came out so funny.  Of course she meant paint the inside, the walls, like a normal color, but it sounded like her life ambition was to tag people's houses.  Hilarious!!

Abby had a little fun too:

Summer Fun

I do love the summer.  I love the heat and being outside and the long days and everything that goes along with summer.  Jerry took me mountain biking up American Fork Canyon.  It was so gorgeous.  I hadn't ridden up there since soon after we were married.  It was fun to be back!

From the ridge trail.  I asked him if it was technical.  He said, "No."  It was.  The first half anyway.  But the second half more than made up for it.  It was so fun!

After that Matt went to scout camp for a week but we kept playing.  There was a full moon one night so headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon to check it out.  We of course practiced our jump shot.

I really don't know what I am doing with my legs!! And my face??  Like really, what was I thinking??  Too funny!  

This one was a little better.  I love how even Abby is off the ground.  Kate and Sara look so good.  They've had it nailed from the beginning!  So fun to mess around.

When we got to the top of the canyon we could see that it would be hard to see the moon because there were a fair amount of clouds around the horizon.  We were bummed, but it made for a really good sunset and that was awesome.  We talked about that all summer long...how we went up to watch the moonrise and instead got a really awesome sunset!

Jerry has a tendency to always close his eyes in pictures.  He's really self conscious about so I rarely post them, but someday I want to tell the grandkids about how Grandpa never could keep his eyes open!  Ha Ha funny me!!

It was an awesome night!!

Camping staycation

At the beginning of the summer we asked the kids to make a list of things that they wanted to do over the summer.  Kate said one thing for sure was to go camping.  So I knew we had to make it happen even though it was a lot of work and hard to fit it in.  When the girls only have 6 weeks off, it's hard to do everything we want.  So we decided to just go camping locally.  We went up Little Cottonwood Canyon and just stayed at a campground there.  It was so awesome and it was beautiful.  LCC is one of my favorite places in Salt Lake County so I didn't feel like we were sacrificing at all.  People come from other places to camp here and we just have it 20 minutes away.  It also worked really well because Jerry just came up in the evenings and stayed the night and then went back to work in the mornings and we stayed up there.  We'll definitely do it this way again.

We blindly reserved our campsite but it was one of the best.

Right down from us was this awesome waterfall.  It actually was right below another campsite but I was glad we weren't staying in that campsite because the water was so loud.  Also, our tent wouldn't have fit.  So it actually worked out perfectly.  We walked down here every day and climbed around but then moved away from it for sleeping.

One of the days we went up to Snowbird and rode the tram up.  Again, the few days we go camping, Utah has a strange cold spell.  It wasn't as warm as it could have been but it still felt good in the sun.  We hung out on the deck of their new building for a while.

We hiked around a little up top and then rode the tram back down.

We saw a huge moose from the tram.  That was cool.

That evening we hiked up to Cecret Lake.

It was very beautiful up there.  That lake is one of my favorites.

We've been working on our group jump shots and we're getting better.  I'd say this one was pretty close!

The best thing about this was for three days I didn't have any distractions.  I could just focus on the kids.  I didn't have laundry, cooking, cleaning or anything like that to do.  We played a lot of Uno Attack with Abby.  She loved that game.  And we sat around the campfire each night and talked, laughed and told stories.  It was really fun.

Jerry said to Matt, "Ok.  You're stuck out in the woods.  It's dark.  You have to spend the night and if you can't build a fire you won't make it, but you only have one match.  Do you survive?"

He survived!

It was a lot of work, but it was an awesome three days.  I loved that Kate's most important thing to do this summer was go camping.  I had to make it happen.  It was so worth it.  #lovewhereyoulive

Even Tulo has a friend

A lady in our ward asked us to pet sit her dog for a few days.  We'd done it once before and it's totally easy.  The girls just go over in the morning and the evening and make sure he has food and water.  So one afternoon we brought him back to our house to play with Tulo.  Chase was crazy.  It made me realize that even though Tulo is still pretty hyper, he has mellowed down some.  It was funny to watch them play together.  I loved that it made Tulo tired so I didn't have to play with him!

Reunited and it feels so good

In addition to leaving my kids, I had to leave my puppy for 9 days.  I was sad for a second, but I was excited to pick him up again.

Abby was also very excited to have him back home.  She loves that little puppy.  Pretty sure the feeling is mutual. 

We stayed up late on the 4th of July of course.  We headed over to Sandy with our friends, the Salmons, and watched the fireworks there.  It definitely took us a while to recover from the trips and I wasn't sad about having to sit down for a while with this girl while she had a little nap.