Summer Pictures: Part 3

One fun thing we got to do this summer was go camping for one night at Tony Grove with the Witkamps. We got to spend more time with my sister Linda and her family this summer than we ever have before. We had spent four days with them in their in-laws condo in St. George for Jonathan's birthday. It was fun to spend time with them. My kids just love their silly cousin, Mason, who can make them laugh harder than anyone on the planet. They both are completely in awe of how good he is about getting shots multiple times a day for his diabetes. Gwen just adores Kim and loves how "grown-up" she is and what a good little artist she is. Emily and Andrew fight like mortal enemies at times. They constantly find little reasons to cry about what the other one is doing, or did, or might sometime in the near future think of doing. You know there's trouble brewing when you here Emily declare "An-rew!" This picture is funny because in the blurry background you can barely make out the little image of my Emily finding a good "pouting spot". She hates getting her hands dirty, but loves a good tantrum. She usually goes for the throw yourself on the floor type of tantrum, but couldn't because of the dirt. Instead she wandered around camp until she found a big enough and clean enough rock to have a tantrum on.

The Hole. I think the kids were convinced that this was a rabbit hole just like the one that Alice fell down. Gwen tried really hard to fall down it. Instead, she settled for taking a picture of it.

Gwen got glasses this summer. Cute, isn't she?

Emily and Andrew right before I'm sure one of them pushed the other off the rock.

I let the kids borrow my camera a couple of times. When we got home I discovered 174 pictures on my camera. About 75 of them were of the campfire and another 50 were of people's butts - thank you Mason. I guess the kids were pretty fascinated by the fire.

Silly cousins, big rock. We had fun playing hide-n-seek around the forest. Luckily, my kids stink at hiding. They tell you were they're hiding and if it takes you more than a moment to find them, they come and get you.

Emily noticed that the woods are full of bugs.

Wow, they're holding hands and not being mean to each other. I just had to capture the moment on film.

Emily the climber. She was not content to walk down a trail on our hikes. She needed to climb up the mountain. That meant that we quickly were left behind most of the time.

There the rest of the group go down the trail. What a pretty lake.

Up and up goes Emily.

Me with a concerned look. I'm sure I was wondering just when the batteries on the camera would die, and just how many pictures I'd have to delete later.

Gwen.

Jonathan.

There are big fields just filled with the prettiest wild flowers you've ever seen. Mason took this picture for me proving that there's more to camping than fires and butts.

The MANY adventures of Winnie the Pooh. For our birthdays' my older sisters' and I had a dinner at the Parker's house. Emily found this giant Winnie the Pooh and took him on many adventures.

If only Andrew and Emily could get along as well as Noah and Gwen do. There are times when Noah gets too rough with Gwen, but they usually have the best times playing with each other. It helps that they're both very imaginative and love close physical contact.

Jonathan and Mason love to play video games together. Jonathan especially loves to help Mason with the Zelda games.

For my birthday we went to Logan and Preston to visit Cookie Grandma (Jonathan's mom) and Farmer Floyd (Jonathan's step-dad). Preston was having their big rodeo and I was super excited for it. I love rodeos. I guess that love has trickled down to Gwen because she also loved the rodeo. She rooted for the cows and yelled at them "Good job for getting that cowboy off". She even liked the rodeo clown, but not his very loud fireworks.

Gwen was riveted the entire time we were there and was sad when we had to leave because it was getting so late. Her favorite part were the rodeo queens - of course. She told me a few weeks later that we would have to go to another rodeo soon, only this time leave Daddy and Emily home because they don't like rodeos. She said she likes rodeos because there's "half a cowgirl and half a princess" inside her.

The only part of the rodeo that Emily really liked was climbing the bleachers - and watching the "jumping horsies" when they came close enough.

During our trip to Logan/Preston, we stopped for the afternoon at the American West Heritage Museum. They have a lot of things to do there. We found some cute little kittens to harass.

A place to lock up the kids.

Some fun wooden toys.

A white peacock.

Some silly pictures.

Ponies.

It was a fun trip and I'm really glad we went up a day early so we could do everything we wanted to. The girls had a sleepover with Cookie Grandma, while Jonathan and I had our first evening away from home without the girls since Gwen was born.

Did I mention that Gwen got new glasses? Just kidding. These are some funny glasses that Daddy bought a couple years ago. Now the girls take turns wearing them and being the dragon while the other is the knight and gets to slay the dragon.

It rained and rained for the first part of the summer. Then it got warm pretty fast. That meant flooding in a lot of fun places, like Murray park. We went there one evening just to get out of the house. We aren't big news watchers so we didn't know it had flooded. I guess the day before we went this park was under a couple feet of water.

There are lots of fun spinning toys. Gwen is fun to get dizzy and watch fall down.

See how high the water still was?

This summer was extra great because Daddy did 90% of the cooking and we just had to show up and eat.

Dinner is always entertaining with these two around.

Swimming and more swimming.

Even swimming in the street. This semi-permanent puddle formed right by our townhouse this summer. Gwen learned how to undo the locks on the door and would escape to do some swimming in her puddle.

Emily eagerly joined in the fun. Ewww. Muddy, filthy, puddle water dripping down your face. This was what I came home to after a run on this particular day. I went inside and asked Jonathan, who was supposed to be watching the girls, if he knew where they were. Yup, he sure did and he was taking advantage of the peace and quiet in the house to surf the internet.

One day, we were getting ready to go somewhere and Gwen asked if she could go play in the puddle. She was wearing a dress, so I asked her not to get her clothes wet and to make sure Emily didn't either because we'd be leaving soon. After a few minutes I went out to collect them and there they were sitting in the puddle - stark naked. Gwen reassured me by pointing to their piles of clothes far from the puddle and saying "we didn't get our clothes wet, Mom." We then spent the afternoon explaining why we don't run around naked outside.

We love to go to the Murray City parade in the morning of the 4th of July. This year we forgot about it and slept in missing the first half of the parade and went without Daddy. We still had fun and this year it wasn't very hot since it was overcast. Emily showing off the fruit of her efforts at the mad candy dash. She would only grab one at a time and then bring it to me to be unwrapped and immediately eaten.

Gwen giving Emily a little advice on candy grabbing technique. We didn't get a lot of candy but we had a lot of fun.