4th of July

Well, I was asked to speak and also sing at a morning Independence Day program.
I'm way more comfortable with the singing part...
I don't know why, but I never feel like I do a very good job speaking.

Anyway, it was at 6 am (pretty early to sing) but I was excited to be a part of it.
I spoke a little bit about my experiences with Mike being deployed and then
I sang God Bless America a capella.

Mom, Dad, Marcy and Kenz came.

Noah and Kenz have really grown close since we've lived here!

Later that day we visited Jan in the hospital...she's having a tough time!

Then we went to a free lunch put on Kneaders for military families...that was cool.

They even had a big tv screen and let us Skype with Mike for a few minutes.

Grace and I took a little mother daughter date to Rita's...yum!!

For dinner I took the kids (including Noah's girlfriend Janna) to J Dawg's.

It was really good and we had a great time together.

Later on we went to Joe and Melanie's for fireworks.
Joe put on a great show!

I'm so thankful for this country. I think that I've been thinking more about that since I know we will be leaving behind certain freedoms soon. I'm not sure what that will be like...I guess I'll have to wait and see :)

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!

Actually, these are just giant weeds that have overtaken part of our backyard.
Embarrassing...I know!
To clarify the weeds weren't actually in the yard, they were back by the fence and the fruit trees.
They wouldn't have gotten that bad if we could have just mowed over them, ha ha!

Anyway, say what you will, sometimes you mean to get to things and then you don't.

Or your life is in such upheaval that some things don't matter...until they do :)

I knew that we needed to get rid of a good portion of the weeds in the backyard,

so I finally forced my kids to work and my mom is just a saint so she helped us.
P.S. You know this weed is tall if it's taller than Dallin!

My dad is awesome too...he hauled away a bunch of weeds and other trash for us!

As we were working we would come across the exact same weed in it's small form

Check out this little weed...this is what we should have been taking care of all along instead of letting them grow to this...

There's an object lesson in there somewhere :)

Ward Pool Party

We had our annual ward picnic and pool party last night.
I was assigned to bring a dessert.

I brought a fruit pizza.

It was gone it about 2 seconds :)
(always makes me feel good)

I invited my family again and they came.

I think everyone had a pretty good time.
My sister got this picture of me with my cute nephew Levi

We played in the pool and listened to the Rushton's band Bonne Nuit.

It was a nice evening :)

I loved how Cedric (a 16 year old) didn't think he was too cool to hang out with Isaac at the pool.

It always means a lot to a younger kid when and older kid spends time with them :)

More Fun at Utah Lake!

Yep, we love playing at Utah lake!
A big thanks to the Daniels for making this happen so much :)
This trip Noah invited his cute girlfriend Janna

and Dallin invited his friend Johnny

 I love how I caught this moment when the sails were lined up :)

 It was such a fun day!

One thing though...
I ordered pizza for us to eat there at the lake and asked them to do light sauce on 2 of the pizzas, the guy repeated half  sauce, and I said yes, half the normal amount of sauce would be fine.
Well, we ended up get sauce on half of the pizza, ha ha!

 ...and I have no words for the cutting style of whoever cut this pizza :)

Manti Pageant

On Tuesday we went to the Manti pageant with Joe and Melanie and their kids and my mom and dad.

The drive down was pretty uneventful. We passed a really pretty lavender field...but obviously I was driving so I didn't get a picture of it.

When we arrived we went to get some dinner at a place called Dirk's Farmhouse Restaurant.

The food was good, my only complaint about the place was that they kept it soooo cold inside!

Then it was time to get our seats and wait for the sun to go down so the pageant would start.

While we waited we walked around the temple, checked out the dugout replica, played games, talked, ate snacks, and just enjoyed being together.

 Noah took a few minutes to try and teach me the right way to take selfies...

so I would stop taking them like an old person :) (his words)
He totally snatched my sunglasses for this selfie :)

We enjoyed the pageant...mostly :)

I think there were some excellent parts, and I felt the Spirit...but I also think that some of it is super cheesy and is in desperate need of being updated.

Thankfully the drive home seemed shorter than the drive there, an answer to my prayers because I was pretty tired! All in all, I'm glad the we made the trip. 

Cousin Campout and Hike

This past weekend we crossed another thing off our summer fun list. 

We had a cousin campout in Joe and Melanie's yard.

I know the kids loved sleeping out in the tents with each other. 

Henry and Isaac in the boy tent

Grace, Maren, Julianne, Anna and Eve in the girl tent.

In the morning we all headed to hike Battlecreek Falls.