Summertime

 

Despite the drought, we needed to get out and get wet because it's been sooo hot.  

Family park night to play pickleball

My lovely pregnant niece, Emma, is working for me in the daycare.  She's been bringing Peter and he LOVES all the activity with all the people and new things to do and play.  Emma's having a girl next.  We're going to have to find some girl dinosaur things...

These guys 'geared up' in all our soccer and biking gear to explore around the yard.  It was so cute.

Sam's birthday

 Sam's birthday was good.  A little stressful, but good.  We were going to rent a private theater room to play video games on the giant screen for $100 and invite his cousins.  We contacted the theater a month before hand and was never contacted back.  We tried to book three different theater chains online, they all stopped booking on June 3rd and we wanted the 4th.  We ended up just setting up a projector in the basement and the boys played to their hearts content.  I didn't want to have to sanitize and clean our house yet again, but honestly they all stayed in the basement for the most part and I just and to throw out some plates afterwards. 

Ada and Aubrey "playing".

Scripture study after guests left.

Sam didn't want cake, he wanted pie... so he got it.

We also played this fun game called From 0 to T-Rex.  It's very funny, but definitely not something that you want to play with a headache.

Temple!

 

Not only did they announce that all the temples would be open to appointment for ancestor's work, but we were able to get an appointment to do baptisms for the dead with my Wilcox family and my Mom and Dad's new member friends.  Jer did the baptisms for Sam, Ada and I.  Then Tom and my Dad took turns with the rest.  It was Isaiah and Michelle's first time in the temple and I loved being there for that.  Our nephew, Joseph, just got his endowments out and had invited us up for that.  I so would have loved to be there but it was in Colorado and Evelyn had her first ballet that day.  I'm so happy for all of these beloved family members and that we get to try to have good experiences with them.  

Ada and I accidentally matched while we were getting dressed, so we had to take a picture... this is Sam's photo bomb.

Seth started Coach Pitch

 

Seth was curious about baseball and all the other kids got to play a year or two, so I signed Seth up for Coach Pitch.  It just to happens to be a record high heat year for June... the other day was 107 degrees. He still loves it and wants us to come to all his games.  He's a pretty decent hitter.  He hits the ball the majority of the time, but he's still working on the catching skill.  By his second game, he had all the rules worked out.  It's been super cute.

He found Sam's old hat in the closet and insisted on wearing it instead of his team yellow hat.  His coach was his soccer coach and he's thrilled to see him again.  So am I.  He's been a great coach for all our kids (except Ada... she's older than his oldest kid).

Matthew and Evelyn's birthday

Here are some pictures from their actual birthday.  They loved playing with the homemade foundry and a combined birthday cake was made for them to eat after a movie night at grandma's.  We used 27 on the cake because Matthew was turning 17 and Evelyn was turning 10.

This is just because I loved our roses this year.

 

Evelyn's birthday party

Usually Sam and Evelyn share a party up at Bear Lake.  This year they both wanted separate friend parties for the first time in many years.  And since her birthday is right after school gets out and everyone is off for the beginning of summer we did her party a few weeks ago and just haven't had a chance to blog about it. Since they are all the people that they see at school every day or people that I know already had Covid, I felt like it was safe, especially outside running around at a park.  She wanted a Michael Vey birthday party, so we planned laser tagging at Paul Ream Wilderness Park.  It was perfect.  They could run through the woods and we still knew where they all were.  They found sniping spots and coordinated all sorts of attacks.  

Isaiah kept camouflaging himself.

She was one happy girl.

Her favorite two things were this hat from Uncle Seth and this singing card.

She wanted donuts, so I found her a giant one that took her three days to eat.

The two Evelyns.

The hat has wires in it that make the ears move when you squeeze the bottom.

My girls always get along better with the boys at school.  Just like Ada, Evelyn's best friends are mostly boys.   My SD cards both got damaged somewhere along the line, but my friend, Beth, let me borrow hers for the birthday party since it was already in her car.

 

Nuttos

I love both these Nuttos.

 

Kayaking with the Brashers

 

One of our favorite things to do is to share fun activities with family and friends.  The Brashers had never been kayaking, so we went down to Salem Pond and had a blast.  There were more people at the pond than I've ever seen, so we found a quieter spot away from most of the people and made a base camp.  There were many adventures, between Joseph and Ada trying to use the youth kayaks and swamping them, Evelyn stealing the paddles from Matthew and Ada, Sam rescuing them, Jer accidentally throwing his fish line in the water, Seth paddling out and rescuing it with the proudest look on his face... I saw smiles and heard laughs from everyone.  My sister Janelle came and that was fun to catch up with her.

Sam fishing

I liked this one because each person kind of matched their boat.

Evelyn fishing

The guys fishing next to us kept sharing their bait with us, we only caught one fish between everyone, and realized that we hadn't brought anything to keep it in, so we gave it to them.  Everyone had fun fishing anyways.

Seth kept coming back and trying out all the different boats.  

Jeff did a great job with both the kayak and the standing paddle board.

This face is why we like kayaking.

Robert, Joseph and Matthew kept trying to capsize each other.... so Evelyn joined in with bumper boats.