18th Anniversary

Today is our 18th wedding anniversary. I always enjoy remembering our wedding day and tonight we had fun watching our wedding video with our kids. They had a great time making fun of us and how we looked in our growing up pictures and the clothes we wore in the "nineties"
Its been a great 18 years and I am grateful for all that Paul has done for me during those years. He is a wonderful husband and my best friend.

Bengal Volleyball

Coach Adam Fernandez talking to the sophomore team.

Justin working the snack bar during the Bingham game.

Brooke ready to receive a serve.

Brooke is playing on the sophomore volleyball team for Brighton HS. The last 3 days have been all volleyball. Thursday night was a pre-season match against Bingham and then a tournament on Friday and Saturday at Lone Peak. Luckily i could go to all of it and IT WAS FUN!!!

the sophomore team had a pretty rough start against a really good Bingham team. most of the team has never played competitive volleyball before. But they made huge progress over the weekend. By Sat they were playing in the semi-finals of the tournament and almost made it to the finals in a very close 3rd game. it was great to watch them improve so quickly.

It's going to be a great season.

First Day of School

Justin and Brooke before heading off to the high school

Taylor with his bike before leaving for 6th grade.

Can't Believe It

I cannot believe that school starts tomorrow. Why does summer always go by so quickly? I can't possibly be old enough to have 2 kids in high school - at MY high school too. I hope they have a great year and enjoy being back at the same school together again.
And Taylor's in his last year at the elementary school! His teacher seems very nice and its her first year teaching so I'm sure he'll have a great time with everything she has planned.
Jared and Kamryn don't start preschool until after labor day but they are very excited about it. We've talked a lot about going to the rainbow school and their new teacher, Miss Carol. Today they were even playing school, it was so cute.
I'm always happy for my kids to be out for the summer and sad when its time for them to go back. I love having them home with me and enjoy the summer free time so much. Life really is going to get busy now.

Destruction Continues

It's kind of hard to see in this picture but this is the passenger side of the van on the dash.
Jared and Kamryn were playing in the van with their friend, while we were up at scout camp.
The next day I noticed this lovely drawing of people. I asked them if they did that and they both denied doing it.
This morning I noticed kamryn had nail polish all over her leg. I asked her where she got it and she said Brooke's room. I went in brooke's room and there is polish all over the carpet too.
What am I going to do with them?

A visit to scout camp

Jared and Kamryn with their friend Aiko, up at our stake property.

Taylor and the scouts playing a new game one of the scoutmasters made and brought up.
It's called Kubb (pronounced Koob, i think) and its a really old game from Sweden,
Viking times it says online.

Paul and I took Jared and Kamryn up to visit Taylor's scout camp this afternoon and evening. We all had a great time. We helped out with fixing the dutch oven dinner and cobblers and enjoyed visiting with the leaders. The most fun was learning this new game. I've got to get my own set and play it again with all of our kids and have friends over to play.

Taylor seemed to be having a good time and hardly said 2 words to us. Paul said he was probably glad to see us, it just wouldn't have been cool to hang out with his parents.

I'll be heading back up tomorrow afternoon to help get the boys home.

Off to Scout Camp

Our troop boys heading off to a mini-scout camp

at our stake property.

These boys are from 3 wards in our stake,

gathered together for a merit badge scout camp.

We sent off this crew this morning. Thank goodness for great scout leaders to organize this camp. They are hoping to get 6 merit badges earned while they are up there.

She Made It!!

Brooke has been playing volleyball since she was 12, either church ball or club ball. She's really gotten pretty good and it's so much fun to watch her play.
Brighton High School tryouts started last Monday. When I picked her up from the first day, she said "that was fun. I really want to make it on the team." Yea! I was just glad she was having fun.
After tryouts on Tues, the coach said they were going to just start practices for the season and then let everyone know on the day school starts if there would be any cuts. So far so good.
Then on Thursday, the head coach called Brooke and wanted her to start coming to the JV/Varsity practices in addition to the Soph practices. So on Thursday and Friday she practiced from 9:30 - 12:30 and 1:30 - 6:00! That's a lot of volleyball. Some days she could barely walk or move once she got home.
On Thursday, she officially made the teams!! Double YEA!! We're so proud of her and are excited to watch her play as a BENGAL!

A very bad day

It all started with this parking ticket I got while I was downtown having lunch with a friend. It was for having expired registration (just 12 days).

When I got home I had a bad headache so I layed down for a little while and the rest of the pictures above are what happened while I was lying down.

Justin playing soccer

It's been fun watching Justin play on an AYSO Summer Select soccer team this summer. His team decided to do one more tournament at the end of July up in Roy. These pictures are from one of those games up there.

Taking a break

His whole team at the end of the game - THEY WON!

Field Trip

We went on a fun field trip with our friends to the BYU art museum. We went to see the Walter Wick exhibit. We also enjoyed eating lunch at the Cougar Eat, checking out the bookstore, and then going to an animal museum full of stuffed, real animals - the kids loved that.

The Roberts, Swans and Adams kids

A cool display as you walk into the Art Museum - all made with hangers.

Oquirrh Temple Open House

Due to a very busy summer our family waited until the very last week of the open house to go. It was very crowded and pretty noisy but still a good experience. I got all weepy in the celestial room thinking about all of my family being in there together and what that really means. Then I thought how long it will be before we can all be in the celestial room together again.

Bear Lake 09

My parents took all of their children and grand-children on vacation to Bear Lake in July. They rented very nice townhomes for us to stay in right across from the Bear Lake Marina. We spent most of each day at the lake with the rented wave runners. The kids had a great time playing on the beach and in the water. We also enjoyed swimming in the pool at Harbor Village and even got in some morning tennis.

Kamryn on the wave runner

Kamryn hanging out on the beach

Jared on the wave runner

Paul and Jared after a fun ride.

All of the family gathered at LaBeau's for dinner and the famous Bear Lake raspberry shakes.

Thanks mom and dad for a great get away.

4th of July

Just wanted to post some pictures of my little cuties on the 4th of July up at our cabin.

Jared

Kamryn

My little posers

Patriotic 4 year olds

Trek

Trek was a great experience!! I'm still trying to write about it in my journal. So I thought I would just post some pictures from the experience.

Our REAL family at the end of trek.

Justin on the first day of trek with his "family"

Me with Jill Shumway -
she helped me so much and our rolls turned out beautifully all thanks to her.

Our trek family
We were the Daniels family because we had 4 kids with "D" names, 3 of them being Danny.

I just love this picture
(have no idea who the girl is, taken during solo time)


Brooke with her trek family

Paul and I with Daniel Viehwig, one of our sons

I really feel lucky to have been able to go on trek and would go again in a heartbeat.

Still trying to catch up

I don't know why I feel like I need to catch up on my blog. I really should just let it go and move on, but I can't. This is really my only journal, except for the rare entry due to guilt. So I plan to continue trying to catch up but will keep current at the same time.
This morning we got back from almost a week up at the cabin at Brighton. At times it was just me and my kids - that was nice to enjoy the peace and be with just them. The first night we were there we drove to the top of Guardsman Pass and went on a little hike while we were up there. The view was amazing.
We watched several movies and I read an entire book.
We had 3 parties while we were up there - had to take advantage of having the cabin.
On Thursday we had some couple friends up for dinner and games.
On Friday we had mothers and daughters up while the boys were away at fathers and sons. This was a great gathering and hopefully the beginning of a new tradition.
On Saturday we had 2 families join us for dinner and enjoyed hanging out together.
We came home this morning to go to church. We missed our ward last week because we were at my cousin's baby blessing so I felt like we should go to our own ward today. I would have liked to stay up in the mountains and go to the branch up there. I could stay at the cabin another week. I love it up there. I've got head back up tomorrow and clean up. I'd love to just stay awhile and enjoy the beauty of the mountains.