Golden Birthday

It was really fun to celebrate Martin's birthday with him while he stayed with us.  He turned 17 on the 17th of July - which we call a golden birthday.  We got him a golden bucket of treats and a golden balloon (hiding behind the happy birthday one).  We also got him his own nerf gun since the kids had all been having nerf gun wars in the house, a couple of USA t-shirts and a collection of sugar cereal.  Its a tradition in our family that you get your own box of sugar cereal for your birthday.  I didn't know Martin's favorite cereal so I just got those little mini boxes.

Sadly, this is the only picture I have from his birthday.  We went to Cafe Rio for lunch to celebrate (unfortunately Paul was out of town in Cody so we didn't do the usual birthday dinner) and then went to the drive in movies.  This was a request of Martin's to go to the drive in.  I haven't been to a drive in movie since we lived in Phoenix before Jared and Kamryn were born.  We saw BRAVE and THE AVENGERS and didn't get home until after 2 am.  At the very end of THE AVENGERS the car battery died (I had it turned on the wrong setting to run the radio for the movies) so we had to ask someone nearby to help us jumpstart the car.

Natural History Museum

We took advantage of the excuse of having Martin stay with us to get out and do new things and go new places.  We went up to the University campus to see where Brooke is going to live and then went to the new Natural History Museum.  Everyone's favorite floor was the last one - where the dinosaurs are :)

Kamryn is standing on a glass floor where there are dinosaur bones displayed beneath

Martin and Brooke tentatively walking over that glass floor

putting together a puzzle of dinosaur bones

Kamryn could have worked all day on this "dig site"

He likes to Bake

Martin likes to bake and we liked the end results.  We were invited to a French Bastille Day party with one of my high school friends and so Martin made authentic French chocolate macaroons for us to take to the party. They were very good.  He also made chocolate mousse, read recipes for smoothies out of a French smoothie book Brooke brought me from France and made one of them, and then made up his own blue smoothie recipe.  He made jello one day cuz he likes jello.  He came to the right place then since we are the jello capital of the world.

YUM!

BBQ at Ericksons

We knew about the opportunity of hosting our French student, Martin, through my friend Paige.  She was also hosting a French student, Marie.  We thought it would be fun to get them together and have our families get together at their house for a BBQ and playing outside.

Kamryn loved petting and holding their pet chickens

Martin had fun chasing the chickens and the kids 

checking out the chicken bath

and then Kamryn joined them

Busiest July Ever :)

With Martin staying with us during July we planned a lot of fun things to do.  I told Paul it was our family "stay-cation."  Here's a list of what we did:

• BBQ at our friends house who also was hosting a french student, Marie
• We had fun learning about French baking from Martin
• Going to a Bastille Party at my HS friend's house
• We went to the University of Utah campus to see where Brooke is going to live 
• We went to the new Natural History Museum at Research Park
• Played a super fun outdoor laser tag game
• Celebrated Martin's birthday by going to Cafe Rio and to the drive in movies
• We watched my nephew Jaxon play baseball
• We  went bowling
• We went swimming
• We put up the giant slip n slide for the youth in our ward
• We went to Butlerville Days on July 24th
• We went camping at Washington Lake
• We spent a few days at our family cabin
• Watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics
• Met Martin's parents
• Attended Justin's mission president's homecoming, a friend's son's farewell, and another friends' son's homecoming
• Watched Taylor's summer select soccer team play in the Roy tournament and win in the championship game that went to a shootout
• Giving Taylor his FIRST driving lesson around the loop up at Brighton
• And watched lots of movies - usually late at night

Now that I've got a list of all that we did I can use that to do the rest of the posts to add the pictures that we took.  It was a really great experience having Martin stay with us and now we really miss him.  He quickly became part of our family and now we've had another family member leave us :(

Cool City Creek

With Martin staying with us for 3 weeks we planned out all the places we wanted to take him and City Creek and Temple Square were at the top of the list - mostly because we had never been to City Creek before.  So Monday night for family night was the perfect time to go.

City Creek was so cool and we all had a good time exploring and playing in the fountains.