Pine Valley

A week ago our family took a trip to Pine Valley, which is in the mountains north of St George. Paul's mom's family has a cabin up there that is 50 years old. Its a great log cabin that is very homey. There is a loft with 5 beds for everyone to sleep all in the same room. We hadn't been there since Jared and Kamryn were little babies so it was great to get back down there.
One of the fun things we did was take Taylor's bb gun. There was a gorge near the cabin where we went shooting. We found someone's campfire they had left in a hurry and had left about 8 full, unopened beer cans on the ground. We set them up for targets and had a "blast" shooting them.

Taylor had a great time driving this golf cart around town. Jared and Kamryn loved riding with him in the yard and it was so much fun to hear them squealing in delight.

We went to church at the Pine Valley cabin, which is the oldest operating building in the church. This is a picture of our family, Paul's brother and his 3 boys who were visiting from Pennsylvania, Paul's dad and uncle Delmont.

Sunday evening we had a Truman family get together which was great to see a lot of Paul's relatives. On the way home we drove through Snow's Canyon and did a little exploring. The kids loved climbing around on the red hills. We hope to go back in the fall or spring and spend more time exploring.

Kamryn and Jared had a great time playing outside at the cabin. Their chairs are old tractor seats.

Paul had to do some work Monday morning and this is the only place he could get cell service and internet connection.

There were some stray cats hanging around the cabin and they became our family pets for a couple of days. Kamryn loved playing with them and Jared got used to them and even had fun with them after awhile.

At one point, our whole family went for a ride on the golf cart.

Our family at the Pine Valley cabin.

My new baby

This is my new baby, no name yet.

We've had her for almost a month and I love her (for some reason, its a her).

We bought our new van in July after our last van died in the Costco parking lot (and we sold it the next day out of that parking lot after one hour on KSL).

Paul is definitely spoiling me with this van - it is a Dodge Grand Caravan SXT and has almost all the upgrades possible. It has dual screen DVD and so much more. The coolest thing for me is the auto-power liftgate - that is the best thing ever invented!

We broke the van in right away and took it to youth conference.

Just this last weekend we took our whole family down to Pine Valley. It was a great road trip, thanks to this great van. Time goes by so much faster and there's no fighting when all the kids are watching a movie. The only downside to that is Paul doesn't get to listen to as much music as he'd like.

Now I'm looking forward to a few more road trips with the family.

Youth Conference

Brooke doing her "dopey" look

Out for a little "friendly" walk

Justin organizing a game of capture the flag

Playing Kubb

Brooke and Justin playing volleyball

Justin exploring the red rock hills

Paul enjoying some fishing

Justin's such a stud

Justin and Paul hanging out with the group

We had lots of fun playing lots of games.

fixing lunch

Taylor goofing off with his friend

Brooke hanging out with the girls

Busy busy

This summer has been so busy, as usual.

*The week after we got back from Florida most of our family went to youth conference. It was fun to go with our 3 teenagers. I went to help out since most of the YW leaders couldn't go. Since Paul is in the bishopric he also went up for the first day. We all had a great time (pictures to come soon)

**We enjoyed the annual Butlerville Days parade and carnival at the park. Jared and Kamryn are old enough to really get into going on all the blow up rides at the park. We had a great time hanging out with our friends and then watching the fireworks. (no pictures coming soon since my camera is broken)

***Last week the kids and i spent a couple of days up at the cabin. It was a great get away. We were joined up there by my aunt and her family one day, another uncle was up there working on the deck and then my friend and her son hung out with us one day. We had a lot of great rainstorms while we were up there and it was so nice to have some cooler weather.

****today the boys helped me with a project in our yard. I've been working in our yard a lot this summer. I get a lot more satisfaction out of that than working inside the house. It was so great to get this project finished and just look at and see it all finished (I wish i could have taken before and after pictures to share)

*****after we finished the project I took all of the kids to see "How to Train Your Dragon" It was a cute show and Kamryn was wrapped around me most of the time. Jared was very into it.

Blast at the Beach

tuesday morning we took one last trip to the beach
before flying home.
We all had a great time and hated to leave.

All of my beach boys

Quick family picture
(my regular camera broke the day before we flew out, so sad)
so this was taken with our video camera.

Kamryn having more fun with her daddy.

Jared went in the water some
but preferred the beach and building and digging in the sand

Brooke hanging out in the shade

Paul loves the beach and had a great time with his kids

Jared with his last creation - a hole!

Florida Fun

The start of our huge shell collection.
I've never seen so many shells at one beach. Most of them were about the same
but we found some unique and fun shells.
All of the kids got into collecting their own shells and came home with big bags of them.

Kamryn at the beach the first night we went there.

Beach buddies

Trying to get a picture of them together

My cute beach buddies

Taylor out in the surf.

Kamryn's castle

Brooke is a real beach beauty

Florida sunset

Another trip to the beach, this time in the morning.

Justin, a real beach dude!

Paul was pretty bummed that there was really no surf
but once he bought a snorkel and mask he had a great time exploring.

Kamryn loved swimming out in the ocean on her own and with her daddy

Justin and Brooke both loved going to the beach and had just come back from exploring.

Kamryn is a real fish and loved swimming in the calm ocean.

Brooke and Jared with Justin in the background.
You can see all the shells in the water.

the ocean was so calm it was like a swimming pool.
taylor and paul had fun skipping rocks.

this picture should be at the beginning.
this was at the opening ceremonies to the soccer tournament.
it was very hot and LONGGGGGGGG!
Jared and Kamryn were very good sports
about waiting for Taylor's team to come out on the field.

This is at the very end of the tournament.
these are the 2 teams that played for 3rd and 4th place.
Taylor's team and a team from Virginia.
The Virginia team won the game 3-1.
The funny thing about this team is they had the exact same blue jerseys as our team.
It was very confusing the first time we played them to remember which team
was which.

Lazy 4th

We had a very lazy 4th of July.
We arrived at Ft Lauderdal Airport at 11:30 pm on Sat night. We were picked up by the hotel shuttle and went to a pretty mediocre Days Inn for the night. In the morning we had some "breakfast" and picked up our rental car and then tried to go to church.
We have a problem with getting to church when we're in Florida. The last time we were here (3 years ago) we made an extra effort to travel on Sat so that we could go to church on Sun. We got to the building and they were having a regional conference that ended 10 minutes after we got there.
Well, this time we got to the building just before 11 and there were no cars there at all. Strange. I checked my info and the meeting started at 11:30. There was a park next door so we let the kids play over there and watched for cars to start arriving - they never did. One couple walked up to the church and we went and asked them if they were in that ward. They were just visiting like us and had just called and found out that the building was closed due to construction inside and that the ward was meeting across town, still at 11:30. By this point it was 11:20 and we were going to try and find the building but once we got on the freeway I realized we would never make it. So we headed north to West Palm Beach where we are staying for the week.
We got to the Residence Inn well before check in time but lucked out and found our friends from our ward who are staying here also and they let us hang out in their room until we could get into ours.
The kids got sucked into a Star Wars marathon that was on all day and night. We spent the rest of the day in our room watching Star Wars, getting unpacked and settled in. We were going to try and go to fireworks but the twins fell asleep and Taylor said he'd rather watch Star Wars, plus it was raining.
Pretty exciting,eh?

No Camera

I've been having trouble with my little digital camera ever since Kamryn was playing with it and did something to it. I got it working and all was okay until I sent it to scout camp with Paul. He took several pictures and then it stopped working again. He got back the night before we left on our vacation to Florida. I could never get it working so I'm on vacation without a camera. That's just wrong. I can take still shots with our digital camera but its not as easy.

Can you believe its July already?!

I cannot believe its July already. I'm kind of glad for a two reasons.
First of all, we leave on our family trip to Florida in just a couple of days and we're all excited for that.
Second, I'm glad to be done with the daily prompts. It was fun and different but I'm ready to do something else. I'm behind on regular posts but figure I'll catch up while we're on vacation.

This morning I went with Justin to get his SENIOR pictures taken. Can you believe it????? It really made me feel old to see him standing there in his orange cap and gown. Wasn't it just the other day that I was wearing my cap and gown for the very same high school?? We just did the photo shoot at Life Touch and it went pretty well, considering how much Justin did not want to do it. He was a very good sport about it and I think they turned out okay, from what I could tell just looking on the cameras. Life Touch has a pretty cool studio for senior pictures with lots of different theme rooms and back drops.

Today's prompt:

"What's the first thing you notice about a man when you meet him? A woman?"

This is an interesting question for me as a married person as opposed to when I was single. I'm really not a very observant person. As I've been thinking about it I've decided I'm very superficial - I notice things about their apperance. In a woman I notice her hair - the cut, the color. In a man I ususally notice his height. I know when I first saw my husband that was the first thing I noticed about him and that's because he's 6'5"!

Green

Today's prompt:

"In what ways have you become 'green' in the past few years?
Do you think that it has made a difference?"

The biggest thing we do that is GREEN is we recycle. Our recycle can is always overflowing and it just kills me if I have to put something that could be recycled into the regular garbage. Our recycled is only every other week and it really needs to be every week. I am always going around filling up the neighbors recycle can.
We also don't put our lawn clippings in the garbage (I also really wish we had a green waste can like my sister does). We just add them to this big heap of dirt and weeds in the backyard that someday we are going to landscape somehow.
I am trying to get more in the habit of using the green shopping bags but thats really slow in coming. I keep them in the car but always forget to bring them into the store.

Born

Today's prompt:

"Tell us everything you know about the day you were born."

I honestly don't really know a lot about it. I know I've asked my mom about it before but I have no firm details about it in my head. I'll have to ask her about it and update this post.
I do know that she first started feeling labor pains around noon and I was born around 10:30 pm. I was about a week overdue and my cousin had been born 2 days before me and my aunt was waiting and waiting for my mom to come share a room with her. My mom had a spinal block and my dad was allowed to be in the delivery room. This was a recent change at the hospital and there is a newspaper article in my baby book about it.

Proud Mom

This past week Brooke was away at girl's camp. This was the first year that she went but I didn't go. The first day she was gone I was kind of depressed and feeling sad that I was missing out on the great thing that is girls camp. Luckily the rest of the week I was very busy with soccer tournaments so it was okay.
Brooke and I went on some errands last night and she gave me a good report of camp. It was a good thing for me to not be there so she could really enjoy it without her mom there watching her.
Today she spoke in church as a kind of report on girls camp. The theme for the stake was CUC University - Come Unto Christ University. Then each ward was one of the YW values. Our ward was College of Virtue. So all of the talks today were on virtue.
Brooke prepared her talk all on her own on Saturday morning. She gave such a wonderful talk today and i was so proud of her. The spirit was very strong during her talk and she was very poised and confident. It was such a proud moment and I was so grateful to have such a righteous daughter sharing what she learned about virtue at camp and in preparing for her talk.

Champs Again

I've spent the last 4 days up in Roy and Hooper at 2 different soccer tournaments for my boys. Justin's team struggled in the Hooper Tournament and didn't make it to the finals. They have a lot of challenges on that team and it can be frustrating to watch them. Justin played well and scored a goal in one of the games.
Taylor's team dominated their tournament again. This was a comp tournament and we heard a lot of smack talk about that AYSO team (his team) - boy, did these boys show 'em.
In 4 tournaments, Taylor's team has never lost and won the championship in each one. They are so much fun to watch and cheer for. They are well disciplined and well coached team. We are excited about how they'll do in the National Tournament in Florida that starts in one week!

My Name

Today's prompt:

"How do you feel about the name given to you at birth?"

I really like my name. Its short but still 2 syllables. My mom tells me that there was a character on As The World Turns that she liked who had my name. So, I was named after a soap opera character. No biggie to me.
In elementary school there was always another Lisa in my class so I was always known at Lisa S. Again, no big deal really. It didn't bother me. I don't ever remember wanting to change my name so my parents did a good job with my name.
As a parent I've always felt a lot of pressure in naming my children. Its a big job that has life long implications.

Worst Prompt

Today's prompt:

"Perhaps you've played this game. Your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse lets you have one free pass -- one special man or woman who is so attractive and out of reach that if circumstances allowed it, your partner would allow you to sleep with that person. Most monogamous couples feel safe with the free pass rule as it's more theoretical than practical. Still, if your partner gave you a free pass, would you use it? On who? "

This prompt is so outside of anything I've ever thought of that I have no answer for it. And wouldn't even want to consider the idea.

today's prompt:

"Do something nice for someone today.
Then tell us about what you did."

the nice thing I did today was to give rides to several soccer players on Taylor's team up to a tournament in Roy. One mom was especially grateful because their family is packing up and moving to Washington State this weekend.

Cheat

today's prompt:

"Do you think it's ever permissible to cheat?"

What an interesting question and what makes it interesting is the word "permissible." That word translates to OK in my mind. I have to confess that I have cheated before but only in a game and I haven't done it very often. Otherwise, I would say cheating is NOT ok.

Worst Job

Today's prompt:

"What is the worst job you've ever had?"

As far as a paid job goes, the worst job I ever worked only lasted one day. I worked at Orange Julius in the 49th Street Galleria for one day. I couldn't stand it - it was so messy and I had orange juice all over me. I also filled in one day in the ice cream parlor there and I also did not like that due to the messiness again. Also had to work the cotton candy cart one day - yuck!

As far as my "unpaid" job of mother goes, the worst thing I've had to deal with is throw up! Yuck!

Father's Day

It was a pretty mellow father's day around here.
We let Paul have a good nap for most of the afternoon. He's an easy father to please - all he wanted for Sunday dinner was cereal and toast.
For presents he wanted NOTHING - in the past we've obliged him on that but this year we got him a few presents - socks, floss (he only likes a certain kind, the most expensive kind of course), some new ear buds cuz he lost his, and the Ninja smoothie maker (there's a story behind that - someone told him about it at work but it was after mother's day or he would've given it to me for mother's day so instead I got it for him).
We went to visit both of our father's and entertained them with our family's crazy banter.
I am surrounded by great fathers and am grateful for all of them.

a SUPER Saturday

Its been a super great and long Saturday.
It started out early. I got up at 6 to go on a long run with Leslie. We went out on Wasatch Blvd and it was so great to be back at the long run. I love the longer distances and it was so fun to go with Leslie again. The weather was perfect, if a little on the hot side towards the end, and the views are the best. We got to the end of the run early so we kept going on the porter rockwell trail and saw my uncle and his granddaughter, that was fun.
Right when we got back I headed right over to Justin's soccer game. Their team won 4 to 1. Yeah!!
And soon as we could get packed up we headed out to lagoon. It was Paul's summer work party there and its such a good deal that we always make sure to go. This year my dad came with us but Justin and Taylor couldn't come because they were playing in the championship games of the soccer tournament in the later afternoon.
Jared and Kamryn had a blast at Lagoon and that made it fun for the rest of us. We all got soaked on Rattlesnake Rapids and the log ride. Jared and Kamryn even dared to go on the Tidal Wave and they loved it!

Food

Today's prompt:

"What's the one food you feel like you couldn't live without?
What's the one food you'd rather die than put in your mouth?"

Food is such a bad thing for me. I have had no self control for the past several months. I tried to get back on a diet a few months back and I did okay for about 2 weeks was all. My problem is I love food, especially sweets. I'm a sugar addict.
I've always said if I had to live on just one food it would be bread. I love bread. And that's a bad thing.
I don't think there's anything out there that I would rather die than put in my mouth. There are things I don't like but I can eat anything if I have to. I've tried snails and oysters and I didn't die. I wouldn't want to eat them again but to stay alive I could do it.

A Journey

Today's prompt:

"If you could take a train journey through any part of the world,
where would you go?"

For sure it would be through Ireland!