Summer Wrap Up

Can you believe summer is over already?!?  I can't believe how it has flown by.  Of course it may have something to do with the fact that schools starts mid-August.  Sheesh!  I remember growing up school started AFTER Labor Day.  Always.  

Once I realized summer was coming to an end, I tried to cram in as many fun activities as I could.  We realized we hadn't been camping even ONCE this whole summer.  Well, we did go down to Blanding with Eric's parents, but we hadn't taken a camping trip up in the mountains.  So we quickly made some plans, invited Eric's dad to go with us (Sharee is out of town) and spent a few days up Currant Creek.  It was really beautiful.  We brought the horses and Ranger up with us so we had plenty to do.  Tyler has gotten pretty good at driving the Ranger around.  He loved giving the kids rides, and we loved that we didn't have to!  Ziggy got in on the action too.  She loved every minute!  By the way, this picture is not posed, this is literally how Ziggy was as Tyler cam cruising back to camp.

Our cute little cousin Ashlee came too.  She told me about another family they were friends with and told me, "They are a lot like you guys, the kids fight a lot."  I asked her if she thought my kids fought a lot and she said that we fight a lot more than she and her sister do.  I explained to her the math:
When you have only 2 kids, there is only 1 potential for a fight: kid 1 against kid 2.
I, however, have 4 kids, which leads to a multitude of additional fight possibilities:
1 vs 2
1 vs 3
1 vs 4
2 vs 3
2 vs 4
3 vs 4
1 and 2 vs 3
1 and 3 vs 2
1 and 2 vs 4
1 and 3 vs 4
1 and 4 vs 2
1 and 4 vs 3
1, 2 and 3 vs 4
etc etc etc etc.
I haven't yet figured out exactly how many potentials there are for arguments, but I know for sure it is more than ONE.   So no judging here.  But luckily the kids all got along pretty well.

Maggie and Joey are pyromaniacs.  They wanted to burn everything in sight and got WAY too close to the fires for my liking.   I'm surprised we didn't have more singed eyelashes and nosehairs....

We took the horses out for a long ride.  I got to ride one of our new horses, Deuce.  She was awesome to ride.  Really responsive and not afraid to go anywhere or do anything.  She's a small horse (which I like with my shrimpy legs) but super strong.  She is fun to ride.  Eric rode one of our other new horses, Dutch.  She however has a few bugs we are working out.  A few days earlier she had bucked Eric off, but today she did much better.  No bucking!  And she rode a lot better.

We had some fun campfires and the kids even put on a variety show for us.  Well, "variety" is a little bit of a stretch seeing as how every skit involved sword fighting.  It was still pretty fun to watch.

I was NOT in the talent show, but I could have been in a beauty contest the way I was looking!

More dangerous fire play...

Tyler and Jacob have big deal pellet guns they got last year for Christmas.  We brought them up but the sights were off.  So Eric and grandpa went to work getting the sights dialed in.

And lo and behold they must have done a good job because not too long after that Tyler came back with his conquest.  Ugh.  He wanted to skin it but turns out it had fleas so we had to get rid of it.  He felt really bad about killing something that he didn't end up using for meat or a pelt or something, but we tried to explain that with fleas it was useless--can't eat it and can't use the pelt.  Live and learn I guess.

Last week we went up to the Olympic Park in Park City.  We try to go every summer.  They have some fun ropes courses and zip lines and alpine slide.

All the cousins together.  Ready to play!

 Joey did awesome (mostly) on the ropes course.  He got scared a few times and I had to go help him but overall I was surprised at how well he did.

 Maggie is a pro of course,  She did this last year!

 One of the times I had to go help Joey....

 The kids all did this fun zip line thing with a drop tower at the end.  Maggie wasn't scared at all!

 Neither was Ty.  He did it like 10 times.

 The older boys did the big big ropes course.  Here's Ty at the top.  They are pretty high up because you can see under them is the regular ropes course with someone on that.  Probably 30 feet up at least.

Maggie and Joey getting ready!

The highlight of our summer was Tyler turning 12 and getting the Aaronic Priesthood.  He was so excited.  He was even excited to pass the sacrament!  Most of our family were all there to come support him when he got ordained.  It was really special to see all the people who love him so much and care about him.  He's lucky to have such a great group of people around him who care about him so much. 

Every year we have a week of Salem Days Celebration here in Salem.  One of the activities is a cardboard boat race.  Jacob and his friend Cambria did one--the S.S. SOS.  Aptly named.  The boat floated well enough but was too bulky for those little guys to handle too well.  They didn't make much progress.  After fighting their way through the course they finally gave up and intentionally tipped over just so they could swim back to shore!  It was pretty funny to watch.

Tyler and his friend Camden also made a boat.  Theirs floated pretty good too and they ended up coming in second in their heat.  They did a good job!  Their boat was name the Soggy Waffle.

I decided to try to embrace small town life and we even went to the Salem Days tractor pull.  Yeah, soo.......it wasn't QUITE as exciting as one would hope.  It's pretty much a bunch of 85 year old men pulling a concrete load with their tractors about 3 mph across a dirt arena.  Literally.  We stayed a bit then left.

One highlight of Salem Days was the parade.  Of course all the candy thrown was fun, but this year Maggie got to be in it.  She did a little cheer camp with the high school cheerleaders so got to sit on the float and throw candy.  Boy did she love it!

After Salem Days was the Utah County Fair.  Once again trying to embrace the life of a country girl we decided to try out the Demolition Derby.  Holy cow it is loud!  We had to get earplugs for the kids.  But it was actually a blast.  The kids had a ton of fun and it was so funny to watch these cars just ram at each other.

Then after each round, since only one car out of the group was left working, they'd bring out like 8 tow trucks and haul them all off.

It was quite entertaining I must admit.  The kids want to go back each year.

All in all a fun filled summer.  Back to school tomorrow!