July 2017

We had a great JULY!  To celebrate Independence Day I figured out how to get a star in Jacie's hair for church that weekend and we went all out on our festive food - star watermelon...that's it!

 On the 4th of July, we decided to head to the mountains and try a new hike.  This one is to three different waterfalls - we loved it.  This first picture had Trevor and I on one side of the river trying to splash these three - all of us were pretty well splashed by the end of our impromptu game!

 I hiked down to the bottom of one waterfall with my 4 youngest kids - we were able to walk right behind the waterfall - very cool.  In this next picture you can see a teeny tiny Matt and Alissa at the top of the waterfall!

 The next weekend was an early Pioneer Day Celebration at our Stake Property.  We had fun playing there all night.  This big black tube was fun for the kids to roll in - until Alissa and Carly had the bright idea to try to roll on top of it and Alissa rolled right over the top and landed on her shoulder and chin - ouch.

Our  next week was busy as Alissa headed off to her second year of Girl's Camp and Cameron and I headed to his first Cub Scout Day Camp that week.  Carly held a "Carly Camp" for the  twins at home and had a little school set up for them to learn things and fun crafts every day.

  We had fun at Scout Camp - my favorite activity was this Bug Bingo - they hid pictures of bugs all around camp and you had to go find them - simple but so fun!  There were also lots of teeny frogs in the grass - a camp full of 8-10 year old boys terrorized them enough that most of the camp they had that area roped off to keep the boys away from them - haha.

 My favorite day was when a real Beekeeper came to teach us about bees - amazing stuff.  He had made a see through hive for us to see his bees and the queen bee ventured out at one point - he's pointing to it with that yellow stick.  Cool.

 Cameron won second place for his BB Gun scores!  Here he is with all his awards - he loved it!

 The kids and I like to go for a daily walk.  Lots of pretty paths and lakes to walk around here.  One day they decided they'd like to have our daily walk at the zoo since we have a yearly membership.  Matt was able to meet us there and hang out with us for a couple hours.  Sweet.

The Octopus was very active - it was fascinating to watch - he's usually a squishy lump of boring!

These little guys are our favorite fish - they dig little burrows and they pop up out of the sand and have shells or rocks in their mouth that they spit out then go back down in their tunnel - funny.

 We were able to see this worker feed the fish in the big aquarium. 

 She hand feeds the little sharks in there!  

The zoo has lots of these artistic displays on their grounds - they are made completely from trash found in the ocean and on the beaches!  I zoomed in on the second picture so you can see some of the cool things on there - shoes, toys, plastic bottles - lots of crazy stuff.

The walruses are just plain awesome.  They are huge and they love to swim right up to the glass and show off for us - they have up to 4 of them in the water sometimes!

On one of our daily walks, we'd actually gotten some rain the night before (it's been a long dry spell) so the animals on our usual walk were more active.  We found two turtles out of the water digging holes in the dirt - the one in this picture didn't like being watched that close and he went running off into the water - this type of turtle is not slow!

 I'm the Primary President in our ward and I like to check in with my teachers to see how they're doing and give them some advice and I give them a treat to say thank you - these are the cute ones we gave this time.  Love it!

This picture is just plain A.W.E.S.O.M.E!

These are too...

We've had some fun exploring the Bass Pro Shops and Cabelas in our area - we discovered a boot that Jacie fits in and the Cabelas had a great African animal display - full size rhino and elephant included!

We had a ton of fun on this shooting range - every time you hit a target, something happened like a bear rises up and growls or a can tips over or a cat yowls at you - very fun.

 Our favorite project of the summer is to paint rocks to hide at parks and on walking paths.  Here's some pictures of the ones we've painted so far.  Trevor did a great job copying my sunset one!

 

One of our walks - so many fun and beautiful places to explore and play at.  Carly was bouncing the tree that the other kids are sitting on - hence her in the air with her hair standing straight up!

 And to end our July - another happy event - my niece Lillie got married!  Her mom is my oldest sister and just look at what a wonderful family legacy she has created so far!