The Three "F"s

Flaming Gorge Days, Fourth of July, and Family Fun!

We've had a busy few weeks.  Summer is always a series of one crazy event after another, and this one is no exception!  We came home from our Zion trip on Sunday the 19th and Mike came and stayed with us for a few days on his way driving home to Indiana.  He helped us with the playhouse and spent some quality time with us and the girls.  It was great to see him for a little longer.  We missed Lacey, who had to fly directly back to Indiana for work.

On Tuesday, my mom, Ben, and Jessica came to stay with us.  They had just dropped off my dad, Scott, and Matt at the airport to fly to Philmont, a 2-week long scout camp in New Mexico.  My mom and the kids will be staying with us off and on for the summer.  It has been so nice to have them here visiting.  The girls love having their Grammy and aunts and uncles around, and I love being with my mom and siblings too.  It is especially nice to have built-in babysitters!

I have been busier than normal with Hallie enrolled in a kindergarten prep program called Kindergarten Here I Come.  It is similar to preschool: 2 hours a day for 2 weeks.  They focus on skills needed in kindergarten, and it starts at 8:30 AM.  It was a good test run for Hallie (and especially for me!) to get used to getting ready for school in the morning.  Also I have been subbing for another Zumba instructor who is out of town and so I have been teaching three classes a week instead of one.  It has been lots of fun! I love Zumba! 

Last weekend, June 24th and 25th, was Flaming Gorge Days in Green River.  It's like a big carnival-type event held at Expedition Island, and it's lots of fun!  We decided to take the kids down to the island on Friday because it's usually much less crowded then.  They loved it! They rode the giant slides, played in the bouncy castles, got their faces painted, and got cotton candy.  Hallie was a little daredevil and loved the huge slides and the inflatable obstacle course.  Claire was much more nervous, and would only go down the big slide with me or Jessica.  But she still loved it.

Face paint!

Claire and Jess got matching fireworks on their arms

We stopped at the booth of a man who makes wooden furniture and rocking horses.  Evie had a great time!

I love their faces!

 Saturday the 25th was the Flaming Gorge Day parade--and our 6-year anniversary! It was a very fun and busy day.  In the morning we went to the parade, which was thoroughly enjoyed.

The girls with their candy bags

Happy Anniversary to us!

After the parade, we had a barbecue with the Smiths and then we came home and worked on the playhouse together.  Rob has been building the girls a playhouse in our backyard for about a month now.  I help him when I can, but the bulk of the work and technical know-how is provided by Rob.  He's such a wonderful daddy!  I love my handy husband!

These pictures were taken before we went on our Zion trip.  This is Rob putting up the roof struts we built.

Ben helped with the roof, and Jessica, Hallie, Claire, and I helped paint. Grammy helped by watching Evie. 

Working on the shingles. This is what it looked like after siding and windows, but before painting.

Painting the slats for the trim.

Hard at work.

That evening, Ben and Jessica were our waiters for a romantic candlelight dinner on our anniversary.  It was wonderful.  I have the sweetest husband in the world to plan it all out without my knowledge.  He blindfolded me and drove around in circles for awhile so I didn't know where I was, then took me to his parents' house (no one was home at the time), where my mom, Ben, and Jessica had set up our candlelight dinner.  Ben and Jessica seated us and took our orders.   The menu consisted of take-out from China Garden, one of our favorite places--yum!  We had the evening all to ourselves, thanks to our wonderful family! Thank you everyone for making our anniversary special.  And thank you to Rob, the most wonderful husband in the world, for always being with me.  The last six years have been the best of my life.  I love you Rob! I can't tell you enough.  You are a great daddy, always doing things with the kids, wrestling with them and playing with them.  And most of all, you are a spectacular husband, always making time for us and making me want to be better.  You are so charismatic and such a good, good man.  I love you more than words can say.  Happy Anniversary, my love!

This weekend was also eventful.  My mom's good friend Kari came with her three youngest kids (Hailey, Aiden, and Maddie) for two days, and we had fun going swimming, playing games, flying kites at the park, and seeing the trains. Hallie and Claire were instant buddies with her youngest daughter Maddie, who is 7.  They were sad to see her go.  On Friday, we cleaned the church as a family.  It was a great service opportunity, and it made me appreciate our church building more and have a greater motivation to keep it clean.  I taught Zumba three times that week also, interspersed between all our other activities.

On Saturday we took a family trip to the Vernal temple.  Our stake is in the Vernal temple district, but we usually attend the temple somewhere in Salt Lake or Utah Valley because that is where we have the most family that can babysit for us.   This is the first time in the 4 years we have lived here that we have actually gone to the Vernal temple, and also the first time I have done a session there.  The last time I saw the inside of that temple was before it was dedicated.  It was a great experience.  We took the whole family, plus Mom and Jess, on the 2 hour drive over the mountains, so that Jessica could babysit the girls outside the temple while Rob, my mom, and I did a session.  Afterwards we all ate lunch at Golden Corral.  It was a very fun trip, and it was wonderful to partake of the peace of the temple. 

Saturday evening, we put together our new porch swing, Rob's present to me, and resurfaced our deck.  It was quite enjoyable because we did it after the girls went to sleep so we had no interruptions.

~ FOURTH OF JULY ~

 We had a great Independence Day this year. Rob and I woke up at 6 AM to go hiking up at Spirit Lake.  Rob is going on a guys-only backpacking trip this coming weekend, and he wanted to scout out the trail they will be taking.  So we drove the two hours up into the high Uinta mountains.  The scenery is just breathtaking!

Up at Spirit Lake, the views were stunning! It sits in this beautiful bowl-shaped valley with snow-capped mountains surrounding a pristine tree-lined lake. Gorgeous.  We started hiking on the "trail" which was mostly covered by standing water and absolutely swarmed with mosquitoes.  They were literally swarming around us, and even though we were covered from head to toe, we still got bites all over.  We only hiked about 1/4 mile before we had to turn back.  The trail went over a footbridge, but since there is so much runoff and flooding right now, the footbridge was only accessible by wading through FREEZING calf-high water for about 15 feet, and wading through another 25 feet to reach the other side.  I was having a hard time breathing because of how cold my feet were.  It was at that point that we decided to turn back. When the mosquitoes are literally eating me alive, it is no longer fun for me.  So we began driving back down the mountain and chose another hike to do.  It was much farther away from all the standing water, so the mosquitoes were greatly diminished.  It was a very nice, enjoyable, beautiful hike.  There were so many beautiful wildflowers, streams, and panoramic mountain meadows.

Spirit Lake.  It was a bit cloudy, so you can't see how green the trees really were, but it was gorgeous!

It was raining off and on all day on the fourth, and we were worried we would get rained out of our barbecue.  Luckily the rain stopped by the time we started, and we had a lovely evening barbecue.  We had the Jarvie family, the Butcher family, and Rob's parents over along with my mom, Ben, and Jess.  We ate, talked, played with glowsticks, and watched the fireworks.  Lots of fun!

Fruit Pizza! This one is red, white, and blue.

Hanging out on our newly resurfaced deck--it's red!!

The best side effect of the rainy day.

That's what the playhouse looks like now.  The outside is almost finished, and the inside is in the works.

The awesome Wyoming sunset.

Happy Independence Day everyone! We are so blessed to live in such a privileged country which grants us so much freedom and protects us so well. Happy Birthday America!  In God We Trust.