Summer - Week #5

We started off the week with fun visitors - Cooper and Miriam!!  They flew into Utah a week before the rest of their family to attend EFY and Retreat for Girls.  We had Sunday dinner with them before they headed to their camps.  Miriam stayed the night at our house and we drove her to Logan the next morning for her retreat.  It was fun to take her register for the camp; I almost wished I was a teen joining in on the great times to be had.  It was also nice to take my kids around the USU campus and show them my alma mater.  We were going to head over to my mom's house after dropping Miriam off, but Lauren started to feel yucky and we didn't want to pass any sickness around so we hurried home.  Luckily, she didn't get as sick as the rest of us were the week before.

 Enjoying free slushies from 7-11 on July 11th.  We stood in line for 20 minutes... was it worth it?  Not from a monetary standpoint, but it was fun to join in with the bagillion people who participated in the free slushy frenzy.

 Friday night Matt and I snuck out for a date while Lauren babysat.  After dinner, I tagged along in the golf cart while Matt played a few holes of golf.  Last year I'd mentioned swimming at Oakridge - Kim, you'd asked what that was, here's my super late reply:  It's a country club we joined last year.  It's in Farmington a few miles from our home.  Both of Matt's grandparents were members and he had really fond memories of the club from his childhood.  His papa's health has been deteriorating lately and couldn't enjoy his membership anymore so he passed it on to Matt.  I could actually do an entire post on this membership as I've had so many different feelings about it.  At first, I was embarrassed that we were members of a country club, I was annoyed at how much $ it was, and I made snide comments all the time to Matt about it.  I've since gotten over myself and realized this is something Matt loves, he's got a family/childhood connection to this club - which creates such strong feelings and ties, and he works so hard it's nice to see him have a place he can go to unwind.  So I guess I'm converted - we all really enjoy playing there.  Who knows... I may go golfing one of these days and enjoy it... stranger things have happened. ;)  Here are some pics of my cutie hitting the ball: 

We sent Bradley off to Trek this week and he returned home on Saturday around 5:00 PM.  The pic on the left is going, the pic on the right is coming home.  We missed him terribly and I was tearing up on the drive to the stake center to get him... how am I going to be when his mission comes around?!?  He was dead tired and didn't say much until we got some food into him.  He told me that his family complimented him for having a great attitude - no complaining.  I think he also may have gotten an unofficial obnoxious award for singing our annoying family hiking songs over and over and over... 

Written by Bradley:

Trek was really fun. We had to pull a handcart over 36 miles up and down hills.  It lasted four days and was really tiring.  It was a spiritual experience and also a hard one.  The food their was great but everyone was drinking water full of dirt.  One day we had to make butter by putting buttermilk in a cup and shaking it for about 15 minuets.  There was also a hoedown at night which was a little boring because all we did was swing our partner round and round.  The last day two of our family members died and we learned about doing temple ordinances for them so they could enter the kingdom of God. Our family name was the Mighty Mormon Power Rangers.  It was really hard to fall asleep because nobody had pads so we were sleeping on rocks.  I also saw a Black Widow which was pretty cool.  It rained a few days which was nice because it was really dusty and hot the day before.  It usually took us about most of the day to hike 10 or more miles everyday.  I thought it was really fun but I don't know if I would do it again.

The night Bradley got home from Trek we had our season tickets to Centrepoint Theatre; this show was "Fiddler on the Roof."  Bradley was too tired to go so Will took his ticket instead while B stayed home and relaxed in front of the tv with Owen.  Before the show we took the kids to Mikado and Will tried sushi (a salmon roll) for the first time.  He loved it - yea!!!

Miscellaneous crafting pictures...

Summer - Week #4

Independence Day!  We started off the morning by going to the West Bountiful parade and lunch with the Green family.  Matt stayed home with Bradley (B was sick on this day and Matt was still recovering from the day before).  I love this parade.  It's so much smaller and less claustrophobic than a lot of the other parades in the county and the best part about it is that the route goes right past Morgan and Amy's home... how comfortable and easy is that?!

This year I told Lauren that she needed to focus on helping the little kids with their candy as opposed to gathering her own stash.  She was upset at first (it's hard to grow up!) but she was so great with the younger kids and of course they all shared the candy with each other anyway.

Nana organized a fishing pond for the kids to do during the day.  The kids loved it, especially Lauren, who is cheering in her picture because I told her she was not too old to fish. ;)

The night of the 4th we pooled all our fireworks with the neighbors and watched them together.  Bradley came out to be with everyone although he spent the evening cuddled in his blanket far away from the crowd.  However, he was feeling good enough by then that every time I took his picture he made "zombie eyes" for the camera.  I really love all our neighbors.  The ones on either side of me are empty nesters and didn't join us for fireworks, but everyone in our neck of the neighborhood is so easy going and low key.  In the picture below left are my neighbors across the street Molly & Mark Oliver, and Theresa & Nathan Baldwin.  Both families have boys a year younger than Will and they're great buddies.  Great end to a great day!

Changing gears... the following pictures actually span across weeks 2-5 but this seems like as good a place as any to smoosh them in.  We own two rental homes in the Kayscreek subdivision (it's the area we lived before we moved to Park City).  We just had our first yucky experience, after years of renters, with a family that filed bankruptcy and lived in the house rent free for 6 months... a lot of ins and outs with that story, the governmental rules protecting our renters are upsetting.  Regardless, they are finally out now and we needed to replace some carpet that got torn up while they were there.  Since we were getting new carpet we decided this would be a great time to repaint the bedrooms.  When we bought the house it was painted and decorated SO cute but it was very personalized so we decided to neutralize the bedrooms.  Matt wanted to hire the work out but I had the brilliant (?) idea that this would be a great way for our kids to learn how to work and help out in other ways besides just cleaning our own home.  I am so glad we had the kids help us with this.  They really did work hard and I was really proud of all they did.  Regardless, teaching your kids how to work usually doubles the time involved and it was an exhausting project.  Here are the before pics:

The "during" snapshots.  The rooms were so dark that they required a lot of primer; 3 coats - ugh.  It was such a good thing that we were painting on carpet that we knew was going to be replaced.  I'd like to blame all the paint spills on the kids but I was just as bad as any of them.  In addition to painting, the kids washed walls, baseboards, shelving, and cleaned the bathrooms.

Bradley was a great helper.  He came with me to the home a couple of times while Lauren babysat the boys.  During those times we did the colored paint... as good as the little boys were at painting we needed the top coats to be applied a bit more carefully.

Here's what the rooms looked like post paint, pre carpet:

Now it's time to tell my pity party story...  I was weeding the front garden at the rental home one day and totally got stung by a wasp.  The nest was nestled up under the stucco and I didn't notice it.  Owie! But to top it all off, a few days later I was at the house and noticed all the neighbors had their garbages out.  I went to grab the can to drag it to the road and stuck my hand right into another nest!  I got THREE wasp stings that time!!  I took a picture of my 3 wasp stings and let me tell you, it does NOT do my poor swollen hand justice. :-P  And here is the final product.  I think it turned out great, was worth all the effort we put into having the kids help, and I'm so glad it's all done!! Wish us luck with our next renters. :)