Pioneer Day

The 24th of July is Pioneer Day in Utah. We celebrate the Mormon Pioneers that crossed the plains to give us the religious freedom we were being denied within the boundaries of the United States. What courage that must have taken to pack a few of the most important possessions for your entire family into one wagon or handcart and start walking to somewhere wholly unknown to anyone except Native Americans who didn't speak your language and mistrusted all white people (for good reason).

That is true faith.

To celebrate, we dressed in our favorite red, white, and blue outfits and headed to This Is The Place Heritage Park.

Foster Care Day at Cowabunga Bay!

I LOVED being there for Foster Care Day at Cowabunga Bay. Only families who have a placement through foster care or who have adopted a child through foster care within the last year could go. We had such a wonderful time, and all the families there were so wonderful. The kids were so great, and everyone was really patient. It definitely felt different than a normal trip to a water park. (All the faces have been blurred out so everyone can stay safe since I don't know anyone's situation in these pictures.)

S had a birthday! Shout hurray!

I've waited to post this so that you couldn't really know when her birthday was. It was so great. I got to give a pink and purple princess party! (That's a lot of 'P's.) I've given a lot of blue and red birthdays. (Thomas the Train, Spiderman, etc. etc.) And it's been so very fun, but this was really different, which is always wonderful. The challenge was getting pictures of S's birthday without posting pictures of S on here. It's a little difficult to not post pictures of the sweet birthday girl, but I'll give it a try.

Our neighbor saw all the presents wrapped up and ready for her birthday, and he said it looked like a unicorn had thrown up on our entertainment center. My response was, "Good!"

 My parents gave S one of those presents, which I thought was very sweet and thoughtful of them. They're amazing like that; they always remember birthdays and holidays.

Sealings

So last week was the endowments for Aunt J and Uncle S. This week they got sealed! :D

This is Aunt J and Uncle S with their younger son's family.

I told you about endowments, so here is my brief explanation of sealings. When two people are sealed together, it means their marriage is for "time and for all eternity" instead of just "until death do us part". When children are born to two people that are already sealed, they are automatically counted as being sealed to their parents. This is called being "born into the covenant". If the parents are not sealed already when a child is born, they must go to the temple with that child to be sealed together, making their family an eternal family. That was my case. My earliest memories are of being in the temple with my family as we were sealed together. What a wonderful way to start remembering life, right?

Endowments

My Aunt J and Uncle S are amazing people. No joke. I love them. We call them Grandma J and Grandpa S because they have been there for my children in so many ways. My boys love them as much as I do.

And a few days ago they got their endowments out in the temple! :D :D :D

From left to right: my parents,  Uncle J, Aunt S, Aunt J, Uncle S, and us.

If you don't know what endowments are, I'll fill you in. (I know the LDS religion has a vocabulary of our own.) ;) Endowments are just promises/covenants that we make with our Heavenly Father. They are very very sacred to us, and they only happen in the temple. A member of the church must be keeping all of the commandments of the Lord in the best way they can to enter the temple and get their endowments. It's kind of a huge step for us. The only larger covenant we make with God is being sealed as husband and wife for all eternity.

We got our family pictures!

Every year we get professional family photos, and we just got ours back from the photographer! :D This year we went through Lou La Belle Photography, and she did such an amazing job. The reason I picked her is because my cousin got pictures taken, and in my cousin's pictures, the photographer obviously knew how to handle kids. I came to find out later that she used to be an elementary school teacher (or something like that. It could have been a preschool teacher. I forget...) So here are the pictures I can post. There were a lot more with S in them that I can't post here, but I'm excited to pick a picture with her in it for our family wall in our living room!

The other things we do.

There are about a million things that haven't fit into other blog posts, so I'll post them in one glob of a post here.

The garden is amazing. We had our first harvest!

 Kai loves tomatoes (as do I,) so he got the very first tomato from the vine.

I love just sitting in the garden and smelling the plants. Fruit and veggie plants just smell different than other plants.

Happy Independence Day!

 I love Independence Day! (The movie and the holiday. Lol!) We always have fun. The Flag flies outside our door, and we get the opportunity to tell our kids about this great country. If you don't know how good we have it in the good old USA, I'd love to have a vacation with you and go see what things are like elsewhere! :)

Waiting for the parade!

When the parade started, there was obviously an American Flag carried to start the whole thing off. It was wonderful to hear the hush that fell over the crowd and to stand with our hands over our hearts along with everyone else. It was so quiet as it passed, and then the throng rang out in applause. I loved it. Every Flag we saw after that, Seth had his hand on his heart. It was so so sweet.

 S decided she needed to sit on Jason's lap halfway through the parade. It was so adorable.

This is what an amazing Daddy looks like.

We've been putting together a new swing set and climbing dome for the kids. I threw my back out working on it yesterday, so Jason has been working on it by himself as much as possible since then. He discovered that one pole we installed at the very beginning of the process was backward, and he had to undo a lot of his hard work to turn it around. It's dark out, and he is still at it, working under a flood light and an army of mosquitoes. Why? Because he loves our children. He can't wait to see them playing, being carefree, and basically being kids.

Nerd moment

Jason and I got a babysitter and went to the Parade of Homes. It was so fun to get away together. We are going to design and build our next home (barring any tragedies or big expenses) so the Parade of Homes is like a huge playground full of ideas for us. Last year, we got a ton of photos of specific details in various houses so that we could remember them. This year? 4 photos...

An exact replica of a Nimbus 2000

EBLT!

Where do I even start? This trip was awesome! My brothers nicknamed it the EBLT, the Epic Bear Lake Trip! We went to celebrate my father's 60th birthday. It's been a great 60 years, so we had to do something awesome to commemorate.

On Wednesday, we got permission from a judge to take S into Idaho with us! Hurrah! We would have taken her to the cabin either way because the cabin is on the Utah side of the boarder. The good beaches are in Idaho though, so S and I would have missed out on a lot of family fun by staying in Utah. Luckily, the judge was kind and we got some fun, action-packed days as a family. :)

We stopped on the way up just to give the kids a break, and they loved the view! (This picture is like a "Where's Waldo?" but I would call it a "Where's Seth?" Lol!)

 The cousins were a blast! And the cabin was amazingly beautiful inside and out. This picture is of a very serious discussion, by the way.