Camping

Kai and his friend, just giggling in a hammock in the mountains.

We are tent campers. It just doesn't feel like camping without a tent for me. I am sure I will change my mind as I get older, but for now, our enormous tent works for us. It can fit a queen, a twin, and two child cots with room to spare. Love it!

Dressed and a quick breakfast so we can get to the fun stuff.

Pioneer Day - 24th Of July

This is Jason posting. So in Utah we have an additional holiday called Pioneer Day. Like Independence Day, it is an additional day to celebrate the past as well as set off fireworks.  Nothing better than remembering our ancestors, barbecuing some great food with great friends, and blowing stuff up. We had three families over, 18 people in all, to celebrate and just enjoy each others company.  It was a blast... literally.  

Happy Birthday... and Happy Father's Day, Jason!!

Jason is old! Yay! ... I mean ... happy birthday, Jason! :)

Happy birthday, Kai!

Kai turned 4 and he was SOOOO excited.

It's Like Riding a Bike

So recently Ash decided to teach Kai how to ride a bike.  He was determined to learn without training wheels so Ash set up this little bike we have without the wheels and took him outside.  She got him going and he pretty much just started riding the bike like he used to know how to do it. It was pretty amazing.  I took a video today of him out riding for his fourth time.  Seriously...  Only the fourth time he had gone out to ride and this is what he is doing.

Memorial Day Weekend

Saturday, we met my brother and his family at the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point. It is the best children's museum I've ever been to. When Seth saw his cousin, they held hands throughout the museum. It was so stinking cute. Not to say the other kids don't get along, but Seth and this particular cousin just connect.

Yard Work Galore

So Ashley invited her 13 year old nephew over to help with some yard work.  What a great idea.  He spent a good amount of time weeding and mowing the front and back lawn on Friday while I worked and then we spent 8 hours on Saturday weeding between the garden boxes, weeding the area behind our fence (in the wetlands), cutting down a huge weed/bush, laying several layers of weed barrier, and then finally moving several wheel barrows worth of rocks from behind the fence to between the garden boxes.  What a tremendous amount of work!  I am posting some "after" pictures of everything.  I wish you could see how much of a change there was in the before and after.

Let me tell you, that 13 year old worked hard and between the two of us we got significantly more done that I could have done in probably 3 weekends by myself.  It was tremendous and I'm glad he allowed us to pay him well for his work.  It was a long, super hot and sweaty day and I for one can barely move between being sun burnt and sore.  It was totally worth it though after seeing the results.  Thank you for everything you did...  It was amazing!