July Recap/ Summer Break

July completely flew by! It consisted of Bryson's three week Summer break so we tried to pack in as much fun as we could.

I started the month off at girls camp with these fabulous ladies! The theme was "It's a Jungle Out There!" and we based the camp around "Survivor" with fun challenges. It was a total blast!

Love these girls...

I got home from girls camp just in time to welcome Bryson home from his last day of first grade. What a stud.

We spent the 4th of July at our local town days. Bryson enjoyed the haystack dive and walked away with a huge bag full of candy.

We visited the fair and Bryson especially loved this water bubble activity...



We ended the evening watching the fireworks across the valley from the top of our house. It was so beautiful!

We enjoyed a day up at our friends Ty & Kami's cabin and spent the day fishing, shooting, 4-wheeling, canoeing and relaxing. We love their cabin!

Mike and Bryson have started fishing on a weekly basis together and enjoyed trying to catch fish from their pond.

Bryson and Saki (our Japanese exchange student) spent hours and hours jumping on the trampoline with cousins and friends. Bryson mastered the front flip and is now trying to master the double front flip. He almost has it down!


We spent a day at Lagoon. Bryson thought he died and went to Heaven. He was finally tall enough to go on Colossus and Wicked and loved them.

This is how Lilly looked on every single ride except on the very slow little boats, the very slow little cars, and the very slow train. She almost smiled on those three rides....haha. She was not a fan of Lagoon.

Lilly's cousin Brody loved holding her and pushing her around in her stroller.

Bryson and Lilly took lots of bubble baths.

We went to see Wicked for the first time with Ty & Kami and loved it!

We also enjoyed several outdoor movies that our city puts on after dark.

We visited the zoo. I hardly recognized the place because it's changed so much since we were last there.

Lilly loved walking with the big kids instead of riding in her stroller.

Bryson played on Granny & Grandpa's big blow up water slide and had fun emptying out the water bags afterward. You'll see in the video why he enjoyed it so much...haha.


 Bryson went to his first live musical at the Hale Center Theater.

Bryson played his first season of rugby with this fine looking group of boys (his cousins).

And the month ended with him starting second grade! His Summer break was short and sweet but he's excited to be back at school and loves his new teacher!

Favortie quote this week:

"Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right."

President Ezra Taft Benson 

Life rules.

Basement Camp Out

Ever since Bryson got his new pirate sleeping bag for Christmas he has been DYING to have a camp out. So rather than waiting until the snow melts enough to venture into the mountains, Mike decided to surprise Bryson with a camp out in the basement. Without warning, Mike told Bryson to pack a bag and grab his sleeping bag and pillow because they were going on a camp out! Bryson was a little hesitant because there was a foot of snow outside and he didn't know if he wanted to camp out that bad, but Mike insisted and they got everything packed up in the car and off they set--first to return a library movie and then to "a special spot" to camp. They drove around for a while with Bryson in the back seat utterly confused and thinking his dad had gone completely crazy. He was not excited at all about the idea of sleeping outside in the freezing cold. When Mike pulled up to the house and told Bryson that the special spot was in our basement, his mood immediately changed to pure excitement and he came running into the house beaming. I was on the couch feeding Lilly as he ran in, threw down his sleeping bag and excitedly yelled, "we're camping in the basement!" He thought it was the coolest thing.

They lugged all of their camping gear downstairs and worked on getting the tent set up on a little patch of carpet we have in the corner of our unfinished basement. Bryson couldn't contain his excitement and was so busy jumping and dancing around that he hardly helped with the set up of the tent, but eventually Mike got it set up and they were ready for their big adventure.

They got their sleeping bags situated, changed into their jammies and then put on a movie to watch. We didn't want Lilly to feel left out so we let her join in on the fun for a little bit. It was so cute to go down the next morning with Lilly in my arms to find Bryson and Mike curled up fast asleep in their sleeping bags. Mike said that sleeping on our cold, hard basement floor made for one of the most uncomfortable nights of his life, but that it was worth it to get to spent some quality time with his son. I feel so lucky to be married to such an amazing father.

Life rules!

Cornbelly's

One big mistake I make with Bryson all the time is that I tell him days in advance about fun things we have planned. I get excited and want him to have something exciting to look forward to, so naturally I tell him. The problem with doing this is that it causes him to ask me about a BILLION times how many more days until it's time to do [insert fun activity here]. Okay, so the "billion" part is an exaggeration, but he asks enough to drive anyone crazy...especially me! Why I do that to myself each time, I have no clue but it's a bad habit I am working very hard to break.

Chazz, Naish, Matani, Zyan, Bryson

This week Bryson drove me crazy asking about our annual trip to Cornbelly's in Lehi with my side of the family. Bryson's favorite things were the corn box, potato sack slide, and the haunted monster. Somehow about 50 corn kernels from the corn box made their way home with us and magically appeared in my washing machine after I finished the laundry. Now, I wonder how that happened?

Although she looks very awake in this picture, Lilly slept the whole time snuggled up warm in her stroller.
She is such a sweet little baby and we just love having her in our family.

 Mallory, Braden, Riley, Skyler, Bryson

Bryson got lucky this year and got to go back a second time two days later with Mike's side of the family. We had a blast with both families and created a ton of new memories.

The Treasure Hunt

Bryson has the coolest uncle. His name is Isaac, but we call him Ike. He came to visit the other day and made Bryson a cute pirate map that Bryson just loved.

Bryson loved it so much that Ike and his wife Amy decided to create a real treasure hunt complete with a very real looking pirate map, clues and a buried treasure for all the grand kids to do at Granny & Grandpa's house the next time we visited.

Here is the amazing map he created.

Here are the clues. Each contained a letter that spelled out the destination of the buried treasure.

The kids ran around crazy from clue to clue which ended them up in the sandbox digging for a treasure chest. When they opened the chest, it was filled with fun kid toys and candy that kept them entertained for the rest of the evening. 

Lilly stayed safe on Grandpa Hink's lap while her cousins ran wild all around her. 

Grandpa sure loves her!

Thank you Ike & Amy for being such a fun aunt and uncle and for planning such a great activity for the grand kids. They sure love you!