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.

Our Crazy Weekend: Skydiving, 10K, etc...

YOUTH CONFERENCE: I shipped Bryson off to Granny's house this weekend so I could attend Youth Conference which consisted of three days of jam-packed fun! We hiked up to Ensign Peak at 4:30am to watch the sunrise, offered service at the Bishop's Storehouse, went to the Olympic Park in Park City and watched the Olympic ski jumpers practice, rode the zip line and Alpine Slide, went to the Clark Planetarium, The Lion House, Hogle Zoo, This is the Place Park, etc. It was such a fun weekend and I loved spending it with these cute girls.

CABIN WITH FRIENDS: This actually happened last weekend, but I haven't had time to post about it, so I'm throwing it in here. We spent a day up at our friends cabin and it was a blast. We fished, canoed, swam, played Human Battleship, played catch, rode 4-wheelers, ate yummy food and just hung out. It was SO relaxing and was just what I needed to detox from a very stressful and emotionally exhausting week.

10K RACE FOR GRIEF: My neighbor Jen (who by-the-way is a total rock star) and I have been running together in the mornings and ran in the Race for Grief this weekend in memory of Baby Mac and Baby Quincy. I've grown to really enjoy running and especially enjoyed running my heart out for my two little nephews. My goal was to finish in under an hour and I barely did it with a time of 59 minutes. I look forward to running the Cedar City Half Marathon in September. My goal for the half will be to simply finish without dying...haha.

SKYDIVING: Mike somehow talked all of these people from his work (& his sister Camden) into skydiving this weekend. Mike was SO EXCITED...and I, well I was just certain he was going to plummet to the earth and die!!! Thankfully he survived. He has always been into extreme sports and just LOVES stuff like this. After watching the fun they all had, I'm almost tempted to try it someday.

Here's the video of Mike's death defying jump:


Here are some pictures from his jump.

Life rules!

P.S. View the latest update on Cali on her mom's blog here: http://mikenatalieandalex.blogspot.com/

4h SHow

Today some young women in the ward had a 4H show at the Lehi Rodeo grounds, so Bryson and I stopped by to watch for a while.

All ready for the show!

Cute Brianna.

Cute Katelyn.

Cute Bryson.

While I visited with the girl's family, Bryson followed all of the bigger kids around under the bleachers like a puppy dog and had an absolute blast!

The Puppet Show

This morning I took the boys to a puppet show put on by the Young Women in our ward for the kids in the neighborhood. We had a blast and the kiddos loved it.

The puppets.

The audience.

The stars!