Anniversary, camping, sports!

 Casey and I celebrated 16yrs on the 18th! We had a simple date where we went to see Thor Love and Thunder and then had dinner at Texas Rd House. Casey re-did our bedroom mirror and made it into a hexagon! I love how it turned out and I Love his willingness to make and do for my creative whims. I gifted him a couple of books he's missing from his Terry Brooks collection. I love Casey so very much. He's truly my best friend and soul mate. I talked recently about a soul mate being someone you don't find, but choose, then get to work together building a life and relationship that lasts, loves, and grows in many ways. We are imperfect in many ways, but I'd choose him time and time again!

(not the finished mirror, just taken after he cut it down to a hexagon!)

Alice got to have a play date with Ava Tuesday (19th). We ended up having her over for the entire afternoon because the girls were having so much fun together! 

Kendal and Peter got to do the Tews basketball camp that week 18th-20th. Peter was in a skills class and Kendal a shooters class. Jessica (the gal in charge) was so sweet and let Kendal and Peter join each other's classes for the remaining two days. They were thrilled to get the extra time and they loved being in classes with some friends this year. Made for an even better experience! (and the carpool help out to Filer was nice ; )

The kids have been wanting to go camping this summer and we finally made it happen the weekend of the 21-23rd. We left Thursday afternoon up to the south hills. We chose a camp spot just south of Magic Mountain. We set up camp and had an early dinner so we could get some fishing in. We ended up finding Moose and ground bee's so we had to give up. We went back to camp and Peter made and started a fire for us so we could cook smore's. We went to bed when it was dark and the kids slept well through the night. The next morning we decided to go for a hike to Phantom falls. We drove a ways out and the road to the falls ended up being closed. So we walked the path for a bit. It had major ruts and was very damaged by flooding in a recent years. We only went about half a mile in before we turned back and went back to camp. We had lunch and had a washers competition back at camp. That afternoon we went on a longer hike on the Eagle trail. We didn't know till we got there that Alice had left her sneakers back at camp. She was a trooper and walked the whole thing (Minus a couple of stretches being carried) in her flip flops. The kids did really great; especially given the fact that the hike was over a mile longer than we originally thought.  We went on another drive to try and find a Humming bird sanctuary that's hidden somewhere, but we didn't end up finding it. We had a hot dog roast that night and finished off our marshmallows. Second night was noisier with other campers around, but the kids seemed to ignore it and slept through a lot. After breakfast we cleaned up camp and headed out. On our way home we did the Ross Falls hike and went fishing. (Really the kids just got in the water and waved fishing poles for a while. We think it was too hot for the fish to be out in the middle of the day.) 

Casey's car doesn't have AC so we had some dusty car rides the whole weekend. We unpacked that afternoon and cleaned up our car, and ourselves from all the dust and dirt. That night we went to a Stake Pioneer dinner that was held at the city park. The kids found cousins and friends quickly and happily played away the evening. 

I had a few outings the past couple of weeks. A girls night out to see Where the Crawdad's sing. (Good book, turned into a good movie.) A book club night at Christina's and a lunch date with friends to celebrate Christina's birthday the next day. I've read a lot this year and know that Casey and I are going to crush last years book numbers by the end of the year! I've read a lot of deep books, with some lighter ones in the mix. Book club has been good to shuffle in some different genre's I wouldn't normally go for. 

Peter and Alice started swim lessons last week! Alice was excited to be in a new class with new friends. She is a little fish in the water and is loving her lessons so far! (If only our little fish would listen and sit still a bit more for her teacher, it'd be great.) Peter has a big class, but he's enjoying things so far. He's learning new strokes and was so excited to learn to dive today. They had lessons Mon. - Thurs. last week and will repeat that and finish up on Thursday this week. 

Casey and I stole away for a belated anniversary trip to the Temple last Friday. We picked a random day and time, but ended up being a part of session that our friends (the Jackman's) were in. Their 3 daughters all have mission calls and they were going through with the oldest Janelle for her first time in that session. It was such a divine mercy that we could be there and see these amazing ladies. Their going to rock their missions! 

Kendal had a three day volleyball camp last week. The high school put on a camp and the girls got to work on their skills and play games together with the other middle school age girls. Kendal has try outs next week for Volleyball! 

Peter and his friends did a lemonade stand. They were thrilled to have the fire fighter truck stop by! Any afternoon Peter can be out with friends he is; especially with Austin. The Dansie's have a pool so Peter has enjoyed playing in that with them quite a bit this summer! 

Kendal joined her friend Hope and together they spent a little over a week making spray side walk chalk to sell at a kids market that was held this past weekend. With the help of Hope's mom they put everything together and made it all happen. I'm proud of Kendal's entrepreneurial spirit, and willingness to put herself out there. We had Jemma with us (Her Mom and Dad were on an Anniversary date) and we took the kids to the market. The little girls got sparkly tattoos and we picked up a few treats. We had Kendal bring home some spray chalk for the kids using the money I lent for change. 

Today we registered Peter for school! He'll have Ms. Martindale. She's new so we know nothing about her yet. Alice and the other kindergarten kids are still unassigned so hopefully we'll know sooner rather than later with her. The summer days are rushing by and school will be here in a mere three weeks. The kids are pumped to go! We had hoped to have our lot purchased by now but we haven't been lucky so far with the timing of things.  (It's been easy for me to get discouraged and my positivity has waned a bit. Our prayers have poured out for things to come together for us / my Dad (who's putting every sub / thing together for this home). . I had the impression when we visited the temple last week to TRUST. Trust in the Lords timing. Trust in things to work our for the best for our family and circumstance. Trust that our Father in Heaven is blessing us in many seen and unseen ways. I don't have the easiest time putting myself at the will of others and being in an unknown space of life. I've done it three times before though, and on the Lords timing I got three wonderful blessings. This is just my next blessing that will happen on the Lord's timing / way.) Deep breaths, patience, hope, trust. . . 

July celebrations and all the things in between

 Playing a bit of catch up again.

We had a handful of days in between trips to Logan. From the 27th-30th Casey helped the high school basketball girls do a camp / games at CSI. The girls did drills and worked on skills each morning and had games every afternoon that Casey helped coach. Casey said the girls did well and won all of their games but one that week!

Kendal had a final check up before she got braces and had open gym for basketball in the evenings. Peter got some play time in with Austin throughout the week as well! He and Kendal played with friends and joined the Dansie's in their pool a couple of times. I took the kids swimming at the city pool on the 27th. We joined some friends and the kids had a great time playing together. Alice is getting fearless with her floaties on. She doesn't mind the deep end knowing she's fine and she was a little fish. Peter and Kendal enjoyed the deep end the whole time as well as the running / obstacle course they put at the end of the pool. 

We headed back to Logan the afternoon of the 30th. We picked up some pizza and had a picnic at Willow Park with the kids. Casey helped David Friday while the rest of us went out to help clean out things at Nana's house. (Aunt Linda has been working so hard to deal with Nana's house and belongings this last month +. Billie helped a ton this summer as well. We cleared out a ton of stuff from the house. We took multiple loads to the DI and filled a big dumpster trailer full of things that were old or unusable. It's hard seeing someone's life packed up and discarded, so many memories tied to so many things. I'm not super sentimental, or big on "stuff" so my picks and wants were minimal. It's overwhelming to see a life time of things that fill up Nana's world gotten rid of; she was a collector, she's lived a full and long life and her home showed that in many ways. Nana is still with us and I'm very grateful when we get in visits with her. Time is a thief in many ways and it takes very little to remind you what is important. )

Casey, my Dad, and I ran up to Richmond that Friday afternoon (July 1st) to pick out our kitchen. We went in knowing what we want, and have since changed thoughts on things. (Since then we've been pricing out and picking things for the home almost daily. I didn't think I'd get decision fatigue about it all; I might be almost there ; ) My dad is our hero and is coordinating everything to start this dream for us. He's climbing a mountain for us and we will never be able to thank him / David enough for what they have done, are doing, and will be doing. We still feel so many road blocks in this path to a house, which have made me feel heavy about the whole thing, but we're hopeful and prayerful. 

Anica and I took the kids to the Home Depot craft on Saturday morning. The kids made a little star gazing toy. Anica took Peter with her home to play with the boys. I took the girls out to do a bit more at Nana's house. That evening we took the kids to the Cruise-In parade. I liked the remade VW vehicles and the character cars. Alice was happy with anything pink and Peter seemed to like a lot of the cars. 

Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at my parent's ward then went for a visit with Nana. Alice loves pulling out picture books and Nana was full of stories and memories for us. We played back at my parents and had David and Anica, and Nana come for Sunday dinner. 

On the 4th we went out to the Hyrum parade. Mom, Katherine, David, Anica, the boys, Billie and her family were there as well. The kids had a good time and we were lucky to be in the shade. After the parade we packed out some furniture / bigger pieces from Nana's house. We went to Tony's for lunch and the kids played in the water and had a water balloon fight. That night we lit fireworks off from my parents house. Everyone I mentioned earlier came; we set off a round of fireworks and then the kids played night games till it was dark and we finished off the rest of the fireworks. (Thank you Mom and Dad for allowing us to do this!)

Casey helped David on the 5th. We went up and joined the boys working for a pizza lunch (Thanks to Anica!) Anica scooped up Peter again to play with her boys and the girls and I visited Nana. We had dinner all together and left that evening to come home. 

Kendal had girls camp from the 6th to the 9th. The girls in the ward went up to Riggins, Idaho and went white water rafting for three days. Kendal was nervous going into it, but had a great time! She did awesome on the river, did some cliff jumping, and slid into the river. (Kendal - "We went on some big rapids, some boats almost tipped over, and a few people fell off boats. Testimony meeting was inspirational. I had fun!") I stole a couple of pictures off of a friend, hopefully i'll get the originals with better quality to them. 

Casey and I dragged Alice and Peter around to pick flooring and get pricing for things while Kendal was at camp. Casey was supposed to be at high adventures with the older boys from the 7th to 10th, but all of the priests dropped out and so he stayed home with us. 

It was Good Neighbor Days last weekend. Casey and Peter went early and played in the disc golf tournament. They got a free disc and enjoyed playing together. Kendal wanted to do it as well so she and I sped through the course before the parade started. We grabbed Jemma (Keegan was playing a ball game behind the middle school) and watched the parade along with the Dansie's and Berg's. The kids enjoyed gathering goodies and eating them. Jemma and Alice eventually got bored of that and got out a coloring book to color in as the parade finished. We went and watched Keegan's baseball game for a bit, and then went to the park. We grabbed some free pulled pork / hot dogs and went to hear results for the disc golf tournament. None of us won in our age brackets, however you had to be present to claim the prize so by process of elimination Casey, Kendal, and I won some prizes. The kids walked around the booths afterwards. Alice and Kendal were loving the petting zoo area. Kendal picked up any chicken she could and Alice cautiously put out her hand to any animal that didn't look threatening. The kids did some games at some of the booths and a fishing pond thing that got them some extra prizes. We got snow cones later and went around Home Depot for idea's / prices. Kendal and I won gift cards to eat out at Guppies so that's where we went for dinner that night. Later we watched fireworks on the balcony with the kids. It's our last year here, next year we'll have to venture over to the school and watch them there. 

Kendal got her braces on this past Monday. (We celebrated the night before by making a big sticky batch of caramel popcorn and playing games.) She was nervous about it, but is taking everything in stride this week. It probably wasn't a great idea to take her grocery shopping right after as we went down aisle's full of things she can't eat for a while. She was in pain for a few days, and is still figuring out how to take care of her mouth full of metal, but she's doing fine. 

The kids earned their reading reward from the Twin Falls Library and we took them to get their prizes on Tuesday. They each got a book and a gift card for Culvers. We took them out to back to school shopping and lunch at Culvers a couple of days later. (Kendal claimed that back to school shopping is officially a highlight of her summer.) 

Kendal got to go to the temple with her Young Women's group Wednesday morning and Peter had an activity where he shot off rockets Thursday evening! The kids played during the day with friends this week. Alice had a birthday party at her friend Emma's on Tuesday. They had a blow up slip n slide and the girls had a great time! She also had a play date with Ava Thursday afternoon playing in their little pool. She get's less "away from home" friend time then her siblings so she was so happy to spend time with buddies this week! Casey and Peter built a rocket last week and we went over to the school Wednesday to shoot it off. There was a slight breeze so the first launch ended up near the road, so we moved the second launch and it landed just fine in the parking lot. It was a fun project for them and fun to see it launched! Casey is making me a new mirror out of our old mirror for our future house! I love it so far! We got a couple spots of rain this last week (one was quite the downpour that flooded the end of our street).

We headed to Raft River Friday for the weekend. On the way we stopped in Rupert to pick out our shower / vanity for our master bath. We got to Casey's parent's house and got to work redoing their bathroom floor. Casey did the bulk of the work and rocked it out on the floor, I did what I could, but there were a lot of corners and niches that Casey had to do specific cut outs for. We went out with Casey's parents that evening for dinner to celebrate Cheryl's birthday a couple of days early. Nicole, Jordan and crew came that evening as well. The kids palled around and stayed up way to late. Saturday morning we launched the rocket a couple more times. The second launch the parachute didn't open well so Peter and Jaxson ended up in the nearby cornfield to find the rocket. We headed over to the Steadman slide for the Brown family reunion around lunch time. It wasn't busy at first so the kids had fun going down the slide without having to wait much. The group grew to 150 people, but the kids didn't mind at all they just waited a bit longer and went down in clusters having a great time! Towards the end they dragged Vanessa, Nicole, and I up the slides. We only lasted a bit because our last time down ended in the muddy mess at the end. We had a good time catching up with some Webb family (didn't know anyone besides Casey's immediate cousin's) and greeting some relatives here and there. We went back to Kenny and Cheryl's so Casey could put the base boards back on in the bathroom (Brett and Vanessa didn't come till Saturday and had the brad nailer.) We had dinner with Kenny and Cheryl then headed home.