Overdue

The past two months in review (lots of pictures):

Noble's school Capstone project - he and some of his school friends played games and played music with residents at the Herriman Beehive home

Jessie started a job at Fiiz drinks of South Jordan

Noble started his summer job - washing windows in the neighborhood with his business, Bluesky Windows

A visit to the Payson Temple open house

Grace celebrated her 13th birthday with all of her buddies

We said good bye to the Henderson's who moved to Louisiana 

We had the opportunity to go on Trek with Jessie and Noble. Mike and I were a Ma and Pa. We went on Trek once before with our old stake 8 years ago. This was a totally different experience. Part of what made it special was being there with these two - even though we only saw them here and there over the 4 days. Here we are on the morning we left - still fresh and clean. Thanks Mom and Dad for sending the sweet Amish hat for Mike.

Mike and I with our Trek family - 2 from our ward

we did about 30 miles at Deseret Land and Livestock. 

Our kids - last night. 

Post-Trek - only a little worse for wear. 

We finally finished the backyard boulder wall. The kids ripped out the old retaining wall.

Sean and Kim came down to lend a little cat driving expertise.

With the rock wall finished, we sodded the hill at last! Mike put Noble, Jack and a bunch of the neighborhood boys to work.

Jack making breakfast for us his last morning with us. We enjoyed having him visit!

River helping Mike pick up a load of hay cubes. I have often been very frustrated with River over the past months - but he is finally starting to become a pretty good dog.

For Father's Day Tillman composed this tribute. We figured the 3 wishes pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Abner. This kid keeps us all on our toes.

An evening with the Utah Symphony

Sully turned 7!!

We heard the news that our little trailer - so happily situated in Torey, Utah for these past 15 years - burned down last week. So sad.

Noble's ingenuity: He and his friends rigged up this trampoline sprinkler with some sprinkler pipe, duct tape and zip ties.

Mike and Noble started the 4th of July by running the Riverton 5k. They placed 2nd and 3rd in their age groups. We thought this picture of Mike sprinting past these ladies at the finish line was awesome. Mike said it must have been REALLY embarrassing to have him pass you because the mom was saying to her daughter as he passed, "Don't worry. Its ok - we're just doing this for fun."  :)

4th of July festivities - we had about 30-40 people at the house for water games, a BBQ and fireworks. Big crowd. Big fireworks show. With the Bishop's firework connection, the whole neighborhood was alight with spectacular aerials.  It was awesome. I think Roy was the only one who was hit by shrapnel. Sorry Roy.

Baby E's ear protection

Some of the tamer fireworks

Mike arranged to have some of the Melton cousins over for dinner on Sunday night. We had a great time catching up! It was about 11:00 by the time we broke the party up.

For Abner's 4th birthday we spent the day at Seven Peaks, SLC. These two sharks had a great time!

Grace shopping for Abner's birthday presents in style. :)
She had a little incident at 4H this past week when her horse reared, then fell over backwards on her. It broke the saddle but Grace came out unscathed.

Which is more than Sully and I can say. We came away from our Seven Peaks day with a few battle wounds.We flipped the tube on one of the slides and Sully landed under me. After I righted the tube and we got back on, he spent the rest of the ride telling me, "Keep it safe, Mom. Keep it safe." ha ha haha He refuses any pity over these gashes - when I shook my head and said, "poor Sully", he immediately stopped me and said, "NOT poor Sully!" Love this kid.