We'll Always Remember the Blue and the White...

It's sort of a weird phenomenon to have our kids growing up in the same place we grew up, going to the same high school that we went to. While each new milestone with our kids is uncharted territory, somehow everything seems vaguely familiar...

Jessie on her way to Bingham Ball with her friend, Danny.

Not a great picture, but this shows the color of her dress better

The guys from the block.
These dudes aren't in high school yet, but their parents went to Bingham too. SoJo has a lot of "repeat customers" - people who grew up here & who have settled back here with their own kids...so we have a lot of shared history.  By the way, I love this picture. It will be a classic one day. 

Noble lettered in Cross Country at Bingham this last week.  (Deja vu.)
Noble with his friend Jacob Haynes and their coach (Coach Arbogast retired two years ago). A  little brag time: Noble was the only freshman boy to letter, and was awarded the freshman mvp plaque. He was born to run. Also, as Mike pointed out, he was recognized for wearing the best tie (Mike is taking credit for the fashion-forward gene).

So I took Noble on a history tour to the trophy case where still hangs the 1990 team cross country photo - my second year on the team and the year of their first state championship.  Good memories. 

Living full circle.

From an Overheated House in SOJO

...Our A/C decided to go on vacation for the weekend. Currently we're sitting pretty at 84 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hey everyone...I apologize for the "conversational hiatus" (reference: "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?"). It has been a very busy couple of months. A quick synopsis:

* The Melton family was all together in August for a camp out at Black Hawk.

*The start of school - Noble, Grace, Tillman and Sully at the Montessori School, Jessie at Bingham High School and Abner at Big Kids on the Block Preschool

Sully - 2nd grade, Tillman - 6th grade, Grace - 8th grade, Noble - 9th, Jessie - 11th (didn't get a picture of her first day because she spent that morning getting ready at a friend's house)

* Roger's Family Reunion & my Grandma Gertie's 90th Birthday - My siblings and I helped our Aunt and Uncle put together the festivities

Grandma on the kids' bounce house at her party. She's 90. :)

Rogers jam from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

* Noble has been having a killer season with the Bingham Cross Country team. Apparently he is only the 2nd freshman boy in Bingham history to make varsity. (The first was a kid - now on a mission in Canada - who's family lives across the street. There might be something in the water here. Incidentally, that kid has a full-ride scholarship to run at BYU when he gets home...we've mentioned that once or twice to Noble. $$$)

* Jessie finished the 4h season with a great performance at Team...

...also, she turned 17 and went to her second Homecoming dance

* Grace crafted this llama for a school assignment with Grandma

* Our tomato patch is too much for us to handle this year... we've given away a lot of tomatoes.

* Somehow between working two jobs, a calling, starting a business and being dad to 6 dudes, Mike has found time to train for the St. George Marathon. Here he is after running 20 miles before 8 AM and before going to work for the day. He is amazing.

...and just because he's so cute...here's another one of Mike - lounging after church.

*  Tillman and Sully have been playing soccer - and doing well. This year Sully is a total pacifist on the soccer pitch. It makes us all laugh. He is constantly telling me that the most important thing is NOT winning, and that we should cheer for everyone, not just the winners... or his team. A few games back he pulled a Scott Sterling, and caught a soccer ball to the face twice in one game. On the way home we were laughing about that, and I said, "Well, it's great that you won anyway...." to which he responded, "We WON?!!?"  ha ha ha ...We credit his peaceful nature to Hypnobirthing and the daily yoga practice at school. Oh Sully.

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.