Camp Friends

Sunday we went to the missionary farewell of one of Brian's staff from camp. It was so good to see so many friends from camp there.
When Amber saw her friend Julia from camp, she jumped out of the car really fast to go see her again! It was good to see everyone, and we miss you all every day.

5K

Amber and Brian did the 5K here in town on Saturday. Amber took 3rd place in the Jr. High girls division, and.....
Brian took 1st place in his age division, as well as 2nd place overall!

Great race!

Zak's Birthday Party!

For Zak's birthday this year, we had Grammy & Gramps over for dinner and cake & ice cream, and then a week later we had a party with his friends. He was silly and excited all day! But he was determined that he wasn't going to be older until 8:30 in the evening when he was actually born. Since he was exhausted and in bed by then, we all went in with party blowers at 8:30 and sang him happy birthday. He was all smiles!
These are his friends that he had over for his birthday. We had a good time!

School Pictures

Everyone who knows me well knows that I am too cheap to pay for the crappy pictures that are offered through the schools. So this year, I decided to do them myself. They are not perfect by any means, and I've got a lot of practicing to do, But I still think that they turned out pretty good, and by far better than the school's.

AMBER

LES

ZAK

Other Favorites

Bear Lake Brawl

A few weeks ago Brian and his buddy JR did the Bear Lake Brawl Triathlon together.
Before the race, they did some stretching.....

And various other warm-up exercises.....

And while the race was going on, the kids took a few minutes to play in Bear Lake again.

Brian finished each part of the race exactly in the time that he had been training for, and finished the race exactly at his goal time!

Brian took 3rd place in the division that he raced, and JR took first (I think) in his division!

Brian is so excited to finally have someone to race and train with after all these years of doing it on his own.

What a beautiful day for a race and to spend at Bear Lake again.

First day of Junior High!

This year Zak is in 2nd Grade,
Les is in 4th Grade,
And Amber is in Junior High! How did she get so old?

Fair Entries: A quilt and a Photo

This year I decided to enter Amber's quilt and a photo that I just took into the county fair. I was so last minute deciding to enter them, that I didn't even print the photo until the day I had to have it in.

I'm glad that I decided to enter both of them though. I won a blue ribbon and Best of Show on both the quilt and the photo! Now I want to make another quilt....!

This is the photo. A lucky shot I guess!
And this is Amber's quilt I made for her birthday!

Downstairs Demolition

While we were gone this summer, we were getting water in the basement along this wall from the sprinklers that we got running the day before we left. After we had been home a few weeks, the kids noticed it, and told us the wall was moldy. Sure enough, the whole wall was mushy, and moldy, and the carpet was wet. We didn't notice it at first, because the water was under & behind the couch. Needless to say, we had to tear out the bottom half of this wall, and I had at least two very willing to help with the destruction!

Hammers in hand..... both hands even.....

The wall was in bad shape, but fortunately it is relatively easy to tear out and fix. Especially since we have the paint and mouldings left from when we re-did the house 2 years ago.

Camping (for real this time)

After we got home from working at camp, we needed to get away from life, so we went camping (Ironic?!) It was nice to be away from the craziness of life. It's amazing how hard is was to adjust to being home.

The kids always like to roast odd things. This night, it was Starbursts that they were roasting!
Zak found some tiny little baby trout in the river and he worked for hours trying to catch one. He finally did. He was very excited.
This is how I camp. Brian does everything except set up the tent, and I lay in the hammock while he does it. After camp, I was so exhausted, that if I got fatigued at all, I would get physically ill, so the hammock worked just fine for me!

We also went for a hike to a beautiful waterfall that we hadn't been to for a few years. The kids loved climbing on the rocks (what kid doesn't?) Every picture we got of Les he was doing the "irresistible man pose" that we all learned at camp. It was so funny when they would do it at camp, and since all the boys that he looked up to did it A LOT, he felt he needed to do it a lot too!

The view back up from the waterfall...

Thinking.....thinking.....thinking!

Zak posed for pics too!

I was back in bed for days after the hike because I was so tired, but we had a good time.