Kim and Kristin, This One's for You

HA!!  So much for my summer of blogging!  My 2 faithful followers Kim and Kristin nicely pointed out that it's time practically begged me for my quarterly blog post, so here it is.  Anything for my devoted blog fans.

For a lazy summer we've sure managed to stay busy!  But it's all good, it makes the 80 days of summer vacation a little more bearable.  This summer I kept a family summer log of sorts, to keep track of all the things we've done.  Each day I wrote down what we did, no matter how insignificant, so we could look back and realize we did do some fun things.  (It's kinda like on those days when you feel you've accomplished nothing - but if you write down everything you really did do that day, you realize how much you did accomplish!)  I know there are cute summer checklists or countdowns out there that we could've done  - where you make a list of all the places to visit or activities to do.  We already had some fun things planned for the summer, but honestly I didn't want to set ourselves up for disappointment if we made these grandiose plans and didn't get around to doing them.    So I let the days take us where they wanted and kept a record of our activities and took pictures along the way.....


Our schedule in June was much like it is during the school year.  Days were filled with swimming lessons, piano lessons, viola lessons, scouts, Activity Days, Presidency meetings, and girls camp.  Even though Taylor doesn't turn 12 until late September, she was allowed to go this year because the cutoff is October 1st.  She was excited but nervous.  Unfortunately our stake girls camp was evacuated off the mountain due to high winds, so her first year of girls camp wasn't the greatest one but hey, at least it was memorable!

July is really when the fun started.  We headed up to my parents in northern Utah for 13 days.

Most of these pictures were taken with my iPhone 4.  I've been pleasantly surprised with it's camera quality compared to the 3Gs.  Since I always have it with me I'm not missing out on some fun shots.  Plus the photo editing apps are a blast to play around with!

Feeding Grandpa's peas to the neighbor's horses

Deer spotting with Daddy up the canyon

Andrew's AMAZING Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler for 4th of July.
Seriously, it's life changing!

Fireworks

Lots and lots and lots of bonding time with the cousins

Smores and Utah Sunsets

Watching Angel Moroni being placed atop the  Brigham City Temple

Upon our return home we finished out the rest of July with summer camp for all 4 kiddos, lots of swimming and playing with friends, dates for Mom & Dad, and a Harry Potter marathon. The kids and I decided to watch the previous 7 HP movies to get us ready for the last one.  We finished them in 8 days.  Taylor, Zach and I went and saw the final one and it was AWESOME!!!  I was surprised how attached we had become to these characters after only a week.  But it was a great ending to an amazing story.  Hard to believe that was all inside J.K. Rowling's head.  

At the beginning of August, the kids and I headed back up to Utah.  Much to Andrew's chagrin, we were gone 14 days this time.  

Hitting crazy weather outside Fillmore

Riding in the parade with Grandpa

Checking out the cool cars at Country Fair Days

Gorging ourselves on veggie goodness from my Dad's garden

Lunch dates

Riding in the neighbor's train

Canned 7 pints of chili sauce......

.....and 18 1/2 pints of salsa

This salsa is the best!  It is a family recipe my friend Jill shared with me 3 summers ago.  It was my very first experience canning and I've never looked back.  It's now a summer tradition for me.  It's time consuming, but I have so much fun making it.  I only made 2 batches last summer (about 35 pints) and it barely lasted me a year.....especially since I give so much away.  Many people have requested it again this year.  I made a batch up in Utah, made another batch three days ago, and hopefully will make a third batch in September.    You can never have enough of this stuff and it's become quite the bartering item.  I don't even have to look at the recipe anymore, I know it by heart!

While in Utah we also had an early birthday party for Mason as requested.  Mason has always been very particular in his birthday requests.  Last year he specifically wanted spaghetti and mashed potatoes for his birthday dinner and doughnuts, no cake.  This year he wanted to have dinner at Brick Oven, Star Wars party decor, a police car pinata and birthday brownies made by grandma.  What a funny kid!  

We finally made it back last Wednesday and now gearing up for our final week of summer vacay.  With so many obligations going on this week it won't be much of happy ending to summer, but my kids are excited to start school so I'm sure the week will pass by quickly.  My only goal for the week is to get them back on a decent sleep schedule.   Wish me luck!

Until next time.....