Freedom

I do love our "young scrappy and hungry" country.  

Centerville sets off our fireworks on July 3rd, as does North Salt Lake. We drove Miriam North to watch their fireworks with friends (madhouse...I don't enjoy firework traffic...I will stick close to home thanks...but she had a blast so I am happy she went) the rest of us went up on the roof!

We can see the fireworks from our deck but this seemed an even more exciting way of viewing.  We have never been up there in the dark before. The boys were kind of freaked, Darin had to walk them around until they got comfortable.

All kinds of fireworks on the roof!

The next morning the kids and I grabbed a back pack full of frozen water bottles and walked down to the parade.  We asked a nice man if we could sit in his driveway in the shade (he was sitting in a chair in his truck) he said yes, and then brought us a blanket!  How nice is that? People...they are good I tell ya. The boys caught tons of candy and brought some back to him. 

We stopped by Dick's Market for their amazing blueberry glazed ribs, but they wouldn't be ready till 11.  So we trucked it on down to the park to watch Centerville's got talent until they were ready.  Such a fun show, lots of our friends had entered and we had no idea! 

We almost picked up a watermelon as well, but remembered just in time we were walking....whew!

Ribs veggies pita + hummus for our Independence day lunch.

Miriam made sheet s'mores for dessert. 

It was blasted hot by that time so everyone else watched Black Panther in the cool basement and I took a nap. 

Miriam and I then watched Love, Simon...by that time things were cooling off and we were ready for some excitement.  The boys and I let of one of the many many military smokes they have and we danced around the smoke until Darin said it was coming in the windows and making the house stink.   

It was dark by that time, so we played with all our sparkers instead.

And then had another delightful evening of FIREWORKS ON THE ROOF with Miriam too this time. We watched the first stars appear and then BOOM! The explosions started! We can see displays from Bountiful all the way to Farmington and there are a lot of people in neighborhoods who spring for the big ones as well.  I made everyone sit still for a while to grab some snapshots (thats why I am not in any).

One of my summer highlights for sure.

I wonder if I could hire someone to climb up there and take a photo of all of us?

I

Just Stuff

Byron earned his Arrow of Light!

Byron really does love scouting. 

With 2 new bikes in our garage we needed to address the storage situation STAT.

Darin had a Friday off which he spent in the basement epoxying PVC pipe.  Saturday he and I took a quick mountain bike trip on Firebreak.   We came home, cleaned out one side of the garage and brought out the chaos solution!

I LOVE it, and we can add other bikes in if/when we need.

Then we were off to the Rasmussen Reunion.  

My dad, Aunt Helen, Cousin (who feels like Aunt) Maureen, and their great friends the Mathis family shared beautiful stories of my Great Grandparents.  So fun to see cousins and connect our children.

Soren was the only Wolf attending Cub Camp so I offered to go rather than have his leader (who would need to get a babysitter) go with him.  Such a beautiful area! So many butterflies fluttering all over...and wild flowers galore (but I didn't dare go take photos because I would have to leave the path and those Scout Leaders were very strict with the rules!!)

Soren's favorite parts were archery, fishing, the trading post and the obstacle course.  He wants to try bee bee gun shooting without a power hungry hormonal teen barking warnings at his back.  We all loved canoeing with a muskrat!

Father's Weekend

Byron's Adventure Race fell over Father's Day weekend.  In preparation he and I took 2 mountain bike trips the week before, in the morning while M & S were at their theatre camps. The first trip was to Bountiful Pond...super easy didn't really prepare him for much but we loved seeing the pelicans, egrets and other water birds! Second trip, we took his friend up to Firebreak road in the hills.  This trip was more in line with real mountain biking, but Byron said the actual race mountain biking was waaaay more difficult than what we did.  The scariest thing about our little jaunt in the hills were the lizards daring back and forth on the trail...I DID NOT want to run over any reptiles so I was skittish.

Darin's birthday gift came in - his new bike! So he and I also rode up to the hills.  All I can say is that I need to work up to Darin's rides...he is tough on a bike and goes too fast.

Darin took work off on Friday to take Byron and his friend up to Park City to the training clinic for his race. Both of them loved being up there in the crisp mountain air!  Byron loved his training.

Grandma and Grandpa came up that evening.  Soren, Miriam and I got to take Grandma out to one of our favorite "girlie" restaurants to finish out her birthday gift from us.  Then Miriam and Grandma went to see Miriam's ballroom teacher perform in Crazy For You.  While they were gone Grandpa arrived in his very cool Buick Riviera so we cruised on down to Tony Burger so he could get some dinner.

Saturday Byron got picked up bright and early to get to his race, Grandpa got up bright and early to get his car ready for the car show.  Luckily we got some photos and updates from Byron's friend's mom throughout the day.  He was totally worn out when they got back! It was a challenge which was exactly what we wanted for him...a challenge that he could push through.

He said he would love to do it again next year.

While Byron raced the rest of us had a leisurely Saturday. We biked around town, Darin and Soren put together a solar robot (thanks Grandma!), spent some time down at the car show snarfin on junk and lookin' at the sweet rides.

We ended our night celebrating Grandpa and Grandma's anniversary at Twigs with Damon and Gwen.  Everyone came over to our house for German Chocolate Cake afterwards and we stayed up too late tinkering with the car or shooting the breeze. 

Hello Summer!

Our first week was a bit rough.  Everyone had to get use to the idea that no school didn't mean no work.  We have never had a summer where there was no work so I don't know why this is such a hard transition every year, but it is, and this year was no exception.

 The kids are still waking up by 6:00 every morning.  Maybe this will end as the summer goes on but for this first week we were all up bright and early.  I decided on a whim that we should all ride bikes to a park while it was so cool and beautiful.  So we spent our mornings riding, and playing returning home around 9:30 to get on with chores and stuff. We can't do this all summer because of classes/camps which is a bummer, but I am glad we did it while we could.

We used those birthday groupons for FlowRider.  The kids had a blast, but said it was hard.  

Byron's friend invited him to participate in a Kids Adventure Race this weekend.  It looked so fun, we wanted Byron to be apart of it, but it was also expensive.  As mom's we asked that the boys both contribute some $ to the experience.  So they sold Otter Pops at the last two baseball games and made their goal!

We got some Alicia and Parker time at a local Splash Pad.

My kids love following Parker around giving him fist bumps.

We met cousins at Lagoon!

Saturday evening was windy so Darin and I took the boys to the park to fly kites in the sunset.  

All in all we are off to a good start!

The End

Soren's ballroom season went out with the cutest dance to I'm Still Standing from the movie Sing. 

Soren has such good rhythm! 

Hugging their teachers.

The last week of school was so good for these two. Field trips, Mountain Man Rendezvous, Buy and sell days, and of course FIELD DAY.  I was so glad Dart side was there because Byron didn't want to get wet....that leaves bubbles, limbo, corn hole, or throwing balls at the dunk tank.  But #blessed Dart side was there for hours of nerf gun fun for those non-water people.

Miriam had Lagoon Day, Yearbook day, and ended the year with the Ballroom Banquet. 

Shirt signing fail.  Byron wanted kids to sign the Rendezvous shirt he had made...but didn't want kids signing it while on him, well...the Sharpie bled through to the other side of the shirt.  Soren wore his shirt, but lost the sharpie markers so his teacher had the kids use Crayola markers which washed right off with the first wash.

Oh well...it was cute for the day it lasted.

Neighborhood Welcome Summer Party! Miriam was off doing her own park waterslide party.  That girl has has one heck of a final week.  She is actually not all that excited about it being summer, she is totally happy going to school.

The first weekend of summer we ran to Price to celebrate mom's birthday! My mom doesn't ask for much, so when she asked to have a garage cleaned out it was the least we could do.  So we did some hauling, and then planted some flowers. Some work followed by cousin time and a BBQ.

We will do more celebrating when they come stay with us for the Bountiful car show!