Jonathan's Blessing

This summer has been full of travelling.  First Hawaii and then Fish Lake, Cove Mountain and now St. George.  We traveled to St. George this weekend for Jonathan's baby blessing.  This little guy is getting so big and he is such a cutie.  

Look at that good looking family.  It was so nice to spend time with the Farnsworths this weekend.

We came down on Friday and spent the weekend just playing and having a good time.  Friday we went to the St. George Town Square splash pad and had a blast.  The kids just loved laying in the water and cooling off from the St. George heat.  I had forgotten how hot it is here.

Then they got  little crazy with the water and started filling up water bottles and dumping them on us.  The little stinks.  They had a great time though.

Along with the splash pad, we had pizza and got to spend time with Traci, Sean, Jonathan, and Grandma and Grandpa Farnsworth.  During the weekend, we stayed at the Cardon's place.

The next day on Saturday, we had a lot of fun at the Children's Museum.

The kids have always loved the Children's Museum and had so much fun pretending to be fire fighters, pilots, car mechanics, and engineers.  They spent hours building an obstacle course for golf balls downstairs in the science room.

After the Children's Museum, we headed over to Swig for some yummy drinks.

The reason we went there was because we thought we had a $10 gift card.  It turned out that for some reason the gift card was either a phony or it had been erased somehow so it was no good.  We were so mad because we  would not have gone there in the first place if we had known.  Oh well, the flavored Freezes with ice cream were pretty good though and they helped to cool us off.

Later that day we went to see Great Grandma Farnsworth.  It was so good to see her and talk to her.  We have not done this is a really long time.  She seemed to enjoy seeing us too.  

This weekend was really fun and the kids loved playing with their cousins the whole time.  The baby blessing on Sunday was really good too.  Traci and Sean go to the Spanish Branch so that is where they had the blessing.  It was kind of weird going to the Spanish Branch because everything was in Spanish and we didn't understand anything.  We could have gotten headphones for interpretation I guess but we didn't.  Luckily, Sean did the blessing in English so we all could understand.  Regardless it was  good meeting.  After church and the luncheon, we headed back on the road to go home.

Happy Birthday

One more reason to celebrate this week was my birthday!  OK so turning 31 is not the most exciting thing in the world but we had a good time anyway.  We spent the day just hanging out at home and picking cherries from our neighbor's tree.  In the morning Russell went and helped another neighbor clean out his yard and came home with a concrete ring they were just going to throw out.  We decided it would make a great fire pit for the backyard so Russell set to work digging a hole and putting in a fire pit for my birthday.  When he was done, he invited a bunch of our friends over for S'mores that night.  

For dinner I wanted Navajo Tacos but I didn't know how to cook them because our Camp Chef and Dutch Ovens were on the mountain with our trailer.  Then, Ta Da, we had a fire pit.  We borrowed a cast iron skillet from the neighbor that gave us the fire pit and Russell cooked the scones on an open fire!  We should have been pioneers!  Ok not really.  The food turned out so good. 

That night at around 8 we had our friends come over for S'mores.  It was fun to get together with friends to celebrate my birthday.  We all had a good time chatting and cooking marshmallows on our fire.  My visiting teacher gave me a bucket of Tootsie Pops with a sign that said "30 Sucks!"  I laughed so hard and said well I am sure 31 sucks too.  

See our awesome fire pit.  I think it turned out pretty good.  We are excited to use it more often this summer.  

After everyone went home, Calen and Rochelle treated us to another firework show.  

We mostly did sparklers with the kids but there were also a few flowers and other crazy things we shot off too.  One type were these flying ones.  You would throw them and they would fly into the air and disappear.  The first one we did, we didn't really know what would happen so we threw it in the air and it shot off right toward our house.  In fact I think it hit our fence.  We were so shocked we all went scrambling to our fence to see if there was any damage or flames or something but we didn't see anything.  We decided these fireworks are meant for the ground.

At the library a few days ago the kids made these cool glow bugs out of water bottles and  tiny glow-sticks.  They decided tonight would be the perfect time to let them glow.  

Like I said before, we picked a bunch of cherries from our neighbor's tree.  We picked three shopping bags full and there were still a ton on the tree.  So on my birthday, I decided to have  little "pity" party for myself and pit all of those cherries.  It took quite a while and my hands were stained red like I had murdered someone.  But the cherries tasted so good.

In the end, those three bags of cherries turned into 12 pints of jam, three cookie sheets of fruit leather, and  Ziploc bag of dried cherries.  I really should have made more fruit leather because it turned out so delicious.

Another birthday present/Russell's birthday present/ anniversary present we got was a new truck.

We call him "Big Red."  It is the same year as our truck but it is a 2500 HD and four-wheel drive.  It also only has 57,000 miles on it rather than 130,000 on our other truck.  It was a grandpa truck that hardly ever got driven so we are hoping it will be a good truck for us and last us for a while.

Happy Birthday to me!

4th of July Cache Valley Style

The 4th of July in Cache Valley is a pretty big deal.  In fact, when the 4th falls on a Monday, you get to celebrate all weekend!  We started our festivities on Friday July 1st with a barbecue with the Phillips's.  I think I ate way to much delicious dutch oven potatoes, sloppy Joe's and corn on the cob not to mention watermelon and chips!  We love spending time with the Phillips because they really know how to throw a party.  After dinner, we drove up the mountain near their house to watch the Freedom Fire firework show shot off from the USU Stadium.

The kids had a blast sitting in the back of Calen's truck hanging out with Rochelle while they waited for and watched the firework.  

Before the fireworks, we got so see the most amazing sunset.  This picture does not do it justice.  Finally the fireworks started and we watched them for over 45 minutes!

It was such a good show and we had the best seats to watch the whole thing.

The next day, Saturday July 2nd, we spent the day with the Stewart's.  We played games at the park and then headed over to Main Street to watch the Cache Valley Cruise-In.

The kids loved seeing all of the classic cars.  It was fun to see them rumble down the street and show off.  I kind of thought it would be more of a parade of classic cars but it wasn't.  The cars just drove back and forth down the street at regular speed.

That night after the Stewart's headed home, we met back up with the Phillips for another firework show.  

Each year Calen goes all out and buys a ton of fireworks and then puts on his own show at the church parking lot.  This year was another great year of fireworks.  All of the kids loved wearing the light sticks Rochelle brought for them.  They also loved doing Sparklers and Poppers and we all enjoyed the big aerials and other fireworks Calen shot off.  Along with our fireworks, other people were doing fireworks around us too so it was another great day for fireworks.

On Sunday, we decorated Emily's bike so that she could be ready to ride it in Hyrum's 4th of July parade with her CCLT team and school.

Here she is with the other kids before the parade on Monday.  All of the bikes turned out awesome and Emily loves her decorated bike.

Here we are waiting for the parade to start.  It was a hot day so luckily we found a place in the shade. 

Here comes Emily and her elementary school!  All of the kids on her CCLT leadership team rode their bikes in the parade and had a good time.

The boys loved watching the parade too.  They liked all of the floats especially the Aggie's and Big Blue!  They were also able to collect so much parade candy!  We came home with a whole gallon Ziploc bag full!  They were in heaven.

That night, we went next door to the Jones' to watch their firework show.  The kids loved doing sparklers with Lundyn and her cousins.

Then, we had the perfect seats in our backyard to watch the Hyrum city firework show.  The fireworks are shot off at Mountain Crest High School right behind our house.  The show was another hit.  After the city was finished, all of our neighbors decided to shoot off their fireworks too!  We watched fireworks all around us until midnight or later!  It was amazing!  

What a great weekend celebrating our country's birthday!