Second Lake Powell Trip of the Year

Jon and Steph told us they were planning a last boat hurrah for the year at Lake Powell over Labor Day weekend and invited us to join in.  We will never say no to a Lake Powell boat trip.  We drove down Friday afternoon after school.  I actually picked the kids up 30 minutes early from school because the school called saying Carter was sick.  Got him home and found him to have a fever of 101.5.  We decided to go anyways, by the next morning it was clear he had strep throat.  Luckily, I had a few left over Amoxicillin pills that I had packed along.   He learned how to swallow horse pills and honestly did great the whole trip.  Hopefully no one else gets sick.

We spent all day Saturday on the Lake.  


We swam, jumped off rocks, all the kids knee boarded, Olivia skied, and the kids got to tube. 


We explored Labyrinth Canyon which is entirely wakeless and pretty.  



After the long day on the Lake, we went back to Page and had dinner at a Mexican food joint.  The kids were the best they had ever been at a sit down restaurant probably because they were so exhausted from the full day on the Lake.

Sunday, we all went to church.  Then, we took the dam tour which was pretty cool.  

It was hot though.  We were actually one of the last tours to go before they shut down the tours for the day due to extreme temperatures.  The group stayed to watch some Lake Powell videos.  Camden decided that was boring, so he and I explored the museum and he got two different Jr. Ranger badges.    


The kids absolutely adore Chase.  

Especially Carter.  He wanted to put Sunin in his hair just like Chase.  

A
t breakfast, he would follow Chase around and put on his plate whatever Chase did.  We were originally planning to go home on Sunday, but all the kids and Chase and Jon and Steph’s family begged us to stay, and I am a sucker for making all my kids dreams come true, so we booked another night at the hotel and stayed for Monday too.  Sunday, I played games with the adults down in the lobby of the hotel and Derek put our tired kids to bed.

Monday morning, we got up, packed up, had breakfast, and hit the lake.  We stayed sort of close to the marina.  Both boys knee boarded, Liv did a great job skiing—she got outside the wake and back in.  We found the greatest little non wavy place to swim and jump off rocks.  

We had lunch at a nice little beach and Liv made Camden into a Mermaid.  

Then, the kids, Derek, Chase and I all swam out to a little island off the shore.  It had sand and lizards and a great place to jump off the rocks back into the water.  Then, we pulled the boat off the lake and started back for home with Chase in our car again per kid request.  Now, back to school and life again tomorrow.  But not without of course making the always necessary bathroom break on the side of the rode for both twins.

School Starts Up Again

School has started again.  Both boys are in 1^st grade and have the same teacher Liv had for first grade Mrs. Ficklin.  

Camden is so excited to also be in class with his BBF Caleb and sounds like they spend all their days together.  (Caleb's Mom snuck this picture of those two BFFs at lunch on the first day).
Carter is glad to have some good neighborhood friends in class with him.  The first week of school the boys had to make poster presentation about themselves.  Quite the parent hands on project, but they were excited to do it.  It’s sometimes hard to make these twin projects look different.  I printed off a bunch of all different pictures and let each boy pick which ones they wanted to put on their posters, so no two were the same.  

Liv had the craziest first day of school.  


A violin lesson before school, school, a piano lesson after school, then an audition up at Hale Center Sandy for Jane Banks (we used our brand new headshots), then a rehearsal for a back up choir to Steven James she got selected to be in, then a voice lesson.  

Hopefully we don’t have many more days like that—it almost killed me, but Liv loved it.  Luckily, no callback for Jane Banks which allowed us to go as a family to Lake Powell with Steph and Jon’s family (callbacks were scheduled for Labor Day weekend).

Ending Summer with a Bang

 All the kids played on the same Tball team this summer and Derek coached.  Derek was a great coach particularly because he could pitch so well to the kids.  Every kid was able to hit off his pitches, and everyone improved throughout the season.

All 3 of my kids did a cooking camp this summer at the Provo rec which was fun.  The theme was local favorites and their learned to cook J. dawgs, Café Rio salads, Smash Burgers, and crumble cookies.  They were excited for me taste their creations every day when I picked them up.

 

Liv did a fun summer mini musical camp at the Hale Center Theater Orem.  It was Beauty and the Beast and she actually was cast as Belle which was super fun for her and made for quite a busy week of memorizing lines and learning new songs.  Hallie came to watch her which was super fun, and then we went to lunch with them at Carl's Jr. so the kids could play at the playplace.

The kids and I make it a point never to miss free slurpee day on 7/11.

On my birthday, the kids made me the best breakfast in bed to date all by themselves complete with candles (glad the house didn’t burn down in the process).  They unknowingly put sour cream on my bagel instead of cream cheese, but I ate it anyways without complaint.

The two boys finally qualified to take their first hockey skills class on the ice rink this summer and Liv did a figure skating class.  They all passed.  Liv’s teacher really encouraged her to think about skating competitively, but she doesn’t love it enough or have the time for that.  Carter was so happy that he passed off his swizzles which had frustrated him so much that as soon as he found out he passed he excitedly skated over to me and called up to the top deck, “Mom I passed! I passed my swizzles!”  It was the cutest.

The kids and I enjoyed the Scera Summer Movie series again this summer.

Derek had his 20 year HS reunion.  It was like a marathon date day for all his high school buddies.  They started the day off with a guys only golf game.  Then the wives and kids met up with them for a lunch BBQ at a park.  We went to the reunion and they all stayed in the gym visiting until they literally kicked them out.  And then they went back to one of their HS friend's parents's house and hung out until 2am in the backyard.  Here are as many as we could wrangle together for a picture and all the wives felt like we needed to take our own pic too.

Liv tried to break Camden on his nail biting habit this summer.  By taping paper over his fingernails.

The big mother’s day gift this year was 2 tickets to the Hugh Jackman show.  Derek told me I could take Liv because she would appreciate it more.  We had such a good time.  And she loved the show.  Every slow song she would steal my phone and sway the flash light with the rest of the audience.  I loved the show too honestly one of the best more interesting shows I’ve seen to date.

My good friend Tiffany from London came out this summer with her family.  The kids and I met her at the Lindon pool.  My kids had a great time swimming, and I had such a great time catching up with Tiffany and reminiscing about out London days together.

 

I got Jens to babysit one day, so Annie and I could float the Provo river together.  It was such a relaxing beautiful day.  I have been wanting to repeat it every since.

 

The Leeper family invited us to hike Battle Creek falls with them one summer evening.  That is the best way to gets kids not to complain about a hike—go with some of their best friends.  We had a great time and afterwards they introduced us to Italian Ice which was a treat we all loved.

One of our neighbor girls decided to do a sewing camp for girls this summer to make some money.  We convinced Hazel and Lilah to do it with us.  She taught the kids how to sew scrunchies.  I bought Liv her own sewing machine, and she spent the summer sewing scrunchies for all near and dear to her heart.

 

For the first summer ever we got the Pass of All Passes and put it to good use.  We went to seven peaks twice, the Lehi fun center a few times, Derek and the boys went to an Owlz game, and Liv and I got free tickets to Peter Pan at the Scera Shell with the passes too.

 

I hosted the last neighborhood art group of the summer.  We decided to make back pack charms.  The kids loved it.  Liv made an million and they decorate her backpack every day.

 

The Watkins asked us to bunny sit while they were on vacation this summer.  My kids all enjoyed that—not sure how much the bunny did.  While that bunny was super soft and sort of therapeutic almost to pet…I am glad it is home with the Watkins and Liv’s bedroom no longer smells like bunny.

 

I asked the kids what they wanted to do on the last day of summer before school started and they all wanted to go to the Springville reservoir.  We invited the neighbors to join us, packed up the kayak and had a great last hurrah to our summer.