End of Summer Fun, Birthday, Pineview, Weber River Tubing, School, Hiking, Visits, Nope Ropes, BINGO, Pictures, Soccer

What a crazy past two weeks!!  Sarah had a birthday two weeks ago.  It was on a Sunday so we didn’t do anything super exciting.  We invited G&G T over for Sunday/birthday dinner.  She wanted smoked hamburgers for her birthday dinner.  Aaron was more than happy to accommodate her wish--any excuse to use his smoker--haha!  For her ‘cake’ she wanted cheesecake.  She must be my daughter!!  We both love us some cheesecake!

She even got a birthday sign put in our yard by the young women:

The next day Aaron and I did take her out for breakfast at Sill’s Cafe in Layton.  She LOVED the HUGE scone with honeybutter!

She had a great birthday.  She got a few books--she is quite the bookworm, some clothes, and some Legos.    She is a great addition to our family.  She is a sweet, but sassy, loving, compassionate, smart, funny, adventurous, confident, fun loving gal.  We love her!

She is enjoying being in Young Women even though we aren’t meeting together very often due to COVID.  This past week though we did have a Strive to Be-Bootcamp that the young women did all together.  This year the new youth program is really focusing on setting individual goals in the four areas of Intellectual, Social, Spiritual and Physical.  The young women presidency put together a Strive to Be box with different packages to open every day.  Each day coincided with a goal area (social, intellectual, physical, spiritual) that helped the girls narrow down and set goals to accomplish in that area.  Most of it was virtual, but the last day we did all get together. The  last day was the physical day.  We got together that evening and did some glow in the dark yoga.  It was pretty fun!  It was nice to actually meet together in person!

Every night Sophie LOVES tucking in the kids when they go to bed.  As soon as I ask her, “Is it time to tuck in kids?”  She goes CRAZY.  She starts barking, grabs a toy and runs into their rooms and jumps on their beds to snuggle for a minute.  She instinctively knows about what time they go to bed and when it nears that time she will sit and watch me until I say something.  She also loves ‘Waking kids up’ if they don’t get up when they are supposed to in the morning.  She does the same routine if she needs to ‘wake up kids’, too.  What a crazy dog!

I am proud to say that I got one of my to do list chores done last Saturday.  It was cleaning out and decluttering my upstairs.  I am embarrassed to say it still had unpacked boxes up there from when we moved in almost 9 years ago.  Here’s the end result which still needs to be vacuumed, but looks a ton better than it did!!  Wahoo!

In other happenings Josh convinced Daniel to try out for Nightmare Acres, the haunted corn maze, for this upcoming season.  Daniel was pretty hesitant at first, but eventually decided to try out.  They both had to go and audition in front of the owners who then picked which people they wanted for regular staff.  Daniel and Josh both got picked to be regulars for this fall.  They are both pretty excited!  I am proud of Daniel because that is completely out of his comfort zone, but he still tried out anyway.  Wahoo!

Last week the Jr. High had a welcome for all the new incoming 7th graders which was called Warrior Welcome.  It was so crazy to send Sarah by herself--parents weren’t supposed to go with them.  I still can’t believe she is in Jr High!!  She had a lot of fun and I think it eased some of her anxiety with starting a new school.  At Warrior Welcome the new students were shown around the school and had their questions answered.  It was a good thing for Sarah to go to.

To celebrate the last couple days of summer we decided to have some family fun.  Wednesday Aaron took a day off of work and we went up to Pineview Reservior and hung out at the beach at Cemetery Point.  We had to drive two separate cars since we had to load the three kayaks in the back of the truck.  Poor Aaron had to drive the 45 minute drive up the canyon with no air conditioning.  I offered to switch places, but he didn’t want to.  Anyway, we spent the whole day up there playing in the water, kayaking, and playing on the beach.  It was so much fun!  Matthew wasn’t a big fan, but we did manage to get him out on a kayak at the very beginning with Aaron.  Aaron and Matthew are in the furthest kayak.  Josh and Sarah were on the second kayak, and me, Noah and Daniel were getting on the third kayak: 

It was a beautiful day, too!

Matthew was pretty content to hang out in the chair, under the umbrella by the food for most of the day.  He really doesn’t enjoy the beach, but came along anyway.

We even had swimming contests out to the buoy and back:

Matthew eventually fell asleep in a pretty crazy position:

We had a lot of fun.

The next day we decided to go tubing down the Weber River.  Matthew would have HATED doing that so he went to his summer program that day instead so it was just the 6 of us.  Noah was a bit apprehensive about tubing down the river, but he did it.  Honestly, he didn’t really have a choice when we got to this point:

I have tubed the Weber River before, but it has been at least 6 years ago.  I didn’t remember how deep it and fast the current was in places which surprised me.  We did get to float past Devil’s Slide which was pretty cool:

We went under quite a few road and train underpasses.

Noah was pretty nervous the whole time, but he did okay.  His arms and legs were too short to try and paddle to steer anywhere so Aaron and I (mostly Aaron) and Daniel had to jump off our own tubes a few times to rescue him from a stretch of water with no current or steer him away from some rocks or bushes.  

This was the most nerve racking bridge to go under since you actually had to lay completely flat across your tube to fit under the underpass.  The arrows painted on the bridge tried to direct you to go under the tallest opening, but a few of us didn’t make it over there in time.  We just had to lay extra flat on our tubes to fit through.

Aaron’s tube flipped a few times so he got pretty far behind us as we floated along.  However, he did eventually catch up:

We even went under a train bridge while a train was going over the top.  It was pretty loud!

For the two hours we were on the river, we did run into a microburst rainstorm.  It was super crazy, but thankfully, it was short lived!  We were already wet so getting rained on wasn’t that big of a deal--it was the wind that made it super cold, though!

At the end all of us made it out okay.  Josh did go out and try to help Aaron bring in Noah so he didn’t keep floating past the take out point.  We made all made it out okay.  All of us had so much fun, except Noah.  He was pretty nervous about it the whole time, but he did okay.  In order to steer around obstacles you had to do a lot of hand paddling.  The next day all our arms/shoulders were pretty sore--haha!

The next day Aaron had to go in to work so I ended up taking the kids hiking.  There was a cool trail down in Draper I had wanted to try out for a while.  It had a pedestrian suspension bridge on part of the trail which was cool.  We got down there and were surprised to see a sign for cougars in the area.  We didn’t run into any, though.

There are so many wildfires burning around our state right now that the air quality was pretty terrible.  However, it didn’t stop us from hiking.

Much to Matthew and Daniel’s chagrin we did run into a about a 3 foot long snake aka ’nope rope’ aka ‘danger noodle’.  However, as soon as we got close it slithered away pretty quickly.  We just got a tail shot:

Here is the suspension bridge we got to cross:

It ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it would be.  It was pretty cool, though.

The kids thought it was pretty funny to jump and see how much they could get the bridge to swing as I tried crossing it.  I was not amused.

While we were on the trail we did notice that some of the foliage is starting to change colors signaling the coming of fall.  Wahoo!  I LOVE fall!

One of my hiking buddies:

Again the air quality was so bad due to the wildfires.  It was pretty hazy.  You can kind of make out the Jordan River temple in the middle of the picture, but the air was hazy:

The views were pretty, despite the haziness:

It was a fun little hike.

Afterward we stopped for a super cheap Costco hotdog lunch and ate it picnic style in the parking lot:

Saturday was a fun day.  My sister Jennifer and her family were in town.  We got extended family pictures with all my side of the family.  Everyone was there except my niece Miriya, her husband and new baby.  We got individual family pictures, a big group picture, couple pictures, sibling and child pictures, too.  While Aaron and I were getting our couple pictures done I gave my phone to Noah to hold. He decided to take some of his own pictures with my phone.  Here’s a few crazy ones he took:

Nice:

After pictures we went and had our annual family BINGO party.  Everyone brought pot luck to eat and random wrapped presents for the BINGO game.  We ate dinner first and then played BINGO.  We ended up with quite an assortment of different prizes.  We were able to off load the ugly macrame gag gift, but unfortunately, ended up getting another one that was wrapped up.  DOH!!  Oh well, we just have more stuff to bring back for next year’s BINGO game--haha!  It was fun visiting with everyone and the cousins had fun playing and hanging out together.  

Noah got the first BINGO.  I was a little skeptical, but it ended up checking out.  Wahoo, Noah!

We have had this family tradition of BINGO for a LONG time.  It originally got started to celebrate my grandpa Terry’s birthday on January 1st before I was even born--so that is a REALLY LONG time ago--haha!  When my dad’s extended family got too big they started having each of my dad’s siblings continue the tradition with their own extended families.  So it has been going on a long time and everyone loves it.  It’s one of those fun family traditions.  It was nice to see Jennifer and her family before they went back to Ohio.

Noah has started up soccer.  He was pretty excited about it.  He really likes soccer and was pretty bummed when the spring season got cancelled.  We were both glad the city decided to go ahead with the fall season.  Here’s Noah playing his favorite position of goalie:

We got to meet with the local missionaries via Zoom on Sunday.  I can only imagine how difficult doing most meetings over Zoom must be for them.  We were glad they shared a spiritual thought and gave us a challenge which they will follow up on next Sunday.  

It was hard to fit our whole family in the frame, but we tried--haha!

Sunday I also got visited by the Relief Society presidency.  They try to visit everyone in the ward to make sure they are doing okay and Sunday it was my turn.  Due to Covid they do the visit a bit differently.  They brought camp chairs and set them up in my driveway so we could visit social distance style.  It was fun, safe and a nice visit.

Also Sunday Aaron got to try out a new meat concoction he found at a butcher shop in Morgan.  It is called a Powder Keg Beef Bacon Bomb.  It is a seasoned and marinated sirloin roast wrapped in a bacon weave.  He smoked it and although it was a bit on the salty side, the kids all loved it.  

Monday, yesterday, was spent getting everything together for the first day of school.  The kids were all a bit nervous about starting school up again.  We got first day clothes put together in addition to packing back packs and then topped it off by Aaron giving them all Father’s Blessings.  It was a hectic day, but it went okay.  This morning to help things run smoother I put together an overnight crockpot breakfast casserole and cooked some cinnamon rolls, too.  That way the kids could eat on their schedule whenever they got up.

We also did our annual height measurements on the wall.  Daniel grew four inches this past year--wahoo!

Josh, the senior, left for school first.  They all have to wear masks at school so here’s a picture with and without a mask:

Daniel, the freshmen (9th grade) left next with Sarah:

Sarah, the 7th grader, gets to be in the same school as Daniel.  They even had lunch together today.  Glad she is in the same school as Daniel so he can watch out for her.

Noah, my 5th grader, got up super early because he was so excited for school--crazy kid!

Aaron took the morning off to help me out.  We walked Noah to school together.  The theme at the elementary school this year is ‘Adventure is out There!’  They are using the movie ‘Up’ to drive home that theme.

To welcome all the kids back to school they even had a hot air balloon in the parking lot to surprise the kids.  It was pretty cool.

The principal even made his morning announcements from the basket of the hot air balloon this morning.

We dropped Noah off and gave him a hug.

Then we walked home and saw Matthew off for his day at his summer program.  Matthew doesn’t start school for another week.  Even though he doesn’t start for another week we did have a Zoom meeting with his new teacher yesterday.  She wanted to meet Matthew and ask him a few questions.  He is getting excited to go back to school again.  Anyway, after seeing Matthew off to his summer program, we then grabbed a Fiiz Drink to celebrate making it through the past 5 crazy months.

Then Aaron went to work and I was left alone with Sophie.  It was pretty quiet to say the least, but it was okay with us.

Don’t let her fool you though.  Sophie was a stinker this week.  She needed to get her vaccines at the vet.  Aaron was nice enough to take her, but she gets nervous at the vet.  Unfortunately, she is a nervous pooper.  As soon as Aaron took her out of her kennel she started pooping all over the vet's waiting room.  Aaron was unprepared so he had to ask for cleaning supplies to clean it up.  He was embarrassed, but the vet staff didn’t even blink an eye.  All they did was comment about the vast quantity that she produced--it was A LOT!!  They then said it was nice that there was no way she had any more left to poop when they gave Sophie her shots. Fun times.  Aaron told me next time she went to the vet it would definitely be my turn to take her--haha!