9-6-3

What a happy day for some 9th, 6th, and 3rd grade teachers. They get to have these three in their classes! Hope you all know how lucky you are....(but I'm luckiest of all).

First-day-of-school breakfast. Too bad everyone's too excited to really eat anything!

Last year for these two to ever be in the same school. Good thing they're such good frenemies!

Mrs. Bingham's class

Mr. Shumaker's class

Happy school year!

Goodbye, summer!

How is it that school is starting tomorrow? 

I asked Sam what special thing he wanted to do tomorrow with just me and him. He said he wanted to eat lunch together on the front porch. I love him so much.

Here are some flowers in my front yard. These are profusion zinnias and purple fountain grass. Just in case you wondered. My absolute favorite thing about summer is being outside. I have been and always will be a summer girl.

Garrett earned a new skateboard. He is so excited about it, but mad at me that I won't let him ride it to school. He enjoys watching youtube videos of the stunts he wants to work on. I'm sensing an injury in our future.

This is a zinnia close-up, because sometimes I like to put my camera in macro mode.

Sam is a maniac on his bike and I'm pretty sure would qualify for the BMX Olympics if such a thing existed. Also, he is very excited to start preschool in a few weeks.

Last year Garrett had the most amazing school teacher ever, Mrs. Stephens. She challenged her class of second graders to read every day of the summer, and those who did were invited to this party in her awesome backyard. It was so cool! The kids rode her pony and had cake and ice cream and played games and there were prizes and it was just wonderful, just like her.

This is my favorite picture of Garrett riding the horse, because it looks like he's wearing some extra-large sombrero or something, but actually it was just a tree branch. He is sitting atop the horse.

You know it must be time to go back to school when the only thing left to do is watch the laundry spin in the washing machine. Oh well. At least we have lunch on the front porch to look forward to tomorrow!

Swimming and Trafalga

We went swimming with our favorite people the Knoxes, and took some pictures. Also, Sam almost drowned but didn't, so that's something to be thankful for. Whew. And I learned that when you see your child drowning, even when you are fully dressed in non-swimming clothes, it will only take about a nano-second for you to jump in the pool to save him. Just sayin'.

We also hit Trafalga, got to get our money's worth out of our POAP, right? 

And also Rich smoked some ribs, and we had craft week and made homemade crayons and other treasures:

To quote a favorite friend of mine, one who is actually adventuresome and goes on real vacations..."Fun, I know."

EFY, Park City, and Camp Grandma

We were so excited for Ben to attend EFY for the first time this year! I had so much fun getting him all checked in and settled in his dorm. It is a hard thing to be a 14 year old boy! It's hard when your mom wants to take pictures and document every moment, when she wants to hug you goodbye but she doesn't want to embarrass you which she seems to do all the time now,  and then she can't help but remind you 58 times to brush your teeth and don't forget to eat and a million other things that your mom does because she loves you more than life itself and wants so badly to have a loving, close relationship with you and for you to have an amazing, wonderful time at EFY and she just wishes (oh how she wishes) you could maybe see past all her flaws and the angst of teenagerdom and just throw her crumb of affection every now and then and......

Enough.

I did get at least one picture, however, of EFY, as we stood in line waiting to check in. Suffice it to say that Ben had an AMAZING time and hasn't stopped talking about it since. I feel so grateful that he got to go. Now when does Especially-For-Moms-Of-Teenagers start?

While B was at EFY, C,G,and S enjoyed some time at Camp Grandma and Rich and I escaped for a few days to Park City. We are the most unadventuresome couple I know, but even with our boring selves we managed to have fun. We did a little shopping, walked around Temple Square and visited the Church History Museum. We went to Trader Joe's and had lunch up Emigration Canyon at Ruth's Diner. We slept in, did family history work on our laptops, and watched a little Downton Abbey. We met friends in Sandy and enjoyed the Huey Lewis concert (He is really old and can't sing anymore, but it was very nostalgic for Rich and fun to listen to live music.)My favorite thing that we did was to do a driving tour retracing the Mormon Pioneer Trail. We stopped at every single historical marker there was, visited small towns, traipsed through old cemeteries, and looked for pioneer wagon wheel ruts which we never did find. It was actually a very special, sacred experience to be on that trail and ponder the faith and sacrifice of the Mormon pioneers. I loved every second of it, even if we are boring.

(Lunch on the patio at Ruth's Diner)

Park City

Wanship Cemetery

(I love old cemeteries! I'm so weird, but I love reading the headstones and thinking about these people's lives)

Donner Hill, where we looked in vain for wagon wheel tracks. But still, kind of cool to think the pioneers traversed this exact spot.

This really cute, old church in the city of Echo.

Somewhere in one of the small towns we explored we saw these street signs and had to take a picture. Oakley, maybe?

In Coalville they have this cool court house that has a pioneer museum in the basement. It was awesome!

One of the many, many reservoirs we passed, probably one in East Canyon. Obviously I took copious notes of the places we visited.

Maybe this is why I embarrass Ben so much...because we go to Huey Lewis concerts! (Still, it was fun.) These are our fun friends Dave and Lindsay....they are wonderful. Rich has known Dave since they were very, very young, when they used to rock out to Huey Lewis.