Handsome Harry

I did a little bit of shopping a few weeks ago and found this fedora at a children's clothing store. It was super cheap, so I thought, hey, why not?

Harry wore it to church and miracle of miracles, he kept it on the whole time.

Handsome Harry, for sure.

Staycation, All in the Name of Football

Several months ago Rinar and I scheduled our family vacation time. Rinar has to do that now because of his extensive travel schedule. Unbeknownst to us, we scheduled vacation number 2 the same week as football tryouts.  Yes, for some reason here in Utah 11 year-old boys have to try out for the football team to see where they get put.  You know, because when you are 11, these things are vitally important, on the same level as the North Korean missile crisis and preventing world hunger.  It is that important around here, apparently.

Hence, vacation became staycation.  Bummer. But we tried to make the best of it.

On Monday, July 29th we headed down to Provo to go to Seven Peaks with  my sister Catye and her husband Mike. Catye worked at Seven Peaks last year and she had a whole bunch of free tickets.  Staycation was looking pretty darn affordable.  The kids had a blast, but we had to hurry back to get Raef to football tryouts on time, so we didn't get to stay as long as we would have liked.

On Tuesday, we headed up to Hogle Zoo. But it was blazing hot. The kids only lasted a few hours and then it was time to get some pizza.

And if you are going to get pizza, the obvious place to go is The Pie. Where else?  The kids thoroughly enjoyed the fare.  Then we had to call an audible for afternoon activities, because our original plan did not give us enough time to hurry back for...yep, football tryouts. This meant a quick trip to the Church Museum to see the kid's Book of Mormon exhibit.

Wednesday was my favorite.  We dedicated the whole day to This is the Place Heritage Park. It happens to be across the street from the zoo.  It is a pioneer village with oodles of things to do, a hands-on, living museum.  Harry and Zach enjoyed a "shave" at the barber shop while the other ones waited by playing checkers.

They got to ride the ponies, and totally loved it.  There was also a petting zoo, and lots of historic buildings.

This little pioneer house was a big hit. They washed clothes on a real scrub board, beat the rug with a wire whisky thing, plowed the soil with a real hand plow, played toss-a-ring, and even gave it a go at stilt walking.

When it got too hot, they spent a bit of time playing in the splash pad. I had no idea there was one there, so we were woefully unprepared.  But after ringing out the shirts and staying outside for a  little bit, they were dry in a short amount of time. 

We also rode a train, panned for gold, made an arrowhead necklace, and ate ice cream at the old hotel.  And then we packed the kids up and hurried home. Surprising, I know, but had to get to football tryouts on time.

We were tuckered out by Thursday and hung around the house. Rinar did take them swimming for a little while and then it was off to football again.

On Friday, Rinar took Raef, Zach, and Eli to Lagoon, or as Eli calls it...Magoon.  We made sure that they got there right when it opened.  They stayed as long as they could before they rushed back for football tryouts.  After football, Rinar took Raef and Zach back until closing time.

As for football, I might have been a little annoyed.  Okay, maybe a lot.  We gave up a week of vacation so that he could tryout for teams that were pretty much already decided before anyone showed up for the first day of tryouts. Most of those boys had played in the system before. Everything was predetermined.  There is an A team. Yep, that never happened. There was a B team. Nope, didn't make that one. And then there were the color teams, like gray, blue, white, etc.  The color teams are for all the rest of the boys, whether they tried out or not.

Raef is on the gray team.

I am just so glad we had to lose a vacation and rush back from every activity early so that he could be on the gray team, a team he would have probably been put on even if we had gone to Yellowstone for the week.

But whatever!

Pioneer Day Celebrations

For those of you not from Utah, you may not know that July 24th is a big day for Utah. In fact, Utahns party all week.  The 24th is the day that Brigham Young first set his eyes on the Salt Lake valley and proclaimed, "This is the right place. Drive on."  Now that we are officially Utahns, we had to partake in all of the festivities.

One of them was the local Draper Days parade.  We found a cozy spot along the parade route and got ready to watch all the action.  It was great and holy smokes, my kids walked away with a ton of candy. It was out of control.  But they sure had fun collecting, and eating, all of it.

The big parade for the state is called the Days of '47 and is through downtown Salt Lake. This thing is seriously a massive event.  They say that 250,000 people line the streets to be a part of the parade.  We were not one of the masses.  But, the day before the parade we went to the Sandy Convention Center to preview all of the floats.  They were amazing; very intricate, well planned, and executed.  It was fantastic. We could see all of the floats without the heat and delay. I didn't mind that so much. Plus, we didn't miss out on any candy because candy is prohibited at the Days of '47 parade. It was a win-win for me.

At the end of the week, I was able to go with Rinar and our new friends Brad and Melissa to the Conference Center to watch the Pioneer Concert put on by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We also took Raef and Zach because we thought they would enjoy the music.  Hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir should be on every persons' bucket list. It is awe-inspiring. 

On the drive to downtown, Raef got sick, like queasy, vomit every 20 minutes kind of sick.  And Zach brought a book and couldn't be bothered to actually watch any of the concert.  So while it was going on, Raef had to crawl out of our seats, which were smack-dab in the middle of the row to go to the bathroom at least 3 times. The people on either side of us probably wanted to strangle us. Even I was annoyed and it was my child.   

But the concert was beautiful and I am glad I got to hear it. Next year, I will leave the kids home.

Draper's Cutest Cowboy

I cannot believe I have never done this before.  On July 12, we took the family to our local rodeo. It seems that every town in Utah has a rodeo sometime during the summer. And man, is it about the coolest thing ever. I don't think there is anything more American than a good ole' local rodeo.  The first event of the night was by far and away the best: Mutton Bustin'.  

You have to weigh less than 50 lbs. to participate and so I was thrilled to sign up Eli for this event.  Rinar and I took him down to the back side of the rodeo with all of the other little victims children to give it a go.  What exactly was he going to do?  Ride a sheep for as long as he could stay on. Each kid started taking their turn while Eli waited in his dad's arms.  He was very quiet. I was worried that he was getting afraid. I mean, he had no idea what was going on except for the fact that every kid who finished was crying buckets of tears. Oh dear!  What had I signed my child up for? 

Finally, the time had come for Eli to bust the mutton. Rinar put Eli into the arms of one of the cowboys. They put him in the cage with the animal and as soon as he was set, they let him fly.  To say he looked bewildered would be putting it mildly.  But he held on for about 3 seconds and then the sheep took a right turn. Eli fell left, face first into the muddy turf.  Was he going to cry?  I watched him stand up, as quiet as could be, and start spitting profusely.  All the dirt seemed to go into his mouth.  I still wasn't sure how he felt about the whole experience, but I was very surprised to find out that he absolutely loved it and wanted to do it again! The first thing he said to Rinar was that he needed to practice riding sheep more.  Well, all be!!

He was so proud of himself and felt like a real cowboy. Then it was time to watch the big cowboys in action. And we were not disappointed.

At half time, all the little kids got to chase a calf that had dollar bills pinned to it.  All three of them ran hard, and really enjoyed running. I don't think they knew why they were running, but it sure was fun to watch them out their running their best. Dad gave them each a consolation coin and they were all really happy.

The rodeo is just up the street from our house and I know this is going to be a family tradition. Draper Rodeo every year. Good times.

Camp Tracy

What would summer be without Boy Scout camp, right?  July was also the month for the boys to go to Camp Tracy. It is an awesome, permanent Boy Scout camp in Millcreek Canyon. They went for three days and I was able to take all the scouts from our troop on the last day of the camp.  That equals four boys: Raef, Zach, Matt D., and Caden C. 

They were able to pass off a bunch of stuff for their rank advancement. I helped them do the compass requirement. Actually, I just helped Raef and Caden. Matt and Zach finished before us.  They asked if they could go do rock climbing while we finished. I told them they could and then about 15 minutes later I went to look for them.  But, of course, they were not there.  Then the hunt began. It soon ended at the pond and canoes. I saw them out there and waved for them to come in. Matt and Zach came right back and when they came to dock the boat, Zach was really upset and crying.  I was a bit taken back by his emotional state. They both got out of the boat and Matt took off.  Zach proceeded to tell me that Matt was keeping him hostage on the canoe because Matt wanted to canoe, and Zach did not. Matt is much bigger than Zach and so he was pretty much powerless.  Zach begged him to go back to shore but he wouldn't.

Oh the drama of an 11 year-old mind.

Then they went swimming and everything was okay again.

Diving boards can make everything better.

***
It has been nice to have Rinar around more. Even though he travels a lot, he is able to work from home when he is in town.  That means we have been able to go on a lot of lunch dates together.

One of our lunch dates was to the Serving Time Cafe.  It is a cafe at the prison in Draper. It is run by female prison inmates. They get release time and work at this little cafe.  Rinar and I tried it out and were pleasantly surprised. The food was darn good and it was a neat little place to eat.

We will definitely be going back again.

The Fourth in St. George

I am going to kindly remind myself never, ever go to St. George in July while pregnant. Like, ever.  Grrrr.... It was so hot.  

We decided to go to St. George for the Fourth and spend time with our families.  Since we sold our van, we actually rented a car to make the trip. I have learned something very important from not having the van.  Our family really does not need a DVD player in the car. All of the kids did great for the trip. They each had a bag of toys and played really well. We listened to satellite radio, which was a nice luxury and the kids were surprisingly very pleasant.

As soon as we got to St. George, we headed over to Aislinn's house. She just got remarried to Dave in February and we went over to his house because he has a pool. Pools are a nice commodity in that town and the kids had a lot of fun swimming for a few hours. 

Then we went to pay a surprise visit to my Uncle Ron. He lives in Bloomington and is a widower.  It was really wonderful to be able to catch him at home and we sat with him for about an hour or so and talked.  

Then it was off to my Grandma's house to catch the fireworks. Her condo is right next to the field where they set off the fireworks and it is really neat to see them that close. The kids were in heaven. They just loved it. I was a little worried about getting stuck in traffic, as we had to drive to Hurricane to stay at Lyf's house. But it was no problem at all. Traffic was a breeze heading out the way we did.  Lyf and his family were out of town, but they graciously let us stay there while they were gone.  

And then on Friday, we had dinner over at Nordel's house. It was a fun surprise to see Linda and her brother Richard and sister Carma and Bruce.  I was a lot of fun catching up with them, and of course give them a little concert before they left.

Besides the horrific heat, it was fun to be with family for the Fourth of July.

Sunset Friends

Ever since the first day we moved to Utah, I have been without a laptop. It is really cramping my style. With a laptop, it equals blogging freedom. I could just pull it out whenever I got the fancy, usually right before I go to bed and blog about some little nuance of the day. Now, blogging has to be done with intention as I have to actually go down 14 whole steps to the computer room to blog stuff. Yikes. It is really getting away from me. But I am determined to keep my blog up to date for the posterity of my family. They love reading my blog books and I love having them. I do it all for the book!

In July, we had the pleasure of a visit from Keri and Jeff P. and their family. They now live in Maryland and are loving life. We got to know them in Las Vegas and had many wonderful years with their family.  They just happened to be passing through and stopped for dinner and a visit.  So, I made sure to invite Lindsay B. and her family as well. Lindsay was also in the Sunset Ward in Vegas and we were all there together.

Front: Briahna, Kinley, Abbie, Ali, Eli, Harry, Julia, Lorelei. Back: Breken, Lindsay, Raef, Mason, MacKenna, Bryson, Zach, Jeff, and Keri

This was so much fun.  I remember the first time I met Keri. It was at the park in Henderson for a playgroup. She was chasing Mason around (he was a runner) while pregnant with Bryson and carrying MacKenna in a baby carrier. Man, I thought this woman is some kind of crazy. Actually, I don't think my opinion of her has ever changed. She amazes me with her craziness.  A woman to be greatly admired.  We just love these families and are so blessed that they have been a part of our lives for such a long period of time.

After the Paul's left, Lindsay and I were hanging and started talking about amazing thrift store finds. I told her about my sweet living room chairs I had found at the downtown Salt Lake DI and that there were still a bunch left. She called them and found out that they still had some chairs left. So, naturally, we left all of the kids with Rinar to get in some last minute thrift store shopping. And lucky we left when we did, because we only had about 20 minutes in the store.  And then Lindsay went bananas. Not only did the guy mark down every piece of furniture she bought, but the girl got the two chairs, a large couch, an end table and a book shelf.  I was worried that it would not all fit in my truck.  But Lindsay is a girl of fortune and it worked out great.

This girl is out of control. And I just love it!