Springville Reservoir

 Ever since we moved away from Springville, they have added some really cool things.  They built a really fun splash pad and park that we would have walked to at least three times a week if we were still there. Also, they just opened a reservoir in the canyon about 5 minutes away from where we lived.  We were finally able to check it out while my mom and brother were in town.  We went straight there after we visited BYU.  It was almost lunch time so we decided we would eat when we got there because it should only take about 20 minutes to get there.  Well, the GPS took us to a totally wrong place so the trip ended up taking twice as long so we were all really ready for lunch when we got there.  So we ate and then changed into our swimming suits and got swimming! 

 Riley started swimming before we even changed her!  Ha ha.  It was a hot day.  By the time I took this picture, Sadie was pretty much done in the water. 

I packed two things of sunscreen because I knew out spray was almost gone.  But when we got there the bottle of sunscreen had exploded all over my bag and there was NONE left.  Yikes.  Luckily, I randomly ran into my friend Stacie from college there and asked to borrow hers.  Thank you Stacie!!! 

 We tried to keep Riley trapped in this tube so she could play without us having to hold her hand the whole time in the water, but she kept crawling out.  The water was freezing, but I finally got brave and got wet.  I didn't get completely wet...it was so cold. My mom and Scott and the kids did though.

 My mom was on Riley duty a lot of the time we were there.  That is a big job.  Ha ha. Thanks mom!

 Scott went out into the water for a little while too.

The sand was great too.  Really soft and fun to dig and make sandcastles.  

It was a fun day.  I need to go back again with Rob because we loved it.  But it's just so hard to find the time to get out there!  

 

And this is a random picture, but I love it.  Riley sure loved having grandma here for a couple weeks!

BYU and Bean Museum

 My mom and Scott were planning a trip to BYU while they were in town so I invited myself along and we stopped at the Bean Museum first.  It is SO different after the renovations.  I don't really remember it much, so it might actually be mostly the same.  ha ha.  But the kids had a good time.  Zac was excited to see a penguin there, but I told him I didn't think there were any penguins there.  But soon after we got there a worker came out with a penguin and asked if we wanted to pet it.  The kids were so excited.  Penguins are a favorite right now.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

 Giraffes greeted us as we walked in. I had to snap this picture really fast because a big class of preschool age kids were walking in the door and they were about to come over.  So I chopped off the head of the giraffe.  Oops.

 Peacocks.  So pretty.

 Ha ha.  Emery's face is so funny.

 Y mountain in the background.  BYU is so different from when I went there less than ten years ago.  Crazy.  It was fun to be back on campus though. 

 BYU Bookstore.  Always fun seeing all the BYU gear for sale.

 I think I need to get her this hat.  So cute.

 Sadie's hat choice for a picture.

 Zac's choice.

 And I didn't think Riley would wear a hat so I gave her this ball to hold.  We are trying to teach them young which team to cheer for!

We also visited the Eyering Science center.  Riley liked watching the pendulum in the entrance.  And we liked shooting each other with the air gun thing.  

We had a great time.  Thanks mom and Scott for helping me corral the kids!

Silver Lake

The last time my mom was in town we hiked Silver Lake and it was still covered in snow.  So we decided to visit again and it was such a different trip!  I love this "hike" (it is really just a walk). 

Sadie always makes sure I take pictures.  "take a picture of me mom!"  

We brought the front pack for Riley, but she just wanted to walk the whole time.  Here she is loving the ducks in the water. 

Family shot.

Rob was so great and mostly took care of Riley the whole time.  

And of course we had to stop and throw rocks in the lake.  Also, if we watched for a while we could see fish jumping in the water.  Pretty neat.  Rob was the one who pointed that out.

Every time Rob would try to pick Riley up to catch up with us she would cry.  She just wanted to explore on her own!  So he got creative.

Isn't she just so cute!

Sadie again.  She always finds the best rocks to stand on for pictures.

Uncle Scott and Grandma are so fun.  

I managed to get this picture of the kids before Riley tried to crawl away.  

BYU50

 This year is the 50th anniversary of Lavell Edwards stadium at BYU.  To count down the days until the first official football game, BYU made a bunch of boxes full of fan gear and they are "dropping" one in every state for people to get.  What they do is they put the box somewhere and tweet a picture of it and wait until someone comes to get it.  Check out their twitter page here.  So my mom found out that while she was in town they were going to drop the Utah box.  As she was watching twitter to see where they were going to drop it, they posted a tweet that said they would be dropping 30 boxes in Utah that day and some of them were going to be competitions to win the box.  For example, they would put a box somewhere and post a picture of it and say "first five people here will compete for the box".  Some of them were puzzles, some were eating competitions, one of them was a race up Y mountain.  Stuff like that.  So the whole day we were keeping our eye on twitter in hopes that in one of the close cities they would put a box that we could try to get.

As we were out running errands, my mom noticed that they had dropped a box in Kearns at the Olympic circle.  I told my mom it was only 15 minutes away and that we should try to get there.  They were waiting for five people to race across the ice to get the box.  We drove over there and I let her out to run inside.  By the time we got there, they were already done with the competition, but she got to be in the picture and got a shirt.  Check it out here.  She is to the right of the kid in the green shirt holding the little girl.  We thought it was awesome that we at least got there in time for her to be in a picture.

Then later that night as we were playing mariokart on our wii my mom said they tweeted that they put a box in west jordan!  I looked at the picture which was this and I recognized it right away.  It was at the park which is minutes away from my house.  Rob ran down the hall and drove my mom over there to get it with no shoes on.  The whole time they were driving over there I was hoping that they would get there first, but I was doubtful.  But then I got a text from my mom saying that she got the box!  Fortunately this box there was no competition involved.  Just the first person there got it!  So fun!  Here are the pictures they took at the park here and here.  It was an exciting evening!  We actually knew the people who showed up second too.  They are our good friends. 

 Here are the kids going through all the stuff that was in the box. 

 Here is everything that was in the box.  Such a fun thing!

Even I got a free shirt out of it.  Thanks mom for sharing your goods! 

Sandy Balloon Festival

 A few Saturdays ago there was a balloon festival in Sandy.  We were going to go on Friday morning, but the weather didn't cooperate so we went on Saturday morning.  I actually slept in a little bit so I got up and got the kids up and dressed and out the door.  My mom was already up and waiting for us.  Rob "sacrificed" and stayed home in bed with Riley because she had a fever.  We found out later she had ear infections...poor girl.  When we got there some balloons were still filling up with air and one had taken off. 

 I love all the bright colors on the balloons.

 There were quite a few people there but there was plenty of room to move around and watch the balloons.

 We noticed there were a lot of helium balloons floating up to the sky so we found out where they were handing them out and grandma took them over to get one. 

 I think the palm tree balloon was my favorite.  I don't know why...probably because it was one of the last ones to take off. 

 Emery decided to wear Riley's sweater.  Just a little bit too small.

 Zac and Sadie thought they were pretty cool.

 Grandma is so fun!  Near the end this balloon landed again in the field and we went really close to it and Zac and Sadie were brave enough to go touch the basket.  It is pretty cool to see how big the balloons really are.  They are huge!  I don't think I ever want to go up in a hot air balloon.  Too scary for me!

 This one finally took off and we all cheered.

Then as we were walking back to the car we saw this view.  It look like it is landing on the roof of the house.  Ha ha.  It wasn't.  It actually landed in a parking lot and then took off again.  It was a fun event and we will probably go again next year!

I also loved this balloon.  The colors are so bright!

Camping in the backyard

 A couple weeks ago Rob was going to take Emery and Sadie camping because he took Zac to the fathers and sons camp out a couple months ago.  So they packed up the car and took off on a Friday evening up the canyon to see if there were any campsites available.  After an hour drive all the way to the top of the canyon, they discovered they were all full, so they turned around.  I got a call from Rob saying they were on their way home so I suggested they call our friends to ask if they could use their fire pit for dinner and smores and then they could set the tent up in out backyard.  So that is what  they did.  Which meant Zac got to join them. 

He was pretty excited.  

Rob is so great.  He slept outside with them all night.  He had to run inside at 1:30 to turn the sprinklers off though.  Ha ha.  

lesson learned: always make reservations first!

Oregon- Friday

 On Friday we decided to drive out to Wallowa Lake.  All of the kids were calling it "la la la la lake".  When we got there we went straight over to the water and Emery got her skirt all wet.  ha ha. And the water was SO COLD!  But most everyone got in at least to their ankles.  The kids were all swimming in it and trying to catch little minnows in a plastic box someone had.  They caught about ten or so and kept them in a water bottle.  I don't know what ever happened to them...

 Sadie, Hallie and Thea all built this rock castle.  Sadie was done with the water after about 20 minutes.  ha ha

 Hallie and Emery just played here in this spot for a long time.  They built all kinds of things in the mud and rocks.  It was really cute to listen to their conversations.

 William loved being in the water!  I think every time I looked at him he was smiling, unless he was being held out of the water.  Then he was crying.  ha ha

 We decided to rent a couple of paddle boats.  Luke and Taylor watched Riley for us so we could all go out together.  Rob took Zac and Emery.

 And I got to go out with Sadie.

 Sadie helped paddle some of the time.  But mostly it was just me.  And I'm sure Rob didn't have any help on his boat. 

 We had a few races and mostly stayed close together.  Zac and Emery took a turn in the back of their boat and they were trying to splash us.  Then Zac leaned over a little too far...

 And fell in!  That water was so cold!  I felt bad for him.  I was too busy yelling at Rob to bring the boat around to get him that I didn't take a picture of him in the water.  ha ha.  Here he is crying in the front seat.  Poor kid!

 We decided to just go in the paddle boats with our clothes on and not change into our swimming suits because the guy that rented them to us said that it is pretty hard to get really wet in a paddle boat.  Well, Zac fell in, so he got soaked.  And the seats had huge puddles of water on them so we all got soaking wet bums.  Oh well.  They dried off pretty quick.  Here is Rob trying to dry his pants off and Zac trying to dry off in the sun.

 Riley was in heaven with all these rocks to play with.  And as long as she had her pacifier in she didn't try to eat them.  

This was right when we got there.  

The guys built this little rock enclosure to try to lure the minnows in and then catch them.  The only thing they lured in there was William.

After we spent some time at the water, we decided to go on a hike.  Rob and I had made the hike before about nine years ago, so we didn't remember how long it was.  But the kids did great and we made it to the waterfall!

 Taking a little break.

 There were lots of babies on shoulders.  There were a few people that we passed that mentioned we had a big group of kids with us.  ha ha.  And Thea is holding an inch worm on her arm.  It was fun to see it crawl.

 Made it to the waterfall!  It was kind of scary and I was worried the whole time that my kids were going to tumble down those rocks, but it was really pretty.  The kids all made it pretty much by themselves except for the babies.  I was so impressed.  There was hardly any complaining!  

The next day we headed home for Utah.  It was such a great trip but it is always great to be home again.

My sister in law Lindsy wrote about the trip on her blog as well. Here are the links: Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday.  Thanks for documenting the trip so well Lindsy!  I think the next family reunion should be in Utah!!!  :)