New Roof

 I just wanted to document the time that Rob re-did our roof.  It has been on our to do list for a few years and we finally decided to do it.  He ordered the shingles, bought a few new tools and got to it. we had a lot of awesome friends who came to help us.  We are very thankful for all the help.  My dad even happened to be in town...we had already scheduled to do the roof...so he got to get in on the fun too.  ha ha.

 It's a good thing Rob had some good work pants for the job.  ha ha!

 Up on the roof.  It was SO hot up there!

 My dad.  Thanks for the help!

I'm pretty sure all the guys felt pretty manly up there with the nail guns and stuff.  ha ha  

It's done now and it feels pretty good having that big thing checked off our list!

Flag Day

 At the park near our house, every year they put up a bunch of flags and leave them up for a few weeks.  We happen to drive past them on Flag day and I decided to pull over and let the kids wander through them for a little while.  We had already talked about why we celebrate flag day so it was fun to see so many flags up close!

 It was windy that day so the flags all blew in the wind.  It was beautiful.

 I had Sadie count the flags on the perimeter and we figured out there were (about) 1,080 flags!  I would have guessed a few hundred.  

 Zac- 6 years old.

 Emery- 4 years old

My four kids.  I love them so much and I'm glad we are able to live in a country where we are free to live our lives how we want to and worship God how we want.  

 Zac loved running through all the rows and rows of flags. 

Emery- Almost 2.  (i'm sad I didn't get a picture of just Sadie.  But she is 8.)

Emery's Dance Recital

 Emery had her dance recital a few weeks ago.  She had been so excited to wear her costume!  She showed it to all of her friends that came over.  She wasn't allowed to wear it before her recital but now she can!  She loves it.  It was her favorite thing about dance!

Here is a link to her class's dance.  It was too big so I had to upload it to Youtube first.

https://youtu.be/IPpY-uQJoV8

Sorry about the shaky camera.  I was too busy watching her dance to keep it steady. And Riley was grabbing my arm.  Emery is the fourth one in from the left.

Here is a video of their practice dance during their last class. 

https://youtu.be/3TdHweILQM8

Poor girl felt bad for dropping her flash light.  But she still did all the dance moves!  I was proud of her.

Camping in Hobble Creek

Last weekend we went camping at Hobble Creek in Springville.  Luke and Taylor joined us for the evening.  It was a lot of fun.  The playset it always a big hit with the kids.  We spent some time in the evening there and also again in the morning.

Riley and William climbed the rock wall.   

My kids spent a lot of time swinging.  Especially Riley.  She would ask for more underdogs over and over.

Sadie and Zac loved the bigger rock climbing wall.

These two cuties were so fun!  They loved the swings.

Rob gave tons of underdogs to the kids.

Everyone helped make the fire.

Throwing rocks into the little river.

It was a hit.  This is Zac's all time favorite thing to do.  He loves throwing rocks in the water.

Hanging out by the fire making s'mores.  This time we ate dinner before we left the house so it was so easy!  We just had to make s'mores over the fire.  Yum!

Sadie became quite the expert marshmallow roaster.

My family on a log.

Emery was dealing us a little crack that night.  :)

She loved "exploring" the campsite and was very sad when I told her she couldn't bring her new friends (potato bugs) home with us in the car.

It was a pretty good trip.  The only hiccup was that Riley wouldn't go to sleep.  We were also in a campsite right next to a campsite where there were like 20 young women.  I thing they must have been doing girls camp or something.  They were up really late singing songs and stuff which was fine.  It was fun to hear them sing primary songs that the kids knew.  Riley finally settled down and was starting to go to sleep around 11:15.  That's when she sat up and barfed all over me and the blankets.  I just kept saying over and over "I'm didn't come prepared for this!!"  ha ha.  It was late.  I was tired.  We cleaned up as best we could with wet wipes and changed Riley and got the throw up blanket out of the tent.  After that, she slept great!  ha ha.  She didn't act sick at all after that so we think it was because she ate doritos for dinner and then cheetos and marshmallows and chocolate.  ha ha.  Next time I will be prepared for a throw up incident.  :)

In the morning we were planning on going to a cool splash pad they have in Springville, but Rob had never been to the new reservoir there.  So we stopped by.  We kept asking the kids if they wanted to go to the splash pad, but they were happy at the reservoir.  So we stayed.

There were tons of yellow butterflies flying around by the water.  There are some in the bottom right of the above picture.

And here is Zac making friends with one.  :)

It's such a fun little place!  I told Rob if we still lived in Springville, we might have to invest in some fun water toys like a kayak or something.

I think we are standing right next to a group of butterflies for this picture. 

Close up.  Emery was able to touch one. 

Riley loved the sand.

And Sadie practiced her cartwheels.

Rob even waded into the water a little bit.  We weren't planning on stopping here, so next time we will be more prepared with our swimming suits and the kids floaties. 

Activity Days spa night

 A while ago I was invited to a spa night with Sadie at activity girls.  It was so fun!  We brought our neighbor friend Hallie.  We got to paint nails, give foot rubs and get face masks and of course eat!  It was delicious crepes.  Yum. 

 Sadie and Hallie.  

 Friends.

 I love Sadie.  It's so fun getting to do some new things with her as she gets older.

The whole group.  I didn't realize there were so many girls that age in our ward.  We just lost about seven of them though because they moved out of our ward.  :(

Trip to Disneyland- Day 5

I'm finally getting around to posting about the last day of our Disneyland vacation.  Phew.  On our last day in California, we decided to head to the beach before we started the long drive home.  My parents took us out to breakfast at IHOP before we headed to the beach. (thank you!!) My parents walked there but we drove so we could head out right after we ate.  Well, while we were stopped at a red light something crazy happened.  There was a green arrow for some cars to turn left and instead of waiting for a walk signal, some runners started crossing the street right into the path of the cars turning left.  One nearly got hit, and when a truck slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting him, something in the back slammed into the back window and shattered it.  My parents had a front row seat to the action since they were waiting for a walk signal themselves to start crossing that same street.  The runners ran away pretty quick and I guess my dad yelled after them that they made the truck's window break.  They didn't stop though.  It was a crazy start to our day.  Anyway, we ate a delicious breakfast and then headed out to a beach that my friend told us about.  It's called Corona beach in Newport beach.  It was amazing!  We loved it because it had tide pools and sand and that particular day, tons of little red crabs washed up all over the beach.  It was crazy.

The Sadie and Rob spent a lot of time finding some really cool shells around the rocks.  Zac liked digging in the sand.  Emery spent the whole time touching anemones.  Riley ate sand.  And I loved it.  I can't wait till we go back to the beach!  Who knows when that will be, but oh well.

 If you look close at this picture you can see the line of crabs along the beach. 

 Here they are up close.

 They were mostly alive still.  They were seriously everywhere!!

 My cute family.

 I love how Zac was holding his shorts up higher than his undies.  ha ha. We waded in to our ankles and had to dodge the crabs that were being brought in with the waves.

 Riley plopped down and had her first taste of beach sand.  Yum. 

 I wrote Emery's name in the sand and literally one second after this picture was taken, the waves came in and erased it.  ha ha

 The kids liked exploring this little cave.

 Zac loved letting his feet get buried in the sand.

 Here is Emery touching the anemones.  She did the the whole time.

 Riley just plopped down in the water too.  She didn't mind having a wet bum.

 Sadie and Rob exploring the rocks.  

 After they found this shell was occupied with some kind of slug thing, they put it back and began the search for empty shells just like it.  And they found 3!!  I'll have to add a picture of the shells they found.  They are amazing!

 

 Here is some proof I was there too.

We had the beach to ourselves pretty much and right as we were leaving a big boat with a ton of people on it unloaded onto the beach.  Perfect timing.

Here are some videos.  The second one I was trying to get a video of the anemone closing but instead I got a video of a poor crab being caught by an anemone. 

We got home around 11:45 that night. We almost got pulled over about 10 miles away from home.  Rob decided he was going to try to slowly pass a highway patrol car, and as we were very slowly passing him, he moved over into the lane next to us and flashed his lights.  ROb slowed down and he didn't pull us over, but it was a long last ten miles of the trip.  And there were so many cars all bunched up because of the police car.  Ha ha.  We don't like traveling that late, but it was worth it to be able to see the beach.  Next time we will plan a whole day at the beach!