Grandma and Grandpa Selin visit

 My parents came to visit a few weeks ago.  It is always so nice to have them around.  :)  My mom helped (pretty much did it herself!) paint a couple bedrooms, my dad helped make our air conditioning cold in our van again and we just enjoyed spending time together.  We are always sad when they have to go home. 

 Grandma gave Riley her first haircut.

 This is the kids while we were at Zuppas.  Aren't they so cute!! (this wasn't when my parents were here...I don't know what it is doing on this post.  ha ha)

 Grandparents!

 The kids got to do their very first mystery box.  There were some glitches- but it was a fun time.

 Riley was really into as you can see.

 We finally made it to our destination...snow cones!!

 Yummy.  One of my favorite summer treats!

 We discovered the Utah Truffles outlet store.  It's just minutes from our house, and you can see them making the chocolates, and they give you a free sample when you walk in.  WIN!

 Watching Zac's last soccer game.  

He got a medal that was as big as his face.  We love watching Zac play soccer.

 WE had a good visit with great grandma and grandpa Selin.  They are great!

Then we went over to a bird migration area.  I can't remember what it was called, but it was pretty cool.  We saw lots of different birds including baby birds, and we saw a frog at the end!

 Grandma was smart and grabbed the binoculars to take with us.  The kids loved it.  Basically you walk around a boardwalk and there is a tower and there are signs with facts about different birds all around.  The kids did great until the very end when Riley had a meltdown. 

 Zac loved the binoculars, and here is Emery helping Riley down the stairs.

 There were a lot of bird nests under here.  It was fun to count them.  

 The girls liked to peek between the cracks because we heard water running under there.  

 Riley just loves all of her siblings.  And it is fun now that Sadie can give her piggy back rides.

 So cute!

Grandma always has fun projects for the kids to do.  Here they are making lip gloss.  

As always it was a great visit and we wish they could have stayed longer.  Can't wait to see them again in August!

Friends

We sure love having lots of fun friends.  We especially love when we can get together with our friends the Hatch family.  They are so fun and the kids just love playing together.  And I love hanging out with Laurel.  :)  So it works out great.  We've been doing some playing this summer...These girls are so cute!
 

 Sadie was armed for the water fight.

 The whole gang...minus Clara (who was napping).

 Slip and slide fun.  :)

 Water balloons...fill them up and they are gone in 2 minutes.  ha ha.

 Sadie and Jake

Andrew, Zac, Emery and Ella

Charlotte and Riley

Flags

 I love when they put the flags up at the park near our house every year.  They go up around the beginning of June, and come down after flag day.  I had the kids count the flags so we could multiply them and figure out how many there were...and there were over 1000 flags!  It's a pretty amazing sight to see that many flags all in the same place blowing in the wind.

 We talked about our freedom and what the flag represents.  My mom was even there with us.  Bonus!

 Then we read the signs that were around because they put the flags up to raise awareness for child abuse.  We read the statistics and I am so grateful for how I was raised.  

 So many flags.

We even went back a week or so later to have a picnic on actual flag day.  It was a fun time.  I'm so grateful to live in this country and I'm grateful for the people who fight for our rights and freedoms. 

Happy Father's day and Birthday to Rob!

 We sure love Daddy around here.  He is always up for a game with the kids, he is a hard worker, and he is handsome.  :)  We celebrated fathers day by giving him some clothes and treats. 

 And of course we had to take a few pictures.  I love all of those people.  They make me so happy.

I didn't take any pictures on his birthday, but here is a family picture before church on Father's day.  For his birthday he got to sleep in and he got a set of throwing knives.  He has yet to try them out because we need a piece of wood or a target of some kind first.  But he was pretty excited about them.  

We love daddy!

Emery's "graduation" from "preschool"

This first picture is one Emery took with my phone of her little beenie babies.  My kids love these things!

This is Foxie and Elephant.  McDonnalds was (or maybe they still are) giving out these little teenie ty's in their happy meals.

So this year we heard about a program called Upstart.  It is an online preschool that is free and it is only for kids who are going into kindergarten in the next year.  It was such a great program.  You have to commit to doing it every day for at least 15 minutes.  At first Emery loved it, but as she progressed and the curriculum got a little more challenging, it was harder to get her to do her preschool every day.  She did really well and it had fun songs that she still sings. 

Well they had a "graduation" for her, which was basically just a little test that they gave her to see how much she learned.  But then they announced her name and gave her a little graduation hat.  It was pretty fun.  I will definitely be doing this with Riley in a couple years!

Emery with Rusty and Rosie, who were on her preschool activities.

The other kids didn't want to be left out!

I'm proud of Emery for finishing this program.  She is so ready for Kindergarten.  She asks all the time when she gets to go to school.  :)

Camping at Jordanelle

 The weekend after the kids got out of school we went camping at Jordanelle.  We had reserved the campsite like months in advance so we were looking forward to it!  The older kids had actually gone camping with Rob the weekend before but they were still excited to go again.  We went to this place a few years ago, but the lake was really low that year so we couldn't even get close to the water because there was THICK mud all around it.  So we threw rocks in the mud that year.  This time we could get right up to the water and actually got to throw rocks in the water.  It was fun.

 All in the car and ready to go!

Of course we had to try out the playground after we got the tent set up.  

And then we found the water.  Sadie had given Rob the perfect skipping rock that she had been saving for months for our first campout.  She wanted him to skip it.  So he tried that one first...but the problem was that his back was thrown out and he hadn't practiced and anyway, the rock just hit the water and sunk.  Sadie was pretty sad about that.  But he made up for it by skipping a bunch of other rocks.

I was there too.

We spent a lot of time doing this.

These two were little explorer buddies.  They were always searching for rocks and spiderwebs and bugs.  It was cute.

We finally convinced the kids to head back to make a fire so we could roast our hot dogs for dinner.

It's a good thing we went back when we did because right after we got done eating and making smores, someone came up and said we couldn't have any open fires that night because it was really windy.  Phew.  I really would not have liked to eat cold hot dogs!

And Riley really knows how to make dinner.  HAH!  

These kids make camping so much fun!

These kids really are so happy when we are out in nature.  I'm sure they have more fun when just Rob takes them camping because I'm always worried and making sure I can see them all and that they aren't going to fall in any water or get lost.  I need to learn to let go a little I think...

MMMM....Smores!

Ready for Bed with our glowsticks.  It looks really bright in the picture, but I think it was almost dark out.  The moon was full that night too so it didn't ever get pitch black.

We put the tent up!  It was a lot of work especially because Rob's back was hurt.  

More rock throwing.

Rob took a break after putting the tent up.  Ha ha.

Little Riley.  So fun to watch.  She gathered all these rocks and put them in a row.  

Overall it was such a fun trip and we loved it.  It is always a lot of hard work packing everything up and setting it up and taking it down, but it is so worth it for the memories and to see the smiles on these kids faces.  They love it!  It's not always fun dealing with the tired kids when we get home, but we make it through.  ha ha.  Here's a funny story...I was worried about camping because sometimes I wake up at night 3 times to use the bathroom.  I didn't want to have to hike to the bathroom in the dark that many times while camping.  Well, around 1am both Rob and I woke up because our air mattress had deflated and we were both on the ground.  ha ha.  So Rob blew it up and told me to go to the bathroom.  I didn't want to have to put my shoes on and walk to the bathroom so I was just going to hold it.  He said he had to go so he would go first.  He stood up and started unzipping the tent without putting any shoes on!  I asked him if he was going barefoot and he said "yeah...it's not that far".  That was true...It was only one or two campsites away, but still.  What about bugs.  I shrugged it off and let him go without shoes.  Next thing I know I hear him peeing right outside the tent!!  I started laughing really hard.  It never even occurred to me that he would just go outside.  Ha ha!  Of course that is what he would do.  And if I were a boy, I probably would too!  I laughed so hard and long that I decided I better make that trip to the bathroom.  So I put my shoes on and walked down to the bathroom.  I didn't even need a flashlight because of the full moon.  Oh man...I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time.  And that is saying something because Rob makes me laugh pretty good every day.  :)   

Good camping trip.  Can't wait for the next one...which will probably not be until next summer for me, but Rob might take the kids a couple times this summer.  :)