Summer, Summer, Summer! And we still have another month to go!

The hard thing about blogging is that the more you have going on to blog about, the less time you have to do any blogging. I'm trying to catch up with these next few posts and grouped them loosely by subject. 

The end of school was bittersweet...Kate and Maggie both cried on the last day.  They loved their teachers and had a great year.  We took this picture as we walked home on the last day. 

We love snow cones!
This one gets hers with EVERY flavor, while her sister gets hers with...

...NO flavor.
That's right.  Plain ice.
BTW, you don't get a discount for that.

We went to Yuba lake with some friends- spent all day talking and laughing and boating and managed to take two measly pictures.  The water was high, which was fun for boating, but not fun for sitting on the beach- it was dirt and mud, no sand.

The girls had a late night with some cuties from the neighborhood.

The Shelton's have been to visit a couple of times.  The kids play and play and play.  The only rule is that Charlie gets to be a Cheetah Girl- no leaving him out allowed. 

 

Father's Day.

Father's Day was a fun chance to get together with the family. 

All the Barratt brats and their dad.

Liza went off to Girls Camp while I took on the enormous responsibility of A) keeping Charlie out of the ER, and B) giving Elise the best birthday of her life.  I think I succeeded on both counts.

Don't be jealous of her sweet moves.

Love her so much.
Same for the other one.
And the one who's their dad.

And the one who's my dad.
 

Annika and Whitney played and played at the splash pad.

Whitney Shelton is a doll.

I don't want to brag, but I might be one of her top twelve favorite aunts.
Even though the other day she told my to "Suck it."
She's only alive because then she handed me a lifesaver.

The front loading washer was more fascinating to her than TV.

I went with the young women of the ward to Manti.

Those girls are a riot.  We went to the temple, watched the Manti pageant, and slept under the stars.

Meanwhile, Uncle Burke babysat Kate and Mags.

They were very productive in my absence. 

We went to Payson Canyon a couple of weeks ago with Burke.  

This is a place called the Grotto.  It's one of those places that looks cool in pictures but is actually not that cool in real life.
It was just crowded and small.

This picture makes me laugh because it looks like a peaceful nature shot, but Kiki was actually crying, "I thought this would be funner."  She had, only minutes before, had a major malfunction while peeing in the trees which necessitated a lower body rinse out in the river.  For her AND me.  Somehow in the chaos I lost my sunglasses, which makes about two dozen pairs claimed by bodies of water in Utah.

Stealth Doberman.

Payson Lakes made up for the disappointment of the Grotto.
These two found a homemade raft made out of logs and wore themselves out in the lake.

I love how they are looking at each other.

We were lucky to have Uncle Burke stay with us.  We introduced him to our cult of Taco Amigo and he became a very willing member.

We spent the 4th of July engaged in a variety of All-American activities.



Cow Show? Check.
This one later won Grand Champion at the fair.

Swimming? Check.

She carefully held this pose until she was certain I had a satisfactory picture, then proceeded to jump off the diving board-

-like so.

Tepanyaki? Check.

We think Japanese food was the perfect way to celebrate our nation's independence.

What's more American than sushi?

We also made it last Friday to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden with my cousin Melanie and her kids.

Also, some friends from the Philippines have been reassigned stateside and we had a happy reunion!

We celebrated Grandpa George's 119th birthday.

We also celebrated Preston's 10th birthday.

He is in disguise.

Kate has been begging me to teach her how to cook.  We started with her knife skills.  (Well, what we REALLY started with was the fundamental cooking rule of "Clean Up As You Go.")

Here she is practicing her chiffonade.

Bruschetta- a summer staple around here.

I can't leave a grocery list laying around her without it being subject to graffiti.  Usually it's Grandpa Jack adding bacon or bullets, but this time our long time sitter Maddie was to blame.

Last week Bruce and I went on trek with our stake.  600 assorted people went- he and I were a Ma and Pa.  We had four fake sons and four fake daughters and they were great kids.

Trek was good but not necessarily fun.  We had some laughs and some happy moments, and I might devote an entire blog post to it at some point.  It was worth doing in spite of the heat and dirt, but we couldn't wait to shower and eat Thai food and frozen yogurt.

Next up in our summer?  Lots of guests and hopefully lots more fun.