Summer Photos

Hi, my people who read this blog. Sorry I've been absent for a while. It's not that I haven't wanted to write. It is just that I have let other things come to the front burners. Blogging just had to be put off until I was ready to write again.

We have been working on taking better care of our bodies. We have been trying to work in daily exercise, better menu planning and cooking, and getting enough sleep with earlier bedtimes. We feel really good and are now ready to dig in for the new school year. We actually started school a month ago, but that also took a lot of attention away from my blogging. I have a minute, so I thought I would post a thought or two and maybe some pictures.

At first we hated Arizona. All of us missed California so much. Even Zach occasionally laments that he wishes we could go to our real home in 'Fornia. Or sometimes he cries that he wants to go play baseball in Grandpa Carling's backyard. It is hard living in a place that seems to consist primarily of concrete. We miss our backyard and our trees! We miss the mountains! To make matters worse, we took a trip to Utah in July that made us realize that we never really mourned leaving Utah (since we thought maybe there was a chance we would move back.) So we have had a double dose of mourning. Hence the need to just go back to the basics.

Here are some pictures of our summer and why we needed to mourn.

These are all the boys in Brandon's old scout troop. Lots of them, huh. All good boys and great friends to each other. Guess how many in Brandon's scout troop now? Two. Brandon is one of them. Notice the beautiful trees and lake? It was hard for Brandon and Brian to leave that scout camp and transition to staying indoors most of the day.

This is one of the highlights of Katelyn's last few weeks in California. She got to meet one of her favorite role models, Jenny Oaks Baker. So many awesome cultural and musical opportunities in California. Hmmm.

We decided to get out of the heat after a couple of weeks of complete isolation and melting. We found relief in Cedar City. Did you know that the air actually smells wonderful nearer to the mountains? We had not known that we had missed this until we came back to Utah.

The older kids and I took in a couple of Shakespearean plays and loved every minute of it. I think the little kids loved time with Daddy in the hotel pool. I am not sure if Daddy loved Cedar City as much as the rest of us, but he is such a good sport.This is us on our picnic adventure up in North Fork. We all made it up to the waterfall even though Katelyn just had flip-flops on and I had to carry 40 pound Zach most of the way. Amanda was covered in dirt when we were done, but it was so much fun to be in the mountains.

Grandma and Grandpa waited at the trailhead for us, cheering us on. Aren't they wonderful?

We took a field trip to This Is the Place Heritage Park with Julie and her kids. What a wonderful reunion. We had already been at the copper mine and the candy factory that morning with the Wilhelmsen cousins. So many cousins and so little time...
Zachie's first horsie ride.


More cousins! It was so fun to see how they are all growing and changing, especially the babies.

Hanging out in Grandpa Wilhelmsen's shady backyard. Ahhh. We so enjoyed that the high that week was 90. (That was our low in AZ.)

We are learning not to hate Arizona. Actually there are lots of things we like about it. But, I'll have to save that for the next post.