Fishing near Koosharem Utah

Lower Box Creek Reservoir was the fishing hole of choice this year. It's a very pretty drive and the fishing was great. Every day they caught their limit within a few hours.

Hailey's not sure she cares for fish kisses.
Taylor posing with the day's catch.

One of the days I took all the younger cousins for an "adventure" while everyone else fished. We thought it would be fun to walk around the reservoir. At the headwaters we found little waterfalls, a beaver dam and MUD. Lot's of MUD. That mud swallowed one of Reagan's flip flops, never to be found again. That's not the first flip flop Reagan has lost on an adventure, nor the second or third. That is why I try to pay no more than a dollar for his summer footwear. :-)

Abram and Reagan forging ahead through the muck. Abram almost lost his sandals too but fortunately we were able to retrieve his.

Sophie and Heidi enjoyed looking at the wildflowers with me and they also found quite a few geodes and interesting rocks.

Hmmm....what is Leif up to?  

Red Rock Country

Our trip to Utah last week included an afternoon exploring Capitol Reef.  Wow.  It was so much fun!  Truth be told, I wasn't too excited about visiting a hot desert full of a bunch of hot rocks, until we got there.  (I'm a wimp when it comes to hot)  But the miles of rock formations were so amazing, eerie and beautiful, all at the same time, that I was certainly won over.  By the time we arrived, clouds and distant thunderstorms were moving in and it didn't turn out to be hot at all.  

We walked up the Sulphur River.....

......enjoying the gruvuulous mud along the way.

 
Heidi and her sweet cousin, Sofia.

Leif was a happy little cherub the whole day.

Here's the whole gang!

We stopped for ice cream on the way home and Joel and I were asked if they were all ours.  I hadn't thought until then of the picture we made as 11 of us piled in and out of the Suburban all day.   :-)

Why haven't I blogged lately?

Oh......no reason really, just busy with life I guess.  :-)  So what's life been made up of this summer?

In no particular order:

*Swimming and kayaking at Fischer Pond  with the Hansons (to read more about that super fun day, check out Jenny's blog post) 

*Hosting 4th of July weekend for family and friends.

*Milking a cow for a friend who was out of town.  Believe me, we will NOT be getting a milk cow any time soon!

*Camping, kayaking, and 4-wheeling with numerous friends at Alturas Lake.  Lovely, lovely place, that Stanley Basin.  I would stay there a month or two if I could.

*Swimming at Niagara Springs with the Lundgrens and Hansons.  Oh. Um.  Jenny posted about that too, if you'd like to jump over to her blog again.  Now the fact that a mother of 8 finds the time to blog about her family's summer adventures and I don't is pathetic. You are amazing Jenny!

*A very wet, cold camping trip at Green Canyon Hot Springs for a week of swimming lessons, again with the Hanson and Lundgren clans.  Even though it blew so hard it broke tent poles, rained pretty much every day, and Jenny and I should have been awarded the prize for the messiest camp site, we had a FUN! 

*Rafting rapids from Lower Salmon to Bliss in a borrowed whitewater raft.  Good times, good times.

In between our outdoor fun, I have been squeezing in time to sew and and read a little, and trying to keep up with laundry.

Now, next time I post, I'll try to get a few photos on here because a story "without pictures" is certainly never as much fun.

Hope you are all enjoying SUMMER!

Our Favorite Water Park

Do you know why Roaring Springs Water Park is our favorite?  Because it's free!  Well, once a year it is.  Every year they are kind enough to host the Roaring Reader program which gives every child an entrance ticket after they track 600 minutes of reading.  It has created a fun family tradition for us.


This year we were able to go the same day as many of our homeschool friends.  Here is Reagan and his good buddy Lincoln trying to stay warm.

Hailey with her friends Kristen and Hannah.  Taylor in the background giving me the "don't take a picture when I'm licking a cone" look.

Heidi and Katie enjoying a snowcone together.

 I really wish I could have captured how happy Leif was to play in the fountain.  He LOVED it!  It was so much fun to see him trying to grab the water and splashing in the puddles.  But my camera is just too darn slow for action shots.  But I have managed to capture in the photo his radiant whiteness, inherited from his mother.

Hailey and Katie after they finished riding the scariest ride in the park: Avalanche.  Katie liked it so much she rode it twice in a row!



















And lastly, Leif and our sweet enduring Grandma, who comes along to places such as this, even when she probably wishes she could stay home and crochet or something.  (But she's always too nice to say so.)