Utah!

July 7th thru 14th the kids and I flew out to Utah to visit with Mike's side of the family. Mike came out for only a few days during the middle of that time due to his classes. But we had an awesome time!

The kids spent most of their time with Aunt Brooke and the cousins. Josh hung out with Piersun and his football team one of the days we were there. I had a wonderful time visiting with Brooke (and Dave when he wasn't working) and getting to know beautiful little Indy. I forgot my camera on more than one occasion, and then the battery died, so I didn't get any pictures of the kids catching their oodles of grasshoppers and devising ways to bring about their untimely demise. I didn't particularly have an interest in watching it myself, either.
I did, however remember to take the camera when I took the kids to Payson Swim Park. Can I just tell you how awesome that place is? It was a reasonable price, and the kids got to spend hours swimming in the lazy river, sliding down the slides, getting dumped on by the big spilling bucket, and ganging up on other kids that splashed their younger siblings. We ended up spending two days there, and had a blast... except for Josh... the second day we had planned to go, he ended up getting 8 stitches in his foot (from an escapade running thru the house at Aunt Brooke's) and couldn't swim. Poor guy. He was lucky enough to sit and watch us have fun, though!

Saturday, July 18th, Art and Michelle brought their family up from St George to visit with us, and we all went to Seven Peaks Water Park. Go figure... we were there for a week, the average temperature for the duration of our stay was in the 90's, but on the day we spend lots of money to go to a water park, it got only into the low 80's and had a couple little rain storms! But, we had a wonderful time visiting with the Cowles family and we had fun at the park, too.
All in all, it was a wonderful trip. We had a lot of fun with friends and family. The kids, of course, had the most fun!

Triple T

My children love riding this poor horse. He is about 16 years old now, but he still has a lot of life left in him! The kids pick him out to ride first, and will occasionally get one of the mares out later. I feel sorry for poor little Triple T at times... he rarely gets a rest from breakfast to dinner! The kids were especially thrilled when they learned they could teach him to run (not trot, a full out galloping run) up the driveway. Then he started wanting to run everytime they started back up the driveway. So I had them try to retrain him to run only when they tell him to. They still love to run full out while riding bareback... with only a lead rope and no bridle. Even Carolynn enjoys riding with a sibling or cousin... but she's not into galloping yet!

Picking mulberries

Wow! It's been a long while since I have posted anything! And I have so many pictures I need to add. I really don't know where to begin...

One night in early summer, I came home from work to find a bucket of freshly picked mulberries sitting on the kitchen counter. I had told the kids the day before I would make them a pie if they could pick enough mulberries. I didn't think I had anything to worry about because I knew all the branches within reach were pretty well picked clean of ripe mulberries by children, goats or chickens (yes... one chicken would jump up on the trampoline and run across it to jump up into the mulberry tree). When I asked the kids how they managed, they smiled and said, "dad told us not to say anything so he didn't get in trouble..." Mother radar sensors alarmed loudly. I don't remember which child finally squealed, or if Dad himself broke out with the truth, but I was glad he thought to get pictures of the crime...


I guess tractors do come in handy!

By the way, mulberry pie is not very good. I couldn't find a specific recipe, so I combined a raspberry and blackberry recipe and created my own. Add some cool whip topping and it wasn't bad, but if anyone has a good mulberry recipe, I would love it!