My week in the Swagger Wagon

If you haven't seen the video (and you live in a bubble), you can click here, but that's not what this post is about.  While I did drive a mini-van for an entire week (don't worry, I wore a disguise), I had good reason.  Why?  Two extra kids who couldn't legally ride in the back of my jeep everywhere we went.  While my sister was a leader at a girls youth camp, I kept her to little hooligans and we had an awesome week!
Day One

Driving home from camping in Colorado, not too exciting, but everyone fit and we got treats and watched movies with a quick stop at one of our favorite parks. (Although I did discover that its alot more fun in the cool of the spring than in the heat of a summer afternoon.)

Day Two (Sunday)

Church. No pictures. Even though everyone did look very cute and I was quite proud of myself for taking five kids all by myself. After church we did laundry and tried to recover from our camping trip.

Day Three

pLaY dAy!!  We built a backyard water park, ate ice cream sandwiches and then got all dry and snuggled up for an afternoon movie and popcorn.

For Family Home Evening that night we went downtown to the LDS Church History Museum (if you haven't been, you HAVE to go to the Children's exhibit before they change it.  It was so fun! And free! And the kids loved it!  Maybe I will write more about it later) and we made a quick visit to Temple Square.

 On our way home, of course we had to stop by and see dad/Uncle Russ at the firestation.  Unfortunately he was on a call so we had a little picnic at the park while we waited...

And eventually we got to play on the firetruck. Yippee!

Yes, that was one day.  Day three was Monday and the week was just beginning.

To be continued . . .

Quote of the week:

From Corbin:

"I never tell lies.  I may be dishonest, but I never tell a lie."

What I learned at Bear Lake

Every year we go camping at Bear Lake with Russ' fam.  It's pretty much the same each year, camping, beach, wind, shakes, go out for pizza, but WE LOVE IT!  And this year was no exception.

Here's what we learned THIS year at Bear Lake:

ONE: When he's tired enough, Colton really can sleep anywhere. (And so can Russ, but I already knew that.)

TWO: While playing hard at the beach, kids get hungry...

and since they're often too distracted to eat during meals, they may just find other things.

THREE:  Though you think your kids are not the "extreme sports" type, they may just surprise you.

FOUR: Although it took LOTS of unplanned time and money to get it there, the catamaran was TOTALLY worth it!

 

FIVE: Playing in the sand never gets old.  (yes, it has taken me all these years to realize we really don't need anything else to do.)

There's a mouse in the house!

But at least it's a cute one . . .

This summer Corbin got to participate in Spanish Fork Youth Theater's mini-production of Cinderella.  He went to the two-week theater camp (just 2 hrs/day) and at the end, they did two 30-min performances of the show.  It was so fun to watch him on stage and he loved it!

Right before his speaking part:

The mice were on stage the whole time and got to participate in every number, Corbin did such a great job during the whole thing.

I had to tape it since Russ was working, so hopefully I can post some video when my computer gets up and running.  It makes me smile every time I watch it!  We were sure proud of our little mouse!

The ACTUAL day

Remember in my last post of the "4th of July", it was really the 3rd of July?  Well, I was a kind of partied out by the actual 4th, but we did have a little fun. 

Playing with snakes . . .

Ziplining (yes, I was a little nervous) . . .

Croquet and cards . . .

Playing on the swingset . . .

And the highlight of the evening . . . Corbin got to light his first firecracker . . .

We are so lucky to have family close by.  What a great day!  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Why don't we go here more often?

After one of our service projects downtown, we decided since we drove all the way up there, we might as well spend the day.  So we ended up at Temple Square and the boys LOVED it!  Corbin said we should we go there once a month . . . we'll have to see, but we sure did have a good day!