Bear Lake

While Roy and Hill were up here we took them to one of our favorite places, Bear Lake. We had been building it up for months and the even more when they got up here. It really is so much fun, tons of white sand and crystal clear water. It's also like a giant wading pool, so shallow for so long. It is such a fun place.
Unfortunately and unknown to us the lake was super high this year. There were weeds everywhere and hardly any beach. It was so disappointing to not give them the bear lake that we love. All considered though we had a really fun day.

4th of July

I LOVE the 4th of July!!! It is my favorite holiday. I love everything about it...the patriotism, parades, bar-b-ques, gatherings, fireworks, flags on houses, summertime, all of it. It is defiantly my favorite time of year.
This year we were lucky enough to have my brother Roy and his sweet family up with us. I told him how much fun small town celebrations were so he came out for it. I think they had a really fun time. We did an awesome firework show! Ryan went to Wyoming to buy the good fireworks. It was such a blast! Literally! The funniest part was the rocket fireworks that we got. The first few times we tried to light them we were having the hardest time because the wick was this plastic material. It took forever to light and then it kinda dripped off until it would finally catch and take off. The first few worked okay and then we lite one and we were waiting for it to take off when the stick holding it on burned through and the rocket fell on the ground. We all just kinda stared at it not knowing at all what to do when all of a sudden it took off all over the place and flew into our neighbors fence and exploded. It was so crazy!
We got nervous after that...so ryan and roy were looking at another one of these rocket and figured out that the "plastic wick" was really just a protective cover for the real wick! We are such idiots! The rest of them went off no problem.
We had a great time at the parade, setting off fireworks and hanging out with family.

Day at the Park

We had a fun day with Owen's class at Ryan's Place Park. I was babysitting that day so I took along the extra kids. They really play so well together.

Declan and Porter

Owen, Mairyn and Hayden

Declan

Mairyn and Hayden

Jungle Jim Porter


Cute Little Arwen

Camping at Cub River

We love camping! The kids really love it, and we really do too, but I have to say that it has gotten out of hand. When did camping becoming moving. I mean, it feels like we are literally moving out of our house to go. We take soo much stuff. We end up using all of it but dang it is becoming a chore. It takes half a day just to set up. However once everything is how we like it, we really relax. I love the outdoors. It is such a peaceful place.

We wanted to go back to the same spot as we went to our last camping trip and we left really early on Friday to try to get the spot but it was taken as was every other spot was in the whole area. We were really starting to freak out and didn't want to end up having to drive to a whole other location so we started pulling off at every spot we saw to check it out. The first couple were out of the question. Close to the road and no trees...parking lots, really. We pulled off at this one spot and it really didn't seem too bad, defiantly not what we wanted, but better than nothing. It was off the road a little ways and there was a stream and couple of trees around it but it still was in the full sun and was super dry. We started trying to level off a spot and it was sooo rocky. I was starting to get frustrated and decided to go for a walk to look at the river. There was this little path in some trees that led down toward the river and as I was walking down it, it suddenly opened up to a perfect camping spot. We had to move everything down there but it was so worth it. Totally shaded, secluded and close to the river which sounded awesome. It was a little small and we had to clear an area for our new giant tent, haha, but I was so relieved.

The boys would go up to the original spot to ride bikes and the quads and then we would go back down to relax. Porter called the good spot "the downstairs". I thought that was so funny. It was a great trip.