Summertime, Summertime, Sum-sum-summertime!

May
All of the years we drove our girls across the USA from Texas to Washington, we always just drove right past the Golden Spike Monument.  So this past summer we decided to stop and see what it was.  We are happy we did...it was really spectacular!

 

 

 

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Mom's Funeral. I am not sure when the last time was that our family was together. Sad, when everyone finally puts down their weapons and a funeral brings everyone together. I know my mom would have loved to have physically been there that day to hug each one of us and say how happy she was to see all of us together again. It was an awesome sight to see siblings, parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren all speaking to each other again. In a strange way, mom's death brought so much healing to our family. 

 

 

 JUNE

 

The annual Father's Day photo.  I love how Tori's sense of humor comes shining through!  Tori always keeps us laughing!  I will miss her next year when she leaves for college.

 

 

We had an incredible opportunity to go on another Mormon Pioneer Trek this past June.

Ron and I were asked to be in charge of all of the food for 300 people for a week.  I just used all of my past information from the last trek I went on in Texas.  Ron created all of the spreadsheets and helped me figure out how much food to buy, the girls and I did the shopping (along with other's on our committee) and then the twins helped sort and keep track of all of the food purchased.  Caitlin used it for one of her Personal Progress projects.  These Treks are soooo much fun!  I absolutely love being with the youth and teaching them about their heritage.  This was such a great group of youth!

 

 

 

JULY

 

The Twins Sweet 16....was truly Sweet!  We had such a great time celebrating with them! Their friends came over and kidnapped them for a "Sweet 16 Adventure". They went out and 16 amazing fun things together.  These girls are such a blessing in the lives of the Caitlin and Courtney. Such good kids to be able to hang out with for good clean fun!

See their cute shirts they all made?? So CUTE!

The mini van was all decorated inside and out for the adventure!

Courtney wanted a chocolate cake and Caitlin wanted the Coconut Lime cake.

They still open presents together! :)

We surprised them with a car!  They were so excited to get wheels!

 

 

 

 

I made a second trip to Texas this past summer, this time the girls and I drove the Houston all by ourselves.  At times I kept thinking "I am crazy to be doing this alone!"  But, by the end of the second day, adrenaline kicked in and I decided I was going to drive all the way to Texas without the girls assistance, just so I could say I had driven across the U.S.!  There is something off my bucket list!

 

The purpose of going back to Texas was to help my dad clean out the home and get it ready for sale. This was absolutely exhausting and heartbreaking. So many memories.

 

 

 

Beehive Camp!

Brianne attended Girl's Camp for the first time this year.  She was fortunate enough to be able to have her three big sisters at camp also...they went as YCL's.  They had such a great time together! 

 

 

AUGUST

Last January, I was sitting in Relief Society, getting to know the woman next to me.  She mentioned she had a son who was going to BYU and I said,"Oh  I have a cute niece who is going to school down there too.  We should set them up!"  Well, one date and that was it!  They were married in the Columbia River Temple on August 10th!  We had Katelyn and Steven's wedding reception in our back yard. It was lovely!  The only downside was the massive Sand Storm that blew in the night before.  We had set up the entire reception...decorations, table settings, dishes, etc. We were just in the process of wrapping the huge tent with thick plastic (to keep out night time critters) when the storm hit.  We had two sides complete and were rushing to get the other sides covered.  Lucky for us, MANY friends and neighbors came rushing over and helped us clear out the tent and then hold the tent down so it wouldn't blow away!  It was absolutely CRAZY, it was  like the Apocalypse!  The next morning, family and friends came back over after the wedding and helped set up for the reception. We were able to re-set in about an hour!

I made this cake for Katleyn and Steven.

 

 

 

After the reception was over, we took down the wedding and set up for the Sweet 16 Party! Caitlin and Courtney and one of the good friends had a party together.  They set up Christmas lights all through the ceiling of the tent and hired a DJ.  While they danced I whipped out another cake. 

 

 

At the end of the summer, we thought it would be fun to have friends over for one last summer bash! We rolled out the plastic that we had used to wrap the wedding reception tent, and made it into a soapy slip'in slide!  It was so much fun!  We will definitely will do this again next summer, but invite more people!