Summer 2023 Round Up!

What a busy summer it's been! We got to visit with cousin Aubrie in June, we took her to the zoo and had entirely too much fun.

 Lee had to travel for work, but we did not let that slow us down. Visiting the various splash pads and public parks near us provided a lot of fun for us.

Here's a great little video of Arthur showing off his dare devil jumping skills. This kids is way too coordinated for a two year old.

Lee and I joined up with his parents on an overnight camping trip so we could do the Muddy Dash at Solider's Hollow. The race was really fun, but I think the best bit was visiting Cascade Falls nearby.

The "Dash" part was is a bit of a misnomer, I didn't run at all. The "Muddy" part though, we did get extremely muddy.

While we did that, the boys got to do some Independence Day celebrations with their cousins and their other grandparents.

one of the perks of having a cousin work for the parks department is that they'll give you a ride at the city Independence Day celebrations.

We got to see even more cousins in Ogden; Aubrie, Kaden, and Violette came for a visit and the kids played non-stop. We visited Karen and Dave's neighbor who is building a pretty neat little museum in his back yard. The highlight is the renovated train car. 

 

It sure looks like a fun place to spend the night!

The kids have been playing with friends nearly every day this summer. One of those days, we met up with several neighbourhood friends to visit the Cavanaugh Chocolate Factory.

We had a good time with the 24th of July celebrations at Bountiful Park. The kids couldn't get enough of the bounce houses.

We bought ourselves a new family vehicle: Right now it's all pedal powered, but soon we'll have a battery to give it a little assistance. Then we'll really get cruising!

I'm not giving any context for the next photo. It doesn't help.

We had a whole bundle of cousins come visit at the end of July, culminating in a big celebration for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. We threw them a little surprise party, which was a blast. I'm not sure which is more unexpected: a marriage lasting through 6 kids and 50 years, or how good my sister is at building balloon arches.

Colorado Cousin Road Trip (June 2023)

Our summer kicked off with our first visit to our family in Grand Junction, Colorado and Colorado National Monument.

We visited this dinosaur museum and no one was more excited about it than Arthur. He was shrieking with glee at every skeleton.

Yes, Arthur was so excited until he saw this animatronic dinosaur. He 100% believed it was real. We explained it wasn't real, that it was a robot and couldn't get him, none of it mattered. He is still talking about the robot dinosaur and how scary it is.

He did not, however, think this diorama of a Utah Raptor decapitating an Apatosaurus was scary. He thought it was great.

On Saturday morning we got to watch my niece Sonya finish first place at a race (was it a 10k? It was something like that) and then we went up the canyon into Colorado National Monument.

First order of business is, of course, doing the junior ranger booklets, and enjoying the view. Then I made everyone do two short hikes. 

Did the kids complain the whole time? Yeah. Pretty much. The destination was worth the journey, I think, because once we got to the end of the second hike they had a great time playing around the Devil's Kitchen.

Between the shade and a nice wind blowing through the rocks and hoodoos, the Devil's Kitchen was a most pleasant spot. We rested from the hot sun and climbed to up to all the little nooks we could reach.

The desert was really blooming for us, we saw all sort of wild flowers along the way!

And capping off our fun activities with our Johnson cousins: bubbles and bounce house-o-rama! Arthur regularly asks to do this again and likes to watch the videos again and again. It really was such a fun time to visit them, I am sure it won't be our last trip to Grand Junction!

The kids absolutely didn't want to come home, but there jobs and chores and mundane things to get back to. Luckily our cousins came to visit us this summer as well, which I will get to in the future. Tah!