Fun Times, a Little Closer to Home

One day, we took the kids to the state park, close to our house, that Ryan and I had found.

The kids...

...AND daddy had fun finding critters in and near the water.

Daddy and Caitlin checking out the water.

Caitlin's little fishy she caught.

More lizards!

If you look closely at these next 2 pictures, you can see the TINY little lizard on the rock.

They wanted to "catch" him. He kept coming out to eat ants. You can see him just under the lip on the rock.

Caleb loved this little toad in his bucket.

Ryan chipping out "cool" rocks.They had a blast playing in the water. We had to DRAG them out at 7pm to go home.

"Surfing" on the logs.

The last 2 critters of the day.

A caterpillar...

...and about 5 deer.

We spent another afternoon up in the mountains, panning for gold. It was a fun adventure. We panned and panned with no luck. We were about to head out and Ryan started finding gold. So, we all moved to his spot. We all ended up with some gold in our pan, by the end of the night. That made the trip even more fun.

Caitlin enjoyed looking for neat rocks.

Caleb sat and did a lot of snacking.

We all had a fun time and enjoyed having some "treasures" to bring home.

A Childless Home

While the kids were in Arizona for 5 days, Ryan and I enjoyed a quiet, clean house. And we got out to explore a few times. We found this fun canyon at a state part, just 30 minutes south of us. It was weird to find such different terrain, NOT in the mountains, and so close to home.

Down in the canyon.

We ran into quite a few lizards. They never failed to scare me.

Then it opened up to a field.

Love all the green! Up on the ridge above the canyon.

Now for the vulture section.

I had seen a few flying around. Then I noticed these 3 sitting in a tree and thought they looked cool.

Then they proceeded to circle, CLOSELY overhead.

You have to understand that by this point in the day, we'd been hiking for like 6 miles, most of it uphill, this section of the hike was like a desert and it was HOT, I was tired, and I really didn't appreciate being "followed" by a flock of vultures. A little freaky!

Yes, there are now 11 of them...ELEVEN!

Ryan playing in the old dam ruins.

We had a fun day. We were EXHAUSTED by the end. We ended up hiking a little over 8 miles. My body quickly reminded me how much different hiking is, than just walking on pavement. I was SO sore!

Arizona Trip

August 24-28th

Two days after we got home from Utah. The kids took off with Nana, to Arizona.

They ended up with a long layover and had fun playing with this Lego display.

PAPA!!!

They spent a LOT of time in Nana and Papa's pool.

Even at night!

They visited a zoo that had lots of fun animals.

Feeding the giraffe.

This fishy liked Caleb

Utah Trip

August 15th-22nd

A few days after the kids got out of school for break, mom flew in and we headed out on our 9 hour(10 with mom's potty breaks:) drive to Utah. I have only been back once in the 10 years, since I went to school there and my cousin Lynnsey and her 3 boys(who I have never met) were there, getting ready to head to Guam for 3 years. So, it was the perfect opportunity to make the trip and catch up with family. We stayed for a week with my aunt and uncle and grammy and pops. It was so good to spend time with close family that we haven't seen for a long time. I also was able to meet up with 2 of my best friends from high school, whom I haven't seen for 9 years. Of course there were many other people I would have loved to catch up with, but our time was QUITE full of fun and activities with the fam.

Taking off!

We walked down the street to the neighborhood splash pad and playground. What fun!

Here's Caleb and Garrett.

Caleb, Logan, and Eli playing with balloons with Nana.

Caitlin and Jayke(my other cousin's son) had fun meeting and made a quick friendship.

Caleb loves playing with his Pops(Great grandpa)

We spent a day at the Dinosaur Museum. Caitlin was in heaven. I think she studied and took a picture of EVERY item in the place.

Digging for bones with Garrett and Eli.

Garrett and Caleb hanging out in my aunt's beautiful yard.

All the boys

Eli(2), Logan(3), Garrett(4), and Caleb(5)

They had a lot of fun!

We enjoyed a day cooling off at the pool.

Nana and Caleb in the lazy river.

The boys had fun shooting each other.

My grammy treated all of the girls to lunch. Olive garden...YUM!

Mom, me, my cousin Lynnsey, my Aunt Debby(mom's sister), and my Grammy.

Logan and Caleb playing swords.

Grammy and Pops with the kids.

Lynns and I with our brood.

Catching Up

Wow, I have been slacking on the blog. What can I say, we've been busy enjoying our "summer break" with daddy home, busy working in the yard, and as usual I have a TON of pictures to go through and I plain don't feel like it! I might just pick a FEW pictures to show what we've been up to so I can just move on. This might possibly happen tomorrow since the high temp will be in the mid 60's. Brrrrr! Definitely an inside day. Yet another sign that fall is in the air. I just can't come to accept this. I LOVE summer. It's hard to believe that it is almost over. The kids started back to school yesterday. We definitely enjoyed the break.

Ryan is STILL applying for jobs daily and seems to have been called for more interviews lately. I'm hoping that is a good sign? He had an interview on Wednesday that went really well. He should know, in the next couple of days, if he got it. I'm finally use to having him home all the time now, but the lack of income for the past 3 months is starting to stress me out.