Week 7

We spent a bit of time in the water hiding from the heat this week.

MONDAY: Westhaven State Park

It was going to be a hot one in town, so we headed to the coast where the high was 66 degrees and partly cloudy.  In reality it was grey and cloudy and windy.  But I still call that a win.  We have no A/C and these hot days are killer.

To mitigate the teen glare, I let Josh bring a friend.  Instead of preventing the glare, it turns out that it doubled it.

Ben thought that if I didn't get a picture of his face, I wouldn't post one of him.  Sucker!

Crazy hair eating his snack and this is the picture I get.

Finally, a kid (and a cute one at that) who lets me take his picture.

We found this great log.  Awesome.  Who knew?

TUESDAY: Hicks Lake
A little more local on this day.  Below is an absolutely darling picture of a crazy maniac posing as a cute child.  Before I took this picture, this child absolutely lost his mind about ants on the path.  After I took this picture, this child absolutely lost his ever loving mind about a few grains of sand on his skin after rolling in the sand for hours.  I love him, but he is so exhausting.

And here is a drenched Ben.  Not in jeans this time.

This is a great little lake without a big crowd.

At one point, Isaac tried to eat the sand.  He chose...poorly.

Michael had such a great time that he requested that we visit this beach at least once a week for the rest of the summer.

THURSDAY: McLane Creek
Down to two kids again for the morning and not at a beach, we did a little hike with some friends.  Oh, and some blackberry bushes.

They weren't quite ripe, but Ben never lets that stop him.

We're still a few weeks away from the start of school and I still have lots of places left on my bucket list.  I am sure that when my kids go back to school they will mostly talk about the video games they played over the summer (and they have played a bit), but this way I have evidence that we did other things too.

Trek

(photo cred to the trek photographers)

Last month, Josh participated in Trek.  Basically, once every four years LDS teenagers (14+) pull handcarts and sleep in tents for a few days to get a "taste" of what it was like for the pioneers to cross the plains.  They are placed in families with a ma and a pa and, in this case, given a baby doll to take care of (?).  These pictures were all taken by the photographers at Trek and I don't really have any commentary to go along with them since I wasn't there, but I will say that Josh had a great time.

Lake Cushman

Just a little summer fun with water, kayaks, and inner tubes.

Week 6

Shockingly, we didn't do any hiking this week.  Shocking, I know.  And yet, this is still the face my teenager gave me....pretty much all week.  If you look very carefully, you can find this face all throughout this post.

TUESDAY: Titlow Park.  This park was a bit of a drive, but had the benefit of having a splash ground.  Some of our friends joined us and we had a great time.

THURSDAY: Blueberry picking.  This is Ben's thing.  He LOVES berry picking.  We're still waiting on the majority of the blackberries, but a trip to a blueberry farm was enough to tide him over....for a few days.

FRIDAY: County Fair.   I thought it would be fun to do something we'd never done before.  Something so wild and crazy that my kids would have absolutely no idea how to respond to it.  

I was successful.  

They weren't really sure how to react to all the farm animals.  Or the smell of the farm animals.  Or the fact that farm animals poop whenever and wherever they want.

Hey!  There's that face again!

This guy turned out to be afraid of most of the animals.  Go figure.

I thought this 4-H poster was awesome and made the boys all stand next to it.

And then we reentered the world of suburbia by going to Costco, Target, and the library.  Less exotic, but Isaac freaked out less and pizza didn't cost $7/slice.