Ready for Summer

White bellies and a buzz cut! 

Nice night for an Owlz baseball game

Mesa Favorites

Its been 5 years since I've been to Mesa - the town I grew up in and called home for 20 years.

There were several things on my list of must-dos while we were visiting.

Mesa, AZ temple visitor's center

City Cemetery to visit my Mom's grave site

 Bahama Buck's - seriously just as good as I remember!

Swim time at a city pool to cool off

Visiting the ol' homestead on Lyn Rae Square

We were lucky that our childhood home is for sale right now and the realtor lives across the street. So we arranged for a walk through. Four of us kids took advantage of the opportunity. We hadn't been home for 7 or 8 years since Mom and Dad sold it.   

All the cousins certainly made themselves at home in the backyard. 

It was a very strange experience to be back home and know it isn't our home. I found my name I engraved into the metal door knob when I was 5, we cried and reminisced about our favorite parts of the house, and we took our first-day-of-school picture by the front doors. 

Dunkin' Donuts 

Krispy Kreme just doesn't compare. 

And our favorite restaurant Gecko Grill

I've been dreaming about their Southwestern Shrimp Burrito for over 5 years. Dream come true!

We had a great time staying at Tasha's new, lovely home in Mesa and visiting with them. We also got to finish the trip with a family BBQ and swimming at my sister, Gayla's house. It was a great trip, and was even worth the sweat from the heat. ;)

Garden progress

We've been enjoying some great crops from our garden. We're learning a long the way. Like, maybe don't plant 8 cantaloupe seeds next summer. :)

Glimpse of a Summer afternoon in our backyard

Girls Camp 2013

 I had a great time at Girls Camp this year serving with some really amazing stake leaders. 

It was a blast!

Not trekkies

We were supposed to be with the youth on the pioneer trek this week. Well, we were called as "alternate" ma/pa four months ago and really hoped we would get a chance to participate, since we've never been a trek before. I was looking forward to it. But as the trek date drew closer, we were really hoping not to go on trek, because we were definitely not prepared. Turns out, they didn't need us after all. Frowny face, and smiley face.

So, we did some other fun things instead...

Like celebrating my nephew, Clint's birthday. He was visiting from AZ to attend tennis camp at BYU. We played tennis together on Saturday. He is crazy awesome. But luckily in control enough to scale back his winning returns to let me and the kids play with him.

And, like a family mountain bike race at Round Valley in Park City.
The kids each had their turn in a race, and then Brian competed while we played and had a picnic at the nearby playground.

We were a few minutes late for the balance bike race. Which was really unfortunate because we were really excited for Levi to show off his stuff. But he still got to race the course even though the other kids had already finished. 

The course more rigorous than anything the kids had done in the past.

Paige got me worried because I couldn't see her anywhere. Everyone else had already finished and still no sign of her. I was afraid she had given up and was pouting somewhere. But eventually she came riding up the path. Chatting about all the nature friends she had made along the way and proudly declaring that she never even fell down. 

Ashby stuck with it even though he said he fell down lots of times.  Tough kid!

MotoX

Brian grew up riding dirt bikes in the California desert. (We have his old RM80 in our backyard shed and an RM125 waiting for him in CA. Projects for another time of life.) He knows all about the different kinds of bikes, the special equipment and the technique of riding. He misses it.

The other night we drove out to Rocky Mountain Raceway for a spontaneous family activity to watch an evening of MotoCross competition. We weren't sure what to expect, but we had a really fun time. We watched 4 year olds to 50 year olds; first timers to professionals, race up, down and all around the dirt track. Some of them were pretty darn impressive.

Ashby believes he has now found his calling in life. And Brian can't wait to get his old bike fixed to join the "vintage class" of racers on the track.

Hiking the Y

When we look down the street from our house it's a straight shot to the Y on the mountain. It's a beautiful sight from across the valley. We are always pointing it out to the kids and this year we thought they were getting big enough and told them we would take them to the top.

Today was the day! (before it got too hot).

I've hiked the Y a few times in college, but that was a long time ago. I remember hating the hike because there isn't much shade, there are a million switch-backs and it's deceptively steep. 

But we didn't tell the kids all that. We just said we were going on an adventure!

We took many rests.

Paige kept asking if we were there yet.

Levi kept sitting in the dirt and drawing with his stick.

Ashby kept stopping and saying he wanted to go home.

 And then something clicked.

Ashby was the biggest surprise. From standing stubbornly in the middle of the trail and crying to go home, to suddenly running ahead and encouraging everyone to go just a little farther, we wish we knew how to trigger that happy motivation all the time. He actually ran the entire second half of the ascent!

WE MADE IT!  And somehow everyone still had a smile on their face.

Man, it's scary at the top. That Y is so extremely steep. We didn't venture onto it, but we watched some silly college kids get crazy on the steep, lumpy slope.

 Cody was jabbering the whole time, pointing excitedly at one thing after another.

 We looked across the valley and tried to determine where our house was. We were pretty sure we could see the elementary school and where our street would be.

So, I zoomed in closer with the camera, and sure enough - that's our house!

 We took a minute at the top of the Y to call Grandma and sing happy birthday to her.

Brian continued the happy-birthday-phone-call with his mom during the walk down. It helped distract him from the debilitating pain in his knee. When we stopped to rest and let him catch up, we noticed his leg was shaking, and he finally let go of his pride and let me carry Cody the rest of the way down.

Despite any complaining and scraped hands & knees, the kids all said they were happy they kept going to the top. They can do hard things!

And then we celebrated with a late lunch and ice cream from the BYU creamery. 

Good family outing, but I'm pretty exhausted now.

Memorial Day Weekend

I've been making a list of "to do" dreams for a long time. This weekend we finally stopped dreaming and decided to just jump into it.

1. Backyard picnic table. Yay! We celebrated with a bar-b-q and a weekend campout.  

          












 This is how we roll when it comes to camping. The kids had a blast sleeping in the tent for 3 days.

2. Painted front door.

3. And shutters.
We've lived in our home for 6 1/2 years and I've always been sad about the color of the door and shutters. I think they were once the same color (a dark green), but the sun really took its toll on the shutters and it was just so drab. Well...not anymore!  Definitely bright and perky - a bit brighter than I was anticipating, but oh well, its fun.

We finished off the weekend with a family bike ride to Subway for dinner. Hard work does pay off!

Still on the list:  painted kitchen table and chairs, laminate flooring and kitchen cabinets. Oh, and curtains, light fixtures, window seats, working bathtub faucet, painted bedroom, headboard, shelves, etc. We'll get there eventually. :)

Our 3 bears garden

It wasn't on our list of things to do....

but look what we did last week!

It started when one neighbor said he had a trailer full of extra compost and would we like any. Another neighbor had extra top soil sitting in their driveway and we could have it. Well, someone should do something with all this free stuff! We have always wanted to make a garden - some day - when we had extra money or time. We hadn't planned to do it this year, but away we went - with a huge load of hesitation. The more reading and researching we did, the more intimidated we were.

Finally we just went with simple and cheap. I got some moving boxes from my neighbors that had just moved in, and laid them down as a weed blocker/grass killer/soil enhancer. Then we bought cinder blocks to build our raised garden beds.

Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear gardens. :)

Our friends with the free dirt were just one street away - an easy walk. But I took that walk about 10 times with a heavy wheel barrow full of dirt. Hard work! My forearms were burrrrning.

So, the garden's not perfect or fancy or even flat, but its ours. We went with the kids to the garden center and picked out some seeds and some starter plants. We picked out: 3 kinds of tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, orange bell pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, cantaloupe, carrots, basil, cilantro, parsley and strawberries.

Its a learning process, but I'm excited to see what grows this summer. The kids are excited too!

Lake time

We tried a new adventure today.
I packed the boys into the bike trailer and rode down to Utah Lake. It took about 15 minutes to ride there and 2 dollars to get in. We played at the beach there for a little while and ate a picnic before afternoon kindergarten.
We had the beach to ourselves, which was nice, but we were unsure of what to expect. The boys were a bit shy about swimming and splashing. We hit a beach ball around and waded out to their waists where the mud grabbed at your sandals nice and tight.
I'm glad we tried it before the summer ended. Next time I think we'll need some kind of raft to play on.