Church summer fun

Our kids had some pretty rockin' adventures with our church youth group this summer! I only have a handful of photos since the kids were asked not to bring phones to any of these. So just photos here and there that parents were texted as proof of life, haha!

Above is Isaac leading the PaddleShip at the end of their whitewater rafting high adventure for the young men's group (they were in actual rafts for the whitewater part, this was just playing around afterwards). He went on a 3-day trip to New River Gorge National Park and had a blast!!

And he used some of the cash we sent with him to buy a sticker for our cartop carrier, which is our family tradition whenever we visit a new national park. I loved that he thought to do this!!!

The day after we got home from 2 weeks of camping, the girls headed out to girls' camp with the young women in our stake! This was Abigail's second year as a youth counselor. 

Color fight aftermath!

Youth conference--this was our year for trek!! Juliet made the aprons that both our girls wore. And more camping!! I was seriously SO worried about trek before they left (and did my usual annoying thing where I email everyone in charge, I'm sure they love hearing from me). But it was crazy hot, heat warnings up the wazoo, humidity was insane, etc. We loaded them up with cooling towels, liquid IV packets, battery-powered fans, Camelbaks...everything we could think of! The leaders made some pretty significant modifications the week of (I think they had a LOT of concerned parents reaching out) and so it turned out to be a really good experience. 

I was just about to publish this post and Abigail said WAIT!!!! I have more trek pictures!! So while I took Luke to his soccer practice I put Abigail in charge of sorting through the Google drive folder of photos. 



These are all brand-new to me but I love Juliet's hair in this one!



And I suddenly understand how Juliet came home with bajillion mosquito bites (she said she didn't spray her legs with bug spray bc they were covered by her skirt...)





One of Abigail's big takeaways from trek is that she did a lot of the work along with the guys in her "family" and the other girls did...not so much. So here is Abigail working away with the guys!



Soooo much mud. And if I recall correctly it was 90 the first day.




River crossing with Abigail having a serious power moment!!!

Juliet provided Abigail with a sunbonnet and Abigail was like nope I am going for the ninja sweatband look.



And apparently Juliet adopted it too, haha. 



They had such a fun time at trek and I'm so glad they were able to go!! They also convinced a friend in Idaho to fly out and go AND they convinced a friend who was visiting from Utah to sign up for trek just days in advance and go with our stake. They are very persuasive girls and honestly, why would you not go if those two cute fun girls were asking you to? ;-) 

Both our girls received their patriarchal blessings at different points throughout the summer. Patriarch Monn was one of the counselors in our stake in Lafayette (their ward was moved into our current stake a couple years ago) and it was really neat to reconnect with the Monns.  

Both blessings were so beautiful and SO specific to each individual girl--they literally could not have been more different and more unique to each of our daughters. 

Pics from the girls' high adventure to Mammoth Cave (they went on the cave tour and canoeing!) and more camping!!! Abigail and I counted up and they were camping for NINE WEEKENDS STRAIGHT this summer. 

And so much paddleboarding fun this summer!! Isaac and Emma made so many good memories together this year. 

I laughed out loud when I saw this pic of Juliet just floating down the river with her Gatorade...

And this is kind of out of place, but here is Juliet as the first recipient of our library's high school reading award. It's supposed to take 4 years...she did it in about six months. 

 

Isaac is 13!!

Two days after we got home from Montana, it was Isaac's thirteenth birthday! Here's the IG post I wrote: Happy 13th birthday to our sweet Isaac, who has grown from the cutest little baby into this handsome teenager!! Baby Isaac and teenage Isaac have a lot in common: they’re both super sweet and affectionate and they’re both BRILLIANT. When Isaac was three he would spend hours every day working puzzles and assembling Lego sets (he could follow the instructions long before he started reading) and he’s just gotten more talented and intuitive as he gets older. He’s now really into building his own gadgets just from his own designs rather than instructions (like the clock he built last week with Lego Technic pieces that had different mechanisms to track the hour, minute, and second. No instructions, just his own knowledge of how it should work). He loves reading and always wants to discuss his favorite bits of his most recent book; his teachers consistently email us and tell us how much they love his thoughtful contributions in class (he’ll be in 10th grade math next year as an 8th grader and is a very talented pianist; he’s always happy to help out younger siblings with math or piano and will patiently sit down and work through a tricky bit with them). For his birthday meals today, he requested cinnamon biscuits for breakfast, Indian food for lunch, and tacos for dinner with lemon meringue pie to follow. We love having Isaac in our family and couldn’t ask for a better oldest son to set a phenomenal example for his younger brothers!



The girls were at camp that week, so it was just a boy house (and me!). 

Birthday lunch at Amber Indian!

And this incredibly specific birthday list, haha!

Isaac used a whole bunch of saved-up birthday money to buy the Land Rover Technic set of his dreams! It kept him busy for a few days, and then calculating all the input gear ratios kept him busy for a few more--he is definitely just like his dad!

Birthday lunch interview

Most recent dream: can't remember one

Favorite summer reading book: The Sword of Shannara

Favorite thing to do after school: Legos!!

Favorite food: tacos

Favorite dinner: tacos

Favorite treat: fudge

Favorite thing to do as a family: play board games

Favorite foods that other people whine about: black bean enchiladas 

 

Badlands National Park

Our last national park of this trip!! Neither Neil nor I had ever been to Badlands before, and honestly, half a day was plenty. Glad we went, don't feel a need to go again. 

We hiked the Door, Window, and Notch trails. 

And we drove the full scenic loop and stopped at every single viewpoint. 

Our kids really loved stopping at every viewpoint. 

Some more than others. Isn't this a cool photo??!!!

It's interesting how similar this is visually to some of the formations in southern Utah, but the material seems so much more prone to erosion that it's amazing to me that this even still exists. 

Some really cool coloring in one part of the park!

So the material that all of these crazy hoodoos are made from feels more like hard dirt than rock. And people were climbing ALL OVER IT. Like everywhere. It was really pretty frustrating to see how much had been worn away by people climbing; there were very clear polished trails through just about everything. 

There were also signs warning you to stay on the trail because of rattlesnakes, but nothing that said "You're going to ruin the park if you keep climbing on it, you fools," but we made our kids stay off it anyway (at first they were annoyed at us and then as we walked through more of the park and saw how badly damaged things were from tourists, they were annoyed at the "flampers," as Abigail nicknamed flipflop hikers several years ago and it's now become part of our family lexicon. Basically shorthand for the kind of people who set out on a hike wearing flipflops and carrying a 20oz plastic waterbottle). 

Anyway, I digress. Enjoy this picture of a child climbing up the formation. 

And another. 

We went in the early morning and it was about 90 by 9 am. So definitely bring tons of water, start early, and I would honestly not hike very far. 

We hiked about three miles total and felt like we got a good overview of the park. 

I can't believe there are still more pictures and I have to think of more things to say! Okay, here's one--it's actually really cool how these just kind of BAM appear out of what seems to be very flat land. Part of it is canyons that just come out of nowhere, and then on the other side of the park it's mountains rising out of flat plain. 

Kids feeling desperate for shade already...maybe we can't do Glacier in August after all.

This is the Notch trail, which is about 1.5 miles long and pretty fun. 

And this is the very end of the Door trail. 

All the kids were there!

And I was also there! Feeling greatly restored after our first night in actual beds in 2 weeks, hurray!! 

HOW MANY PICTURES DID I TAKE?! Okay, these stripes are actually pretty cool. 

So there you have it! Badlands! Another national park ticked off our bucket list, and it provided our kids some good discussion as to whether they thought this or the St. Louis Arch was a more anticlimactic national park (they decided on St. Louis based less on the fact that it's manmade and more on the fact that it's a Trump-era designation). 

 And then we drove through the night and got home just in time for the girls to wash all their stuff and pack up for girls' camp! Woohoo, we know how to party.