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 

 

Fall little things and big things

Lots and lots going on this fall! Above: a bike ride Neil and I took a couple weeks ago when the leaves were really at their peak.

Some pics of Abigail getting ready for homecoming--she looked (and looks!) so beautiful! No pics with her date by her request, since they broke up a couple weeks ago. 



While Abigail was at homecoming, we hosted a big party for Juliet's friends at our house (which then expanded to Isaac's friends too). It was a fun night--lots of bonfire time and backyard night games. Of course, the only pics I got were Luke setting up...

...and Isaac cleaning up (burning the last of the firewood. It's a thing). 

I'm not even going to try to keep these in order since the process of transferring photos from my phone jumbles everything! 

Launching rockets with the Activity Days kids (Neil was in charge of this one and it was so fun!). 

One of our friends turned 60 and designed his own party, which was seriously SO fun! He invited whole families instead of just couples and we had a 5k color run, sumo wrestling, tons of backyard games and yummy food, and wound up with everyone throwing pies at him. A very unique party and one that we all really enjoyed (we have some extremely competitive adults when it comes to duck duck goose and Dizzy Izzy). 

This is the time of year when I have to limit myself to only taking one picture per run because it's just SO gorgeous. One Friday the weather was particularly gorgeous so I ran a half-marathon after I dropped Matty off at preschool and the clouds were so good while I was waiting at the roundabout that I had to take an extra photo!

And then my other allotted photo. I made myself wait 8 miles to get this one because I knew it would be so good! I totally plan my routes this time of year based on leaves. 



Case in point: 

Then I make everyone go back with me on Sunday walks. 

Oh gosh I just love fall running.



This is the time of year when I always get a home improvement itch! This year it was our exterior siding...

PS notice the moss on the sunroom roof? In a classic case of project creep, we just signed the paperwork today for a new roof. Sometimes I get started on a project and I'm like WELL THIS WHOLE PLACE IS JUST FALLING APART ISN'T IT?! Kind of like when you start cleaning something and realize how gross everything is and how you thought your house was clean but you're actually living in squalor with hand smudges on your walls and dusty baseboards. (Note: my walls are smudged and my baseboards are dusty.) 



We paused to take our kids to the ward trunk or treat and then looked at the forecast when we got home and were like, oh dang, we better finish the last 45 minutes worth of painting. 

I'm realizing I uploaded the photos that still have ladder marks in them, so please rest assured that we did go back and paint those spots. ;-) And we have bedraggled fake spiderwebs everywhere since it was the day before Halloween when I took these. 

Love this color!! The wood siding is Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore (same color as our kitchen island) and the stone is Avorio White limewash by Romabio. We added the raised beds last year and I limewashed the stone the year before that. Next year's project is converting the sunroom--hopefully!



Another quick little project--stripping out all the caulk in our main floor shower and hanging new doors. Relatively easy update and it makes such a difference! (I took a photo of the process but apparently nothing of the finished version...)

Lots of morning tea around here (Matthew is partial to Trader Joe's harvest blend and I love Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice) and this is my favorite cup yet. 

The little boys and I waited for four hours for their first round of Covid vaccines--we got them the day after they were approved!! Such a relief. 

Cute Matty in some of cousin Caleb's clothes that they passed on to us!! Such a fun box to open. 

Juliet had her end of season banquet for cross-country!

And started getting in some good cross-training days...

Lukey working on our Halloween week calendar

Cheering on some cute friends in the school musical (Isaac was home with a fever, poor kid, so Nathan happily took his ticket). 



Lots and lots of walks with Matty. 

And hitting the playground with friends every time we had good weather and could squeeze in an hour! 

Matty's hair is a whole thing right now. Sometimes he rubs it up in his hands to make it super crazy...

...and then sometimes he asks for us to style it "like that mean boy in Harry Potter" (Draco Malfoy). He is currently really into the Draco hairstyle and wants his hair like this for every Sunday. 

Not sure why I took this but it is a pretty typical thing--I usually try to fit in some strength work in the mornings while Matty is home because he is really into the various Peloton instructors (if I do a class with Andy, you know that Matthew picked the class that day). Matthew will often do the class with me or just sit here and comment things like "Mom, you're getting pretty strong, but you're supposed to be going faster." 

"Hey Mom, do I look like a really cool guy?" 

And to take us out, here is Neil rocking a fever and "helping" to put away groceries. I came in from the car to find this and started laughing so hard as I realized that if Neil were to ever get drunk, he would probably do exactly this. Haha! Kind of sad though because this is the one that took us all down the week of Thanksgiving and you can see that I was SET on butter for that butterific holiday. (Good sale, gotta stock up.)