Oh, What Do You Do in the Summertime?

Sweet Skye after her baptism

We had a great summer!  The first official day of summer was Skye's baptism.  It was so fun because she got to share her baptism with two other friends from our ward.

Skye starting a race

This summer we had four children in swim team.  I love swim team.  We got up early (6:00) almost everyday of the summer but the kids had a great time.  Adrie was the best to watch because a little 6 year old swimming across the pool is hilarious. 

Darth Vader balloon in the background

We made it to the balloon festival in Provo.  We wanted to take Nathan specifically because he loves balloons.  Whenever he sees a balloon he yells "BALLOON!!!" at the top of his voice (which we think is brilliant and much better than yelling "DOG" or something when he sees a balloon).  When we got to the field with all of the balloons he didn't even know what to do.  He went totally silent and looked like this the whole time:

Note the half eaten Krispy Creme donut in his hand- he couldn't even eat!

I think it was a bit overwhelming for him.  He didn't even smile!! 

It is magical to see the balloons take off- I think we will definitely make this a tradition!

My favorite was the German Chocolate.

In August we celebrated 14 years of marriage!  The best thing about having 6 kids is that you can totally justify buying 14 different cupcakes knowing that you won't need to eat them all! For our anniversary we went backpacking in the High Uintas with the kids.  Yes.  You did read that correctly.  It was an adventure that I will post about another time.  Let's just say that when we got home we looked at each other and said "OK, that doesn't even count for our anniversary this year."

Other highlights to our summer include:
Tennis lessons, golf lessons, piano, spending time with visiting family, Joseph's job at the Space Center, our trip to AZ (and my adventures driving on the Navajo Nation), Joseph and Rachel getting braces, 2 scout camps (Paul's first time not attending scout camp in 13 years) and randomly running into my parents at Granny's in Heber. Oh, and did I mention that Joseph earned a few merit badges this summer? (we are taking a month off from merit badges and can I say Hooray- I had merit badges on the brain this summer).

The summer was way too short.  I was sad to see it end, but I must admit I was happy to see this bunch walk out the door the first day of school. 

OK, maybe Nathan didn't head to school.  All the kids started new schools: Joseph in Jr High (sigh, gasp, shudder), Rachel, Skye, Adrie at a school in Cedar Hills (they changed our boundaries for our magnet ALL site which doesn't mean anything to most people but to us= new school).

This year we are trying to simplify.  We are doing limited extra classes and activities.  I am guarding my days (Katie learns to read this year and I am very very excited to focus on her during Nathan's nap time- because there is not much better than spending time with a four year old).

I realized that we took a lot of pictures with our phones this summer (ohhh look how techy we are!). But now I have to figure out how to get the pictures off our phones.  Sigh.