On day 4 we went to Animal Kingdom. This was a favorite park for many of us. Rock took the boys early to open the park so they could ride Flight of Passage, the Avatar ride that has a huge wait. Then we met up for a safari ride. Very cool! We saw the biggest alligator I’ve ever seen. I should note here that Levi went running every morning we were on our trip and claimed to look for alligators. I don’t know if he really did or if he was just trying to scare me. You’ll have to ask him. The day after we got home some poor guy was eaten by an alligator in Florida so I hope Levi was just trying to scare me. We saw rhinos, flamingos, giraffes and gorillas as well.

My favorite thing at Animal Kingdom was the Tree of Life. It was a huge tree with every imaginable animal carved into it’s trunk. You could stand there for hours and not find all the animals carved all over this thing. It was amazing.

Libby and Reagan were brave enough to try Everest, the big rollercoaster there that the others had ridden the day before. I think everyone except me rode it several times. Pandora, the Avatar world, was the overall favorite, though. This world was incredible to walk through. We all rode the Flight of Passage and everyone loved it except me. 🙂 It had too many steep drops for my taste so even though you’re basically stationary the entire time, I kept my eyes closed for a lot of it. I was able to see that the Virtual Reality affects were amazing-at least in the 5 seconds when my eyes were open. Don’t tell my kids-they think my eyes were open most of the time. 😉

That night Rock and I went off on our own for a dinner date at Disney Springs while the kids all went back to Epcot so they could ride Guardians of the Galaxy. Another BIG favorite.

Up next; our last day in Florida at Universal Studios.

On day 3 we hit a couple different parks. We went to Hollywood Studios to see the Star Wars world-Galaxies Edge. The Rise of the Resistance ride was amazing. LOVED it. I would have gone on it again if the lines weren’t so long.

I was feeling sick with a cold I thought I had beat on this day so there aren’t a ton of pictures. The kids and Rock had fun riding all the big rides there, but the lines were a lot worse this day so they spent lots of time waiting in lines. Half way through the day I had to go back to the hotel to sleep, so Reagan and Liberty came with me and the other three hopped over to the Animal Kingdom to ride Everest over and over. That night we all went to Epcot for dinner and watched the fireworks there.

On our first morning when we woke up to see giraffes out our windows we also saw this interesting looking pen outside our window.

We figured it was something used when working with the animals one on one or maybe where they worked with injured animals. We didn’t think anything else about it. Until 2:00 AM on our 3rd night there, when the fire alarm went off. We all stumbled out of our beds and groggily followed all the other guests down the hallways and stairs along the fire exits. When we got to the main floor, guess where they ushered us? Yep. Into the funny looking pen. Now we knew what it was for. The boys were in different rooms and we didn’t even get put in the same pen as them. We stood there with a ton of other people for about 10 minutes before they turned off the alarm and let us go back to bed. Needless to say we didn’t get the early start we were hoping for on our 4th day.

Day 4 was Epcot. Rock, Liberty and Reagan opened the park so they could ride the Frozen ride and they still had a 40 minute wait. But they loved the ride and tried to get me to stand in a 2 hour long line all day so I could see it. No thanks. I really liked Epcot, though. We wandered around to all the different countries. Our favorite was France, where we rode the Ratatoulie ride-VERY fun- and ate lunch at a Creperie. We did the Canada ride Rock remembered as a kid, and the kids made fun of him for thinking it was amazing as a kid. We ate gyros in Greece while the kids ate some Egyptian and Brazilian food and listened to the awesome Japanese drummers. The Disney Princesses were out and about that day, but this was as close as Libby got to her favorite:

We ate dinner at a fancy restaurant in Italy and then split up again. Levi and Cade stayed at Epcot to ride the Guardians of Galaxy, Rock went back to the hotel and Liberty, Reagan and I went back to Magic Kingdom to watch the fireworks one more time and ride the teacups-for memory’s sake.

Stay tuned for Part III of our Disneyworld adventure!

Rock came to me in April after we’d spent a lot of money to repave our driveway and front porch to say that he thought it was about time for us to spend a lot of money on a fun family trip. Spending money on “fun” is not something that comes naturally to me, but I reluctantly agreed. After some brainstorming we decided on Disneyworld. We planned our trip for the least crowded time which happened to be the beginning of September. So, about a week after the first day of school….

We headed to Utah to pick up Reagan and catch a flight to Florida.

We stayed in the Animal Kingdom Resort which was beyond cool. We had the Savannah right outside our window.

We went to five parks in five days. We did our best to see and do it all and I think we did a pretty good job. It was brutal, don’t get me wrong. The weather was supposed to be cooler in September but it wasn’t. 94 degrees every day with 85% humidity was pretty rough. But it was fun!

On our first day we went to Magic Kingdom.

We had a great day hitting all our favorite rides and riding all the new ones too. It was a Thursday so the lines and crowds were not too terrible. It was so hot we had Dole Whip twice that day. Those funny things we have around our necks in all the pictures are neck fans. A friend from Florida told us they were a must and they were indeed life savers. We ate dinner at the Beast’s Castle and we ended our first day with the magical fireworks over the castle.

Stay tuned for more of our trip….

Cade has been home this past year working and preparing for a mission. He and I took a road trip in August to Yellowstone and the Tetons. We did a road trip last year on which we read a really good book together and Cade wanted to do that again this year. We had lots of great thought provoking conversations as we drove through the parks and read. Well, actually one, park. You’d think we would have been fine, weather-wise, on the first weekend in August, but it rained the entire time. The Tetons were so cloudy you couldn’t see them, so we didn’t actually go into the park. Oh well. It was a good time anyway!

Yellowstone

We drove through most of the park before actually getting to see a Bison. Cade almost didn’t believe me when I told him they are usually ALL OVER THE ROADWAYS in Yellowstone. But the rain chased them into hiding I guess. We did finally get to see a few.

This is most we were able to see of the Tetons, unfortunately.

Since Cade didn’t get to see the Tetons without clouds, here is a picture of what they really look like.

We stayed in Rexburg on this trip and Cade and I explored the Rick’s BYUI Campus. I took him to Millhollow, my favorite restaurant and hang out. He really liked how much smaller this campus was than BYU Provo and is considering transferring there after his mission.

At the end of August, Cade went through the temple for the first time. He had an awesome experience and is now working at the temple on Saturdays.

His next big trip will be to the MTC on December 13th when he starts his mission to the Colorado Fort Collins Mission! He got his call on Sept. 26th after waiting just one week. His mission actually covers more of Wyoming and Nebraska than Colorado. It covers three college towns and by the time he’s done there, it will have three temples in it. We are thrilled he gets to leave so soon, even though it’s just before Christmas. He is more than ready and excited to start this next big adventure!

We didn’t go on any longer trips this summer, but opted for shorter day trips. Idaho is a beautiful place, I gotta say.

Shoshone Falls and Malad Gorge

We’ve had a ton of water this past year and we wanted to see the “Niagara Falls of the West” while it was gushing with lots of water, so Levi, Libby and I drove to Twin Falls in June to see Shoshone Falls.

On our way home, we stopped at Malad Gorge, a sight I have driven over hundreds of times in my life and never stopped at. Wow. I was missing out. None of my pictures really do it justice, so you’ll have to stop and see it for yourself. But the slot like canyon and waterfall you’ve been driving over and ignoring all these years is worth it. The picture below is standing on a bridge directly over the waterfall that flows from the slot canyon. I couldn’t get a good picture of the slot canyon waterfall but it was amazing. So glad we stopped!

Sun Valley

I’ve been hearing about Sun Valley since we moved here and it’s another place we’ve never managed to get to. So this summer we spent a day there and we are definitely going back. It was beautiful! It’s a mix between Aspen and Park City but Idaho Style. We went on a breathtaking hike. It was a gorgeous day.

McCall

No summer is complete without a trip to McCall for our favorite burgers and shakes and beautiful mountain views. This time it was just Sarin, Liberty and I. After lunch we went on a hike up near Brundage to see Goat Falls. It was unusual in that we hiked down to see the waterfall and then back up to the top. Not sure that I loved that, but it was a beautiful hike.

My baby became a teenager in July. She wanted converse.

She also wanted to design and bake her own cake.

In addition to that book and those shoes you see there she got money for cargo pants which she has been dying to have. I swear, she is wearing all the clothes I gave to goodwill years ago.

This girl and I got to go to girls camp together this summer.

They went swimming and paddle boarding and rope jumping…

Another milestone in Libby’s life this summer was learning how to mow the lawn! She just loves it. 😉

And one last big event this summer for Libby was getting her first pair of pointe ballet shoes. She is starting pointe this year! She was so excited.

It’s crazy to think she used to be this little bitty ballerina and now she’s in pointe.

Where did the time go?

There were several things of note this summer that don’t need their own blog post so this will be my catch all post. Some big, some small, but all fun or exciting.

Cade has been home working since January, saving for a mission. He was in a musical called The Promised Land written by his choir teacher. He played Laman (thus the big bushy beard in all the wedding photos) and he was AWESOME! My favorite comment about the play was a friend of mine who said there was only one thing wrong with the play. She was rooting for Laman instead of Nephi the whole time. LOL! He did a great job acting and singing. It was fun to see him in a production again.

Levi got his braces off! So now he’s even MORE good looking. 😉

Levi also got his driver’s permit this summer. So watch out world!

Rock has been cooking a big fancy dinner once a month this year and has found he enjoys cooking quite a bit. He bought this pizza steel that gets your oven as hot as a pizza oven so we can have brick oven pizza without the brick oven.

It was delicious! We have a new family favorite at our house!

He also made a key lime cake this summer AND an apple blackberry pie.

4th of July

We had a good 4th of July this year. I thought our kids were done with the neighborhood pancake breakfast and parade because they’ve outgrown the parade. But Libby still wanted to dress up and this year she helped her friend win the “Most Patriotic” award which she usually takes home herself. lol.

We had my family over for lunch that day and enjoyed some good water balloon fights and cornhole! Then we ate dinner potluck style with our cul-de-sac. Levi was quite the chick magnet that night.

While the neighborhood went hogwild with their fireworks, Cade and I slipped away to watch the big ones in Meridian. We had a great view and and easy parking spot. I love the big fireworks best!

We had our driveway and porch redone in May which was quite the ordeal. But we are happy with the end result.

One last fun thing I’ll include in this post is the kids horseback riding day with Aunt Janie. They love doing this and I wish we could find the time to make it happen more often. Thank you again, Aunt Janie for taking so much time with the kids!

Ok, so it’s not Carmen, but it’s close enough.

I get this question a lot so here’s the update on Reagan’s Excellent Adventure. In February Reagan decided it was time to leave Boise and strike out on his own. He did this in typical Reagan fashion. He threw his stuff in the car and without a job or a place to live, headed on a world tour to find both. He stayed a few days in Rexburg where after getting a ticket and a bad hotel experience he shook the Rexburg dust off his feet and headed to Pocatello where he stayed a few more days visiting a friend at school there. Pocky didn’t cut it so he headed to Logan where he stayed a little longer and visited another friend. He liked Logan and tried to find a job there, but didn’t have any luck. Next he drove down to Provo to check it out and liked the college scene but he couldn’t find a job there either. He was about to head back north when he got a job offer from a fancy jewelry store in Park City. So, he got an apartment for a month in Millcreek and commuted to Park City every day. He liked the high end jewelry store but didn’t like how few customers actually came in.

It was at this point that he came home for Easter. At 10:00 at night we got a phone call from him telling us he was just past Snowville, Utah on the side of the road. His car had died. A kind stranger on his way to Boise picked him up and brought him the rest of the way home where he spent the rest of the weekend working out a way to get his car towed. He eventually got it towed to Logan where the same kind stranger was going to school and was willing to take him. Once there, he discovered to his dismay that his car was beyond repair. This is the same car he came home from the hospital in when he was born, so it’s not really surprising. He hitchiked a ride from my sisters (who literally picked him up at a gas station on their way home from Boise). We loaned him our kid car at that point to get him through till he could buy another car. Soon thereafter he called it quits on the high end jewelry business and got a job selling cars at a Mazda dealership instead!

At that point his adventures took him more permanently to Provo. He lived in the college housing for the summer and sold cars in Orem.

He really loves his job and is the 2nd best salesman there! He’s making enough money to rent a nicer apartment and just moved in the beginning of September. The kids have started planning the cabin in Washington that he’s going to buy us all when he’s rich. He really is great at sales. He’s cute, charismatic and charming and that goes a long way in the sales business. Dimples do it every time. So that is what Reagan has been up to.

Excuse my French, but this blog post is about Allison’s wedding to Cameron Lund and since they couldn’t put it on their wedding announcements, I’m putting it on my Blog.

The event of the year was Allie and Cam’s wedding in June. It was awesome in every way. Sarin acted as lead wedding planner and the two of them planned the entire thing. Allie is not one of those girls who’s been planning their wedding since they were 12 on Pinterest so it was no small feat to whip this wedding up. It was simple and beautiful. And I love seeing my sister so happy.

This wonderful wedding announcement showed up at our house in May. I was so thrilled I sent her a picture of it on my fridge. It stayed there till the end of the summer! By the way, this was the g-rated version. lol.

And This was the non-G rated version she wanted to send but didn’t. 🙂 She did really find this one as an example online so there are people (somewhere?!) who have used it.

Two days before the wedding, Allie and Cam hosted a family BBQ because who doesn’t want to be in charge of feeding a ton of people two days before you get married?! Seriously, though, I’m not complaining because anytime I can eat Cam’s meat, I’m happy. It was fun to meet Cam’s side of the family and I’m sure they would say the same, but really, we were all there for the meat. I’m not ashamed, I can admit it. I did get this great picture of my dad and Cam’s dad, Richard, getting to know one another.

Oh, and here’s the meat. Since that’s what we were really there for. 😉

Couldn’t resist putting this cutie up. I mean, look at those cheeks!:

Final Dress Fitting!

The day before the wedding Allie and Cam did their bridal pictures at the temple. It was so fun to follow them around and help adjust her dress and hold her flowers. It was a tough job but somebody had to do it. I’m kidding about the hard part, not about the liking it part.

I think this was my favorite picture that day.

The Big Day

Sarin collected decorations from as far away as Boise for the reception and I think it turned out pretty great. If I could have brought my porch rockers we would have used those too. ha ha.

Our handsome kiddos.

It was so fun to see Allie and Cam celebrating with all their friends and ward members. And some of Miss Wesel’s old students even came. It was a magical day!

And then it was time for the big exit. Cam drove her away on his motorcycle!

Welcome to the family, Cam!

Levi continues to improve in leaps and bounds (no pun intended) in his running career. His track season, which included triple jump, mile and 2 mile was full of Personal Records, School Records (for Freshman) and even a State record! It is so fun to watch him push himself, continually breaking past mental barriers to new levels.

But almost more fun than watching Levi was watching Rock watch Levi. For those of you who know him, you know my husband doesn’t show his emotions much. He plays things pretty close to the chest and excitement, especially public excitement is not an emotion I’ve seen much in our 21 years of marriage. So it was really fun for me to watch Rock enjoy Levi’s successes. The high light of the season was when Levi won a 2 mile race, beating out his top competitors to become the fastest Freshman 2 miler in the state of Idaho! And who better to tell this story, than his # 1 fan, his Dad:

Levi had a track meet last Saturday. Going into the week, we thought he’d probably be doing the triple jump and 800 on Thursday, the mile on Friday and the two mile on Saturday. Up to now, he’s managed to do the best in the two mile, so the coaches decided to double down on that, and have him rest up and just do the two mile on Saturday. That made life easier for us busy parents, so we made sure to be there Saturday for the race.

I had talked with Levi beforehand about what his strategy might be. For context, at this point, he was ranked 5th on the team in the two mile. Another freshman, Drew, had the fastest time, at just under 10 minutes. Even though Levi has had great times, he’s been a little frustrated this season because Drew did a good job training in the off season, and really passed him by in track. Between Drew and Levi there was a senior, a junior, and a sophomore who all had better two mile times. Besides the five runners from Levi’s school, there was one from another school that was expected to be way ahead of Drew and a few others seeded ahead of Levi, so that he was expected to finish 9th.

Going into the race, Levi had already qualified, barely, to go to districts in the two mile, so he didn’t have the pressure of doing that. Normally, I recommend that he really work at pacing himself in the first half, so he can have negative splits, feel strong at the finish, and do well. But occasionally, it’s good to ignore pacing and just latch on to someone faster than you and see how it goes. He had decided to do this Saturday with Jack, the senior who had a time 5 seconds faster than Levi’s. So when I told him at the starting line to pace himself and have fun, he just said “I’m not going to pace myself”.

And for that first mile, he didn’t. The first lap was a little fast. And the next three were as well, so that he came across the mile marker at 4:59, a solid 10-15 seconds faster than he’s ever run the first mile. Only a few seconds slower than his best mile time. Definitely too fast, I thought. But he was following his strategy. He was right with Jack, and Zangel, the sophomore, had fallen back after trying to surge too hard in lap 3.

Given the pace, I expected he’d struggle with the second mile. Instead, in laps 5 and 6 he gained even more ground. Jack fell back, and it became clear that Levi had chosen someone else to latch onto. Meanwhile, Drew was holding onto the leader, and they were probably 30 meters ahead of Levi, with Branden, the junior, between them. Lap 7 is always the slowest, and that was the case here as well. But again, Levi gained ground, if only a little. As the group started their last lap, Drew had pulled ahead of the leader, Branden was only a couple steps behind them, and Levi was still keeping up, but maybe 20 meters back. On the back stretch Branden pushed hard and took the lead. It turned out to be a little too soon, though. As they rounded the last corner, Drew began his kick and surged past Branden.

And from behind, Levi just kept pushing on the gas. In the last stretch, he passed all of the other school’s runners, Branden, and then with just 20 meters left, kicked past Drew and won the race. With a second mile time of 4:55, and a total time of 9:54. A huge, 22 second improvement over his previous record time. His last lap was 10 seconds faster than any other lap he ran.

All of which is amazing. But it got better when we started looking at the Idaho rankings. His time is now the best freshman two mile time in the state of Idaho. It’s also the best two mile time for his team, of course. He’s ranked 14th for all grades in his district, which means he’s got a fighting shot at going to state in the event (top ten in the district get to go to state). And if the distance runners on his team stay where they’re at, relative to each other, he could be the #2 runner on the team next year in cross country.

It also means his team is going to be really solid next year – they’ve got a strong, deep lineup, with two amazing freshman, two equally strong juniors, and plenty of other runners who are close behind them.

And my voice has been hoarse for the last week from all the yelling I did…

Levi didn’t end up going to State-too many older kids faster than this freshmen of ours. lol. But he is great at cheering on his teammates and went to both days of the State competitions to cheer them on. He really feels the pains and triumphs of his team in a way that shows very mature empathy. Can’t wait to see what this kid will do next year!