Summer Vacation

I LOVE summer vacations!!
We just got back from one of my all-time favorite vacations.

It was alittle bit like a road trip since we drove through 7 states.

For the first week we stayed around the Salt Lake City area.

Some of the highlights were:

*"Music and the Spoken Word" (the organist was amazing),

*EFY for Sierra

*Lagoon

*Farmington's pool & watching teenage boys do pretty amazing tricks off the high dive

*Mario Kart tournament

*Liberty Park

*Cambrie's baptism

*lighting fireworks on the street

Finally..we left Utah to go to Idaho for a

Family Reunion

Some of our favorite things about the reunion were..

*being around family

*tubing down the Snake River

*playing Lazer Tag for 2 hours

*family remixes

*reading secret pal poems

*watching old videos & pictures

*playing games (Stan is the official ping pong champion--which he is very proud of)

*sneaking out to the hot tub at night, so the kids wouldn't follow

We did a remix to Lady Gaga's song "Bad Romance", but we changed it to

"We Are Family"

One afternoon part of my dad's family came over. I loved seeing aunts and uncles and cousins that I haven't seen for years! It was great to catch up and feel a part of such a wonderful family.

Stan & Daniel found this tank.

One of our family traditions is that on the last evening, everyone is given an award or nickname. Courtney came up with the names at the first reunion and just kind of inherited the role. These are this year's awards:

Stan: "Babe Ruth" (there's good stories behind each of these names)
Maria: "The Road Less Traveled"

Sierra: "Best Dance Choreographer"

Callie: "Youngest Late-Night Hot Tub Member"

After the family reunion...
Yellowstone

One of the many gysers
I think the girls enjoyed their ice cream cones more than watching Old Faithful errupt.

After we left Yellowstone, we hiked up Taylors Canyon in Ogden, Utah with Cheryl and her kids. We were trying to get up to the peak but never made it. Instead we found a stream that the kids played in and cooled off.
Our last stop was at Zion's National Park.

I've wanted to hike the Narrows ever since Seth hiked it on a High Adventure trip with the church youth a couple of years ago. Since you basically walk in the river most of the way, I didn't take a camera, but it looks just like this picture. It was absolutely beautiful and my all time favorite hike. We started out early in the morning before it got hot. The temperature hit 111 degrees by noon. It took us about 5 hours to walk about 6 1/2 miles (all but the first and last mile was river rock).