Summer 2013- June Edition

Hello!  Anybody still out there?!!  All of my good intentions to keep posting up our full and fun summer seem to have crashed and burned.  Even my dad has been reminding me that I need to post up all the fun things my family has been up to.  So now that my girls are officially back in school today I am going to take the time to sort through all the hundreds of photo's and attempt to pick the very best to share with you. I have a hard time doing this because I just enjoy so many of them- so I apologize that this post is so long.

We will begin with June:

We kicked off the summer with a huge splash by going boating with my brother Brandon and his awesome family.  They purchased a new boat this spring and we were more than delighted to take them up on the invite to go out to Utah Lake and spend the afternoon together.

Brandon warmed us up by giving us an exciting show on the wake-board. It was evident that he is still right at home on the water.
My girls have never been boating before and I was so proud of how brave and adventurous each of them were to get in the water and give Knee Boarding a try.

Abby

Eva

Olivia

 They were all AMAZING!

We had a blast, thanks again Brandon and Jenn.

Next up we built a new swing set.  Our old one was not only too small for our growing girls but one afternoon the swing section decided it had enough and broke.  Paul bought plans and hardware online and then we picked out our lumber at the local Depot.  He did an amazing job putting it together!!

My parent came over to help one day and just a couple days later it was completed.

After this picture was taken we added the two person swing on the end and all the neighborhood kids love it, especially Abby, who can now swing just as high as her giant nerves will allow.

This month we also enjoyed celebrating our town next door with most of our family in my brother Cory's backyard.  Food, dessert, basketball, trampoline, slack-lining, and fireworks shot off right in his back yard.

We like to call this picture "cousin lovin" Abby doesn't think it's very funny :)
We are just kidding of course, but they are great cousin friends.


It wouldn't feel like summer without the pool in the backyard.  This year it was enjoyed more than once by filling it up with water balloons as well.  Oh the fun!

Let's not forget father's day.  The only dad I remembered to take a picture of this year was my own father- but this shot is one of my favorite of the summer.  They just LOVE Grandpa G!!

Our first camping trip of the summer was up American Fork Canyon in the Granite Flats campground.  We really love it up there.  It's beautiful and not to far from home.  This time we took our good friends the Williams from next door, you might have noticed our fourth child Kate in almost all of our pictures this summer!

(Nice photo bomb Paul!)

We had a two night stay with a hike up to tour Timpanogos Cave- we all LOVED it!

Swim Lessons!!! Abby was SO not interested this year.  I did make the mistake of telling her last year that if she passed level 4 she could be done.  She did not forget over the winter as I had hoped, but she had soccer practice that entire 2 week session anyway.  So Olivia and Eva hit the pool deck for another epic year of learning to float and stroke.

They did a great job, but once again that level 3 and 4 proved to be a challenge.  They were both so close to passing, just a little more work next year.

Oh, and Abby did join us a couple of evenings, but just to swim on her own terms!!

We also had to throw in some trips to the local Manila Pond.

To make things even busier we also have Peaks Passes and went at least once a week all summer long to Seven Peaks with our cousin Brooklyn.

Looking at all this, I will just dub June the "Month of Water"!!