Summer?!

 How can we possibly already be at the end of August?!  Craziness.  We had a great summer.  Well, July seemed kind of long.  Not my favorite month.  But the rest of it flew by, and here we are with school starting.

Sage had a busy June with youth conference, Lake Powell, and girls camp.  She also decided to do cross country this year, in addition to mountain biking.  That girl is busy!  Cross country runs at 7am all summer, Monday through Friday.  And then mountain biking three evenings a week.  This is all before she has a license.  She's also working down the street at Lola's.  Great job that's flexible with her crazy schedule.  Sage got her license last week and we all rejoiced!  Now I need to figure out what to do with myself since my part-time job was driving Sage all over the place.

We got to have Kate home for the summer, which we loved.  She worked full time at the Deer Valley kids camp.  They work those counselors hard!  When she told me about her days it sounded very exhausting.  But Kate did a great job.  And the kids loved her, as usual.  Kate got to experience her first break up this year.  Everyone has to go through it.  But she's set herself up to have a great 2nd year at Utah Tech!  She left on Sunday, and we miss having her around.  But love hearing about all the fun things she's doing.

This was the first year that Zack wasn't home for at least part of the summer.  He's still working full-time in Logan, and enjoying his job.  For his birthday Jake and Sage and I went up to Logan to camp with Zack for the weekend.  We had such a good time.  It's beautiful up there.  We went mountain biking and then went to Bear Lake and rented some waver runners.  So fun!  Sage is hooked and can't wait to go again.  Zack took us on a birthday adventure hike to the highest peak in Cache County.  It was a hard, but beautiful hike.  A few weeks ago Zack wrecked on his mountain bike and dislocated his thumb.  It looked pretty bad and the doctor saw the films and said plan on surgery.  Of course it's his right hand, which is not good when you're a mechanic.  He finally met with the doctor today and she said no surgery.  Instead he'll have a cast for a month, then back to a splint, then PT.  We're grateful for answered prayers.

Sage and I finished off the summer with a trip to Seattle.  Sage got a filling and then was having tooth pain.  Figured out she needed a root canal, so we got to go to Uncle Randy.  And decided we might as well stay for a few days and turn it into a mini vacation.  We hung out with just Mel and Henry because the rest of the family was in Utah.  Sage got to see what it would be like to have a younger sibling.  By the end they were fighting like siblings.  It was pretty funny.  Mel and I went running every day, we went hiking and paddle boarding.  Sage was running ahead on our hike and got stung by a wasp.  I felt bad she was hurting, but might have laughed a bit at the drama.  We had great fun and even got to enjoy a day of rain, which was amazing since we've had no rain at all this summer.  

Another great summer.  Now on to a new school year!

First day of junior year!

First day of sophomore year at Utah Tech!

We got to bike across the bridge behind us.  So fun!

Hallelujah!!

We went for a drive/picnic in the Uintas.  Sage had a headache so she strapped the ice around her head.

Sage got to have her 16th birthday on a Sunday.  Every kid's dream

Birthday floats

We used Kate's employee benefits to bike at Deer Valley

Birthday boating for Kate.  This was right after Jake was surfing, fell, and no one noticed until we were halfway across the lake.  It was funny.  It took him a second to forgive us.

Happy 19!

I got home from biking one day and Jake and Kate were making pickled beets.

When we went camping a mouse ate my shoes.  Only my shoes, no one elses.

I've made this cake a million times and somehow it flew out of the pan and onto the counter.  Fail.

Birthday surfing

46!

This is how I look after biking with the team.  So dusty.

Top of the peak

Opening presents

Birthday hike.  Zack's 21!

Bear Lake shakes

Kate got a new car!

Sage got last second tickets with her friend's family to Stadium of Fire

4th of July boating

Lake Powell Camping Edition

 Another Lake Powell trip in the books!  This year we threw caution to the wind and decided to go camping.  Yes, we're crazy.  I had vowed I would never do it again, and then decided to just go for it.  We don't have any littles right now and our kids are all old enough to help out.  It was now or never!  The kids all got to invite a friend.  Unfortunately, Zack's friend got Covid 2 days before we left.  Kate brought Cade and Sage brought cousin Sam.  I was a little nervous for anyone else to come because LP exposes the good, bad, and ugly of our family.  But they came and still talk to us so we'll call it a win!

I knew the first day would be the trickiest, and it didn't disappoint.  As we pulled up I realized I forgot the toilet.  This is a problem because you can get huge fines camping without one.  We again threw caution to the wind and continued on.  Kate drove her car so we got the boat in the water and waited for her and Jake to park.   We waited and waited.  Then Jake came.  Without Kate.  He didn't know where she was.  All of this is made difficult because there's no cell service.  It's easy to hate cell phones until you need them.  Anyway, to make a really long story shorter, I think it took us almost two hours to finally get everyone on the boat.  Already stressful and we hadn't even gotten to the part I KNEW would be stressful.  

We headed off to search for a camping spot.  Of course it was super windy while we were doing this, which makes everything sooo much harder on a boat.  Now that we have a nice boat we don't just beach it when we camp.  So we have to set an anchor in the water and on the sand to hold the boat in place when we're at the beach.  This isn't easy to do, and it wasn't easy this time.  It took a while.  And was stressful.  But we persisted and got it done.  Poor Sam was like, "Do we have to do this every time we come back with the boat?"  He was happy to hear that it was a one and done situation.  

Now for the easy part.  Setting up camp.  Except it wasn't easy, of course.  It was so, so windy that we couldn't get our tent to stay up at all.  Like not one bit.  I may have considered going home at this point.  Gratefully the tent that Cade brought held up better in the wind.  So we ended up with one tent that 4 of us slept in, and the rest on the boat.  With the bats.  

After all of this fun you're probably wondering why we keep going to LP.  Well, I'm happy to say that our trip was amazing once we got through the first days.  We had early morning slalom sessions, all day on the boat, and nights by the fire under a million stars.  Sometimes my favorite part of boating is when we stop doing anything and just float and eat lunch.  This is especially amazing in beautiful LP.  There was also a decent amount of fishing done on this trip.  Jake and Sam were determined to catch a big fish.  I told them our last night there we were having fish tacos, so they had a couple days to catch enough fish to feed us.  They came through and we got to eat some delicious, fresh fish tacos!  

Anyway, all in all a great trip.  Anyone who goes to LP knows there will be times when things go wrong.  But it's all worth it when you look around at how beautiful it is.  

I think she only smiles this big in Lake Powell

Jake's happy place

We always go to this perfect alcove for lunch.  It's so nice to float out of the sun.  If only I could eat lunch here every day.

Zack was driving.  I was so terrified I finally jumped off.

We did some sunset/night surfing one night.  It was amazing.

Jake and Sage killing it with their fashion choices.