June 2011

I can’t believe June is already over!  This year, June was really our “get ready for July” month, with tons of time spent preparing for our 4 major events in July (2 family reunions, Pioneer trek for Bryce, me, Megan and Devin while Seth and Autumn fly to Oregon and a 50 mile backpack trip for Bryce and Devin), but we still had plenty of fun, too.  Here’s a sampling:

Devin went on 2 scout backpacking campouts, which both turned out to be lots of fun (and lots of work) for him.  Bryce accompanied him on the shorter 2-day one, but missed the 20 mile 3-day campout to attend the final ma & pa training for trek and the sealing ceremony of my niece, Terra.

In bigger Devin news, he completed his Eagle Project this month!!  He worked with the Humanitarian Service Center in American Fork to collect supplies to donate to helping restart the scouting program in Iraq.  Now that the project is done, he is working on final paperwork, etc for his Board of Review. Yay!!

We all had fun celebrating my niece Terra Caldwell’s marriage to Gavin Hansen.  They rented a photo booth for their reception and I am pretty sure our kids each ended up taking about 20 pictures of themselves – it was great fun.  We also had fun dancing the night away and being together as a family.

Seth is spending this last week of June at Clear Creek – a weeklong outdoor camp run by the school district for kids who have just finished 5th grade.  I’m sure he’s having a great time and we look forward to him coming home tomorrow and telling us all about his adventures.

Megan celebrated her 17th birthday (gasp!) by inviting friends over for a BBQ and outdoor party games.  It was lots of fun and we are all still adjusting to the fact that she is really already 17 years old!  I’m still trying to figure out how our kids keep getting older when we aren’t aging a day. :)

Autumn was busy this month dancing at 2 studios.  She had her final recital last Saturday at Just Dance and did an amazing job.  She was in 6 dances this year and hit the milestone of doing all of her costume changes backstage all on her own. The recital was a pretty emotional experience for her – she was crying as she was dancing the entire finale.  Funny how change is always hard.  She is enjoying dancing at The Pointe and has already made lots of new friends there.

Megan and I had fun at Girls Camp.  It’s amazing to me that it was her final year at camp!  She worked really hard as a YCL this year and helped make Camp a great experience for everyone!  Our theme this year was “Be all you can be in the army of the Lord” and each of the YCL’s made a flag for their tent.  The top picture above is Megan with the flag she designed and made – not bad, huh? :)

The rest of the month was spent busy swimming, sewing clothes for Pioneer trek, getting games, activities and all sorts of fun stuff ready for our reunions and making sure we have all the gear we need for Trek and the 50 miler.  July promises to be busy and FUN!!

May 2011

Even though it was wet, cloudy and cool all month (reminding me why we don’t live in the Northwest), we still managed to have a lot of fun around here.

The month started off with Seth’s 11th birthday.  He celebrated with a party at the Space Center and he and his friends had a great time successfully completing their 2 1/2 hour mission.  Seth was the engineer on ship and Megan was thrilled when one of Seth’s friends had to back out from the party when he got sick because it meant she got to do the space mission too.  She was hoping for some minor role aboard the spaceship, but the younger kids were too smart for that and voted her to be Captain.  It was a fun party for all!

When Bryce and I went out on the Saturday night before Mothers Day, we returned to find our bedroom all decorated with hearts with little messages from the kids.  Awwwww – best Mothers Day gift EVER! :)

Bryce and the boys went to the Sand Dunes for Fathers and Sons and had a great time camping and playing on the dunes with all of their ward buddies.  While they were gone, the girls and I went to Park City and had a fun weekend there.  The weather was warm and sunny and we had loads of fun being together.

We had a Laurel retreat here at our house when the cabin we were supposed to go to fell through due to a burst water line.  It was pretty much wall to wall girls in our basement now that we are up to 19 Laurels (all active – yay!) and we had a great time.  So did the Priests in our ward who had fun toilet papering our entire yard the night the girls were all here. :)

Of course, since it is the end of the school year we had choir concerts galore!  Seth, Devin and Megan all had their own concerts and they were all fabulous!  Megan tried out for her high school’s Chamber Choir and was one of only 40 kids to make it!  She is so excited and will be super busy as they have tons of performances throughout the year.  She is especially excited to go to New York next March on choir tour (hopefully I will be joining her as a chaperone.)

We had the pleasure of having Grandma and Grandpa Ririe come out for a too short visit and enjoyed getting to spend some time with them and with Jeff and family over the holiday weekend.  We had fun playing games, having barbeques and just hanging out.

Autumn made the tough decision to switch dance studios and tried out for and made the Company team at a dance studio just across the street called The Pointe.  She’s excited for the change, though a little nervous too.  The Pointe is a more technical and slightly tougher dance studio than she is used to, but we think it will be a good switch in the end.  Since her current studio doesn’t have their recital until the end of June, she will be attending both schools for the month of June, which will mean 11 hours of dance a week, but she is excited about it.

We just celebrated the last day of school today and all the kids are excited to finally have summer here!  Now if we could just get the weather to warm up a bit…

See you in June!!