August 2011

Here’s a sampling of what we did to wrap up our summer in August:

Autumn, Devin, Seth and I went on an early morning hike with our Jensen and Lillie cousins – it was a great way to start a summer morning.

Then, our Lille cousins came over for a sleepover and we had tons of fun playing outdoors and hanging out.

Devin was ordained to be a teacher and after 5 years, Bryce was released as Executive Secretary and called to be 1st Counselor in the YM Presidency.  With both of us now in the YM/YW Presidencies, Sundays and Tuesdays have gotten a little more hectic at our house.  Bryce is excited to be able to work with Devin in YM.

The kids finished up swim team and had their final swim meet of the season.

Megan participated in the Highland Fling parade as part of the Highland City Youth Council.  She is still really enjoying being on the youth council and the opportunities it gives her to serve in her community.

Megan and I went hiking with the Laurels and Priests up to the base of Bridal Veil falls and enjoyed playing in the very cold waterfall.

Bryce and I ran the Hobblecreek 1/2 marathon together.  Well, he finished about 8 minutes before me, but we were at the start line together anyway.  It was a super hot day which made the race seem long and hard, but it was good to do together.

The kids surprised us with a special anniversary dinner, all made and served by them, to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary.  Yum!

The kids all went back to school. :(  We celebrated with our annual neighborhood back to school breakfast, but Megan and Devin missed it since they are both taking early morning seminary this year.  They are all adjusting really well to their busy schedules and I am slowly getting used to the quiet at home.  It promises to be a really great school year!

I celebrated my 40th birthday by going to young women’s activities while Bryce took the boys to their scout Court of Honor.  It was actually lots of fun and we just celebrated my birthday a day late with the family – spreads out the fun that way.

Autumn decided to give the school orchestra a try.  She has been wanting to play the violin for a couple of years, so we are going to let her try it out and see if she really likes it before we put her in private lessons.  She goes to school an hour early 2 mornings a week and so far is loving it.

September promises to be a great and busy month.  Megan has about a billion choir concerts with Chamber singers, Autumn moves up her dance hours to 7 1/2 each week (I think she would be fine if 2 of those hours weren’t ballet, which she HATES), Seth starts another season of flag football, and Devin will be receiving his Eagle award. Stay tuned for details.

July 2011

What an amazing month we had in July!  We’ll just call it our “no work and all play” month, even though the weekends were a crazy blur of work – unpacking from the last week’s adventure and getting ready for the next week.  Here’s a look at our month week by week:

Week 1 – 4th of July Freedom Run in Provo and Finch Family Reunion at Bear Lake

We started the month by running a 5k together as a family.  My sister Kim and her family were visiting, so they joined us, too.  It was lots of fun!  The race route follows the Provo parade route, so it was fun to have people cheering for us the entire way. Going out for breakfast afterwards was even better. :)

We spent the next 5 days at Bear Lake for the Finch Family reunion and had the best time playing at the lake, hiking the caves, playing games, doing skits and just enjoying being together for a few days.  The time passed much too quickly.

Week 2 – Boy Scout 50 miler

Bryce and Devin traveled to Zion’s National Park and spent the week hiking more than 50 miles through some beautifully scenic country.  Devin says the hardest day was the day they hiked 20 miles, but couldn’t choose a favorite part – he says all the hikes were beautiful.  Devin did a great job conquering his fear of heights when he hiked along a sheer cliff face for several miles.  Bryce says his favorite part was hiking in the water through the Narrows on the last day of the campout.

Week 3 – Pioneer Trek

Seth and Autumn flew by themselves to spend the week with Grandpa and Grandma Ririe (where they had many awesome adventures including the zoo, bowling with cousins, sleepovers with cousins, playing store, and playing in Grandma’s garden) while Bryce, Devin, Megan and I went on Trek.  It was a really tough experience, but one we are so glad we got to do, especially together.  We trekked 37 miles in 3 days and gained a much greater appreciation for all that our pioneer ancestors endured for their faith.  It was sure nice to come home at the end of 4 days and take a nice, long shower. :)

Week 4 – Ririe Family Reunion at the Oregon Coast

We joined Seth and Autumn and the rest of our Ririe family in Oregon for the last week of July and had a great time playing on the beach, skim boarding, hiking up the dunes (and running down again), climbing on the rocks, playing games, sharing talents and (most importantly) celebrating Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary.  It was so fun to be able to get everyone together again and spend some time together – the days went by much too quickly.  We also celebrated Devin’s 14th birthday this week – holy cow the kids are growing up too fast!

Well, that’s our month.  Bryce is definitely going to have a shock to his system when he returns to work full time this week.  Hard to believe we only have 3 more weeks until we are back to school. Blech!!

We also got Autumn’s dance pictures from her Just Dance studio – here’s a couple to share. :)

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!!

More April Fun

Video from Autumn’s Dance

It’s My Party

December

April 2011

April went by in a blur! But we did some fun things - here's a sampling:

Megan went with her high school choir to San Francisco for 5 days and had an amazing experience! She got to tour all over the city including Alcatraz, Union Square, Fisherman's Wharf, and Ghiardelli Square, and also got to participate in a choir festival in a really beautiful cathedral. Her choir placed high enough in the preliminaries to earn a spot performing at the evening performance for the public and Megan thought that was pretty awesome!

While Megan was in San Francisco, the rest of us went to St. George for the weekend for one of Autumn's dance competitions. Autumn's team did great and we all enjoyed a few days of warm sunshine!

Devin spent the month with rehearsals for "Fiddler on the Roof" and then performed in it the entire last week of April. I have to admit that I was surprised at how well Jr. High students did with the play, not only with the singing, acting and dancing on stage, but the orchestra as well. Devin had the best time and did a great job performing as a peasant son and doing the bottle dance. His bottle only fell off his head once in the 6 performances - not too bad! :)

Seth finished out the month earning his Arrow of Light award as well as the "All 20" patch. We are all done with Cub Scouts and Seth is so excited to move up to the New Scouts program!

We spent most of our Spring Break in Moab this year and had a great time hiking, biking, and enjoying warmth! We spent a full day hiking in Arches and especially loved Delicate Arch and

hiking the Fiery Furnace as well as playing around Sandune Arch, where we unexpectedly ran into our friends, the Gardiners. We also took a Jeep Safari tour on the red rock trails around Moab and we all loved that! Autumn of course wanted to go faster all the time, but contented herself through the slower parts by flirting with our tour guide, Meesh. It was warm days, beautiful scenery and some awesome adventures - the perfect spring break!

Megan spent the rest of her month trying to balance work, teaching piano lessons, tutoring math (besides her regular job), regular school work and studying for AP tests. She has been one little stressed out girl lately, but has her AP Calculus test done and will be done with her AP US History test tomorrow, after which she may slip into a coma for the weekend. :)

Seth finished up another year in the Storytelling club with an awesome performance. He also participated in the school's spelling bee and spent the rest of the month counting down to his 11th birthday.

Autumn finished up her dance competition season and is now getting ready for the recital in June. She was asked to be a soloist for the opening number, which adds another hour of practice each week, but she was so excited to get the invitation and hasn't minded the extra practices. She is tireless!

After years of negotiations, I was finally successful in talking Bryce into buying a Mac and the kids and I LOVE it! Bryce isn't so quick to switch sides, but he has at least stopped calling it the "stupid Mac" and will even admit it has some pretty nice features. I'll just say that putting together the graduating Laurels video was a breeze this year compared to the 2 previous years of trying to do it on the PC. It made me very happy! Here's a picture of Devin goofing off with the photo booth.

We finally had neighbors move into the house just west of us after it being empty for a year and a half, and that has been great except for the fact that the neighborhood kids were using their driveway as the neighborhood basketball court. Bryce decided it was finally time to add the cement pad for our camper that we have wanted to do since we moved here, and we also added a basketball hoop, which made Seth pretty happy. He is outside anytime the temperature breaks 50 degrees (in shorts) shooting hoops.

That's it for April - see you for May's update! :)