First Day of Work

Summer is over for me!  On July 31st, I had an office retreat to start my new job at Snow Canyon Middle School.  I was having a tough time leaving the kids but it was a good day.  I really like the administration I will work with and everyone seems nice.  I think it's going to be a good fit.  And I get holidays and summers off like the kids do!

The kids were sweet and bought me treats for when I got home.  I really needed that!  They are sweet kids.

Goofy Kids

Sometimes they act just like little bear cubs - they climb and wrestle each other.  It's pretty funny to watch.  Sunday afternoons, when there aren't any electronics or tv, they usually get this way and it's hilarious!

      

Great Basin National Park

We decided to go to Great Basin National Park for the 24th of July.  We have been here before so we were excited to go back.  We loaded up the camping gear and took off.  The drive wasn't bad.  When we got to Great Basin we decided to look around before finding a camping spot.  Ethan took out his camera and took some pics.

       

We then drove up to the Wheeler Peak campground to find a spot.  This campground is at almost 10,000 feet.  We had a reservation for a spot in a lower campground but we wanted to see if we could get one in the Wheeler Peak Campground.  We were able to find one!  It is such a beautiful campground and we were right next to a small stream.  Deer kept coming right through the camp area.

   

Right when we finished setting up camp, it started to rain.  It wasn't too bad because we had the tent and had already set our shade tent over the table.  So we had places to hide from the rain.  We read books, played games, and enjoyed being in the cool weather after the heat of St. George.

We made a dutch oven dinner that night and then went to bed.  It rained a lot at night but we were fine in our tent.

The next morning we made breakfast (our camp stove wasn't working so we improvised and cooked in the dutch ovens over the charcoal chimney, it was inventive and worked) then we went for a hike to the Crystal Lakes.  They were beautiful.  Ethan took pictures along the way and we saw deer on the trail.

            

We went back to camp, started lunch, and then it started to rain.  Great timing for us!  It rained off and on all day but we had books to read and games to play so we weren't bugged too much until we realized the tent was leaking.  We thought they were small leaks that we could deal with so we put towels up where we could and moved beds around so they would be out of the direct drips. That night we made ribs in the dutch oven, but it took a long time.  We also made a very smoky campfire.  By the time we went to bed it was still raining and our tent was leaking.  Ethan said his sleeping bag was damp but we didn't want to load up in the night so we decided to stay and evaluate in the morning.

It rained that night but it had stopped by the morning.  The sky looked like it was going to rain again so we made the decision to pack up and go home a day early.  We started to pack up and I went to roll up Ethan's sleeping bag.  When I turned it over, it was soaked!  He wasn't just kind of damp, he was sleeping in a soaking wet sleeping bag.  How miserable for the poor kid!!  So I was glad we were packing up because there wasn't any way he would get to sleep in a dry sleeping bag that night.

After we loaded up, we went on a hike to the Bristlecone Pines.  I didn't go on this one but Bryan took the kids.  They had a lot of fun and it was a good hike.  I walked around the camp area and explored while they were gone.

When we got back to car we had some time to kill before going on a tour of the Leman Caves, so we decided to go down to the Visitors Center to see what they had there.  While we were there, watching a movie about the area, a storm started to pour and the power went out.  When we looked at Wheeler Peak, where we had been, it was extremely dark and they were getting pounded with rain.  I was so glad we weren't there because it would have been miserable in our leaky tent.  The power came back on and we watched the movie again, we had a lot of time to kill.

We went to the Caves to wait for our tour and then we went on the cave tour.  We did the tour the last time but I don't know if the kids remembered it.  It was interesting.

Then we drove home.  It was a long, rainy trip but we had a good time.

Here are some more pics:

                                           

3v3 Soccer Tournament

Courtney's team had another soccer tournament.  This one was held in Cedar City and it was crazy busy.  They did okay.  It's a different set of strategies to play 3v3 instead of 5v5.  It was rough but they had fun.

                  

Zits is my life

Skimboarding

Courtney has a hard time being left home when Ethan goes to do things with his friends.  So Ethan took Courtney skimboarding, just the two of them, to teach her how to do it.  And she had so much fun.  He is a great big brother and she is a fun little sister.  They make a good pair!

Decluttering

I went to a decluttering seminar by one of my friends and was inspired to start decluttering our house.  Just from Courtney's room, I got 3 bags for DI and 4 bags for the trash.  It was a good day!!

Sunburn

Ethan went skimboarding with some of his friends.  They have so much fun going and it isn't too far away.  Ethan made a skimboard in shop class when he was in 9th grade so he has a nice board to go with.  There is a place on the other side of town where everyone goes, so they load into someone's car and take off. 

Unfortunately, they forgot the sunscreen.



He is fried!!

Cute Courtney

Courtney got my phone again...

                  

Phone vs. Recliner

Have you ever wondered what would happen to a cell phone if it got caught in a recliner?  Yeah, me either, but Ethan found out.



He was at his friend's house and his phone fell into the recliner he was sitting in.  He folded the footstool into the recliner to get up and it crunched his phone.  Luckily my mom had a spare iphone that they let us take for Ethan to use.  This was a good phone that he had for a long time.  Poor thing.

Courtney's kit

Courtney is a member of the SCHS Mountain Bike Team.  She is doing it as a back up in case she doesn't make the soccer team.  Her kit came and she was so excited to try it on!  Looking good!!

   

4th of July

Bryan and the kids bought fireworks so we let them off.  It was a low key day but we made a lot of noise that night!