Trip to Utah

While all the construction was going on at our house, I packed up the kids in the van and we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa Syme and all the cousins in Utah. Aside from the blown fuse knocking out the clock and radio, and the blown tire in the middle of nowhere (thank goodness Julie and Isaac were close by to help) we had a fun time. 

We started the fun watching the Pioneer Day Parade with a bunch of cousins.

The best part of small town parades are the people in them. These folks on the tandem bikes are the members of the Stake Presidency and their wives.

And there were lots of Primary floats from the different wards.

And this is the local Drill Team (men with their drills, ha ha).

 Then we went over to the park where the kids took their turn riding the ponies.

 

Then they waited in lots of long lines to play the carnival games.

Then we moved on to another park to have dinner, try to win a prize in the ping pong ball drop, and wait for the fireworks to start.

 

It was a really long, really fun day! 

We also took time to go swimming. The kids had a great time and this pool is awesome.

 

 And no vacation would be any fun at all for Hayden if it didn't include an abundance of Lego building.

 

 

 

Construction Time Again

We started another major construction project this summer. We hired a couple of guys to turn our massive bedroom back into two bedrooms, as it was originally. A previous owner had taken out the wall between the two rooms, put in stairs to an attic space and moved the laundry room into this room from the garage. We moved the laundry room to the back of the house a few years ago, and that space was going to become a walk-in closet for one of the rooms. The other room had to have a new closet framed in and both rooms needed the popcorn ceiling removed. It was a major project and I ended up taking the kids up to Utah for most of it so we wouldn't be in the way. They weren't enjoying bunking altogether in one room anyway. Here are the in-progress pictures. Unfortunately I was so happy to have it finished when we got back that I forgot to take any "after" pictures before we moved everything back into the rooms. It's so nice having new closets, new paint, new doors, and new carpet.

Great to be Eight!

Our Hayden turned 8 this year! We celebrated as a family by giving him presents and going to Krispy Kreme. Sadly, I didn't take any doughnut pictures.

Then he had some friends come over for a Lego Party. We played a bunch of Lego games and then had cake. That is the extent of my cake decorating skills.

So he was thrilled to go to Deedum's house a few days later and get his "cool" cake. 

He was thoroughly impressed with his Mario Kart/Lego cake.

 

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAYDEN!!

The Fun of July

It gets so hot here in July that its impossible to play outside, so we took the kids on lots of outings and tried to have fun in other ways. 

We went bowling. I'm sure Clint won, but I really can't remember.

Clint decided to shave his beard, but keep the mustache. I promptly veto-ed that. 

He looked like a character out of 70s cop show.

  

We took the kids to Cabelas to ride the carousel and eat fudge.

We took the kids that wanted to go (Kyle and Allison) to a Diamondbacks game.  

Allison took most of the pictures, we did manage to get a few in focus.

 

And Nathan decided he was old enough to play the video games. 

Or at least crawl on top of the PS3 and chew on the controllers.