My month in a nutshell

Nearly a month to the date of my last post? Wow, I suck rocks and eat cheese! A lot has happened and I will write a short summary of the month-cuz it was amazingly crazy and cram packed!!!

July 4th: traditon holds this one. The boys sleep on the parade route the night before to "save" the great spot next to where the infamous subway restaraunt used to stand. Yes, all of you fellow bloggers who share the history of the subway on University Ave, it is no longer there. It has been de-railed forever...moment of silence.... ok, so the girls bring breakfast the next morning. This year we kinda threw out the tradition of slaving all night over breakfast choices and prep because, well I think we were feeling lazy this year. But guess what? EVERYONE STILL LIVED!!! so that one tradition might be SOL, which uh means, stupid old law.... So we were almost an hour late to the doggone parade because we couldnt find a spot that was close enough before we all paid out the wazoo to finally park. Dont ask what "wazoo" stands for cuz I really dont wanna say. The parade was ever so entertaining for us grown up folk, like always, I once again remember that I do this for my kids who I will never deprive of that deep seeded joy I convince myself they feel every year as the "parade planner executive" car passes by. Enough said about my issues. We instead of going to see the great boutiques set up nearby after the parade, go home and gloriously nap. Another tradition, go to the temple grounds to watch the wonderous display of fireworks that we could never in a million years afford to see in the actual stadium, and barbeque as we inadequetly watch over our children- praying they dont get abducted. Also skipped it. I know what you are thinking, whats wrong with us this year?! Well, I think I am getting oldre and in my oldnessism, I wanna say wiser-but I really think I am just getting lazier. So there you have it. We instead went to my sisters neighborhood where they had a great display of fireworks in what they joyfully refer to as "The Culdesac Of Fire", and t was awesome! Not only did we get to eat snacks all night as we watched great displays of firework glory off of step ladders, we didnt get stuck in traffic for 19 hours trying to get home. all in all I say it rocked!!

July 14th: Tim and Tylers birthday. A hot flippin day too. So what do you do on a hot summer day? Yu go swimming of course! Tyler had his party at the swimming pool, a group of 11 year oldish boys all together and swimming.. That will DEFINATELY tire them out for the sleepover later right? WRONG!!! There is a rule, that apparently I missed somewhere along the way, that says "hot sun and junk food and swimming all day will make boys hyper", I know this now and will never mistake it again. Those darn boys were up ALL night long! At some point during the night I decided if the house was gonna burn down, my detectors would alert me and that was that, I went to bed! I was a little bit mommish though, my firstborn turned 11 and I cant believe he is a few short years from teenagerhood, I am starting to be a bit terrified, but still nostalgic.

July 18-20: My sisters grandmother in law (got that?) owns a cabin up in Idaho, so we decided to have a family weekend up there. It really was incredible, no cell phone service, you could see the stars, and nobody died. We had 10 adults, and 14 kids-so thats an accomplishment. This was acres and acres of wonderous playland for the kids. There were cows to chase and prod with sticks, a small pond that almost swallowed a kid but only got away with a shoe, a massive fire pit/amphitheatre, huge outdoor eating area, 3 outhouses (there was indoor plumbing too, but the outhouses were really cool), hiking areas galore. We celebrated my brothers daughter turning 4 on the 17th and my baby turning 4 on the 19th, again I have to say that I was a freaky nostalgia queen-if only to myself. I cant believe that my Madisyn is no longer my baby, she's growing up..You always know thats going to happen, but it is tough when it does. We had a birthday party complete with icecream that didnt fare so well in the messed up freezer, cupcakes we made in these cute star shaped cupcake holders, and birthday hats. The older kids slept out in a tent and I never thought once about a wildly mad psychotic crazed mountain man coming to murder them. So it was a sucessful trip!

July 21: Tim and I could say we made it through 13 years of marriage! We decided to celebrate the following weekend because Tim gets up at 4 am to work and we wanted to stay up late if ya know what I mean. So Christi and Melissa and I went to see Colbi Collet and John Mayer play up in Salt lake city. It was an outside theatre and it was very warm out. We had so much fun though! We were dancing and being ridiculous, but we didnt care. At one point, a couple behind us asked how it was we were having so much fun-the most fun out of anyone there they could see they said-when we hadnt had anything to drink, and they hadnt seen us smoking anything good!! That was pretty funny. We got stuck in traffic getting out and while waiting I suggested we do chinese fire drill. Sounds harmless you say? Well Melissa and I collided into one another in the front of the car, and I still bear a bruise on my right arm!

July 26: I turned 31. I know, ancient huh?! Tim took me out to lunch, then to get my nails done which was exactly what I had asked for. I used to love getting my nails done, its a luxury of the past now-they dont stay as pretty as long when you're making mud pies, ya know? After that we packed for an overnighter at a Hotel in Salt Lake. Thank you to all you family members who took our 5 kids, you are SAINTS!!! It was wonderful.....Need I say anymore? We reminissed about all the years we have been together. We've actually known eachother for 16 years and we were highschool sweethearts. Those of you who are doing the calculations on my age and then the number of years we have been married will indeed discover that I was 17 when we tied the knot, but only for 5 days. Yes, my momma had to sign for me to get married!! I could have never calculated in all my life, that my love for this man could get any deeper or better than that day we committed ourselves to one another. But it has increased at least a thousand fold. Sometimes I look at newlyweds and think, man, that would suck to be there again! I know what lies ahead, and its been a great ride.. I look forward to the rest of my life!

July 31-August 3rd: Melissa and Alan invited us to go down to lake powell and stay on her dads houseboat! I am still freshly burned and almost done recooperating. This was the most fun we have had in I dont even know when! Thanks to my mom and Meredith for watching the kids while we spent time here. Christi and Nathan came as well, we all traveled down together in a borrowed van. Traveling is much more relaxing without kids! The first night we were there we got settled in and decided to kinda dress up and go out to eat in page AZ which was literally up the road. After reading off a bunch of restaraunts we decided on one called "the mandarin cafe" I tell you this so you may heed the warning of this cautionary tale. It was a chinese food buffet, after being led to our table our waitress, who you can assume was asian, spoke to us. "you can go pay" she said. Well we had just been seated, that was weird! we all stood up, looked at one another and asked "huh?" she repeated herself 2 or 3 more times before we realized she ws saying " you go eat buffet" and we were al nearly in hysterics by this point. The food sucked, the service was no good and it was like 30 bucks a couple! We tried warning a family going in that it was no good, but they were tourists from Germany and I guess we could have sounded like we were saying "that foods so good" cultural differences, what you gonna do?! We got our groceries and then headed back to the houseboat. If anyone has been to Lake Powell this time of year, you kn0ow its HOT!!!! We immediately got into our swimsuits where we actually stayed the entire trip, even sleeping in them. A couple people went for a swim off the house boat when this duck comes out of nowheer and proceeds to seem like its going to attack Nathan! The thing, which I lovingly named "quackers", would not stop charging, so the swim was cut short. We found out the next day that the duck just loved swimming with peple, it would swim behind you then turn and have you follow it, it was bizzare! We started a game of phase 10 but stopped midway because we were all exhausted. The next day we picked up the speed boat at 8 am. We spent the day going out on the lake. The first spot we went to was awesome, it had this natural jetty like thig tu could swim out to-the water being over 80 degrees-and the girls and I had a blast breaking off pieces of this natural sanbar and "making sand", we even got enough to make a sand castle atop this huge rock in the lake. The boys fished the whole tie there. We then ate lunch and went to another location that was more rock. The layering in the rock was absolutely amazing. The boys fished, and christi as well. Melissa and I swam off on our rafts to investigate this little "island rock" a bit away. We found there was a perfect divot in it where we could place our foats and kinda be submerged in water and be lying down. We both got fried after a bit and decided to cool off after a massive wave shoved melissa out of the divot into the lake! As we got closer to the boat, I saw something in the water that kinda looked like a 5 dollar bill. I commented to melissa that that would be cool if we found 5 bucks, we could be so lucky to find a treasure! She thought it looked like a bottle, a message in a bottle, so now we HAD to get it up! Bless Nathans heart, he tried tirelessly for like 15 minues to get that thing to a spot he could dive to and show us who was right. He gave it his all with the boat oar when christi finally tired of our antics and dove for the thing. What was it you ask?! An old Budweiser can filled with lake muck!!! That was our treasure, but it was fun anyhow! We went home, made dinner and played a few more hands of our phase 10 game, Tim and I tied with 2 phases left when we quit again for the night. The next day we went out again on the speed boat. We first went through this amazing canyon ride. Let me just tell you, you realize the awesomeness of the world through this ride, the rock creations and the colors, the water, its almost too much totake in! Then we went to another beach spot that had a red sand beach. I collected clam shells wih beautiful pink and purple hues. We swam in HOT lagoons with aaqua water. Small sunfish swam right to us as we sat there on natural rock chairs. It was so much fun!!! It started to get choppy though and we headed back early, but not before Alan discovered how to "spray"the boat with cold water on the way back! We ate dinner, then swam in the lake with quackers, then fished. Yep, I caught a catfish! I wont tell you that christi caught like a million of themm and even hooked a massive 15 pound carp. cuz that would make my one look stupid ya know... Melissa and I decided that we couldnt leave without making someone elses day when they found a "message in a bottle". So Sobe bottle in tow, and wonderous words of wisdom, we set our bottle free off the end of the dock. In ten years we will see if the finders have followed our instructions about the words of wisdom and return them to us. Hey, Alan, you never know!! LOL! We all slept kinda fitfully as we were all burned crisply, and morning came too soon. We packed up and cleaned the boat, waved a sad farewell wave to quackers and headed home. We got home last night around 6, and reality started again...

So there is your update. Jordan turned 7 on the 1st while we were gone, so we havent done his birthday yet, but we will and I will update you on that one. Thanks for reading, please excuse the million typos I know were in here, it took me almost 2 hours to write, and its now well after midnight. I'll try to write more often, school is about to start and some normalcy will again be practiced!! Love to y'all Holly