Summer Doings Part One

 The summer has flown by!  School starts tomorrow, so I thought I would try to at least get half of our summer pics up before then!  The above picture was taken at Cascade Springs.  Look close to see the fish!

 Eden celebrated her 7th birthday at the beginning of August!  I can't believe how old she is getting!  She is such a great sister to her siblings, and I enjoy doing things with her as well!  She loves to think deeply about things, and I'm so grateful everyday that I get to be her mother! (There will be more birthday stuff in a later post!)

 Eden lost another one of her front teeth, so she has a HUGE gap in her mouth at the moment!  I told her she'd better not try to wiggle anymore teeth for a while or we'll have to go get her some fake teeth till her real ones come in!

 We've gone lots of places this summer, including the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.  EmmaLee had to get a picture of her on the frog!

 At the end of July we went to a big family reunion for Rob's Dad's family.  You can see the German flag hanging under the hoop.  Rob's dad's family had to sneak out of Germany at the end of WWII when Rob's dad was only 5.  All of Rob's uncles still have major German accents!  It was a fun day, although we sure missed Helmut!  He is the first of his siblings to have passed away, even though he was the youngest by several years!

 Each of the brother's wore a specific color to the reunion, and Helmut's family color was green.  So, our niece, Hailey, made these shirts for our kids and for her little brother who is Ammon's age!  I thought they all looked super cute!

 This is a picture of all of Shirley and Helmut's grandchildren, except for Brad who is on a mission, Mason who had to work, Jayden, who was being a stinker and hiding in the bathroom, and Caydin who is with Helmut in heaven!  It's been several years since this many of the grandkids have been together at the same time!

 My sister Laurie spent a couple of days with us, so we went on some adventures!  This was at Smith

and Morehouse.  The spot we were at had some cool trials and "hideouts" for the kids to play in, which they loved!

 Our spot by the lake.

 We were also able to get together with my mom's side of the family in July as well.  It was fun to see how big our family is getting!  The kids on the tramp are my kids, my siblings kids, my cousins kids, and a couple of my youngest cousins and my sister!  It doesn't seem like it's been long enough to have so many little kids in the family again!

 Isaac was excited to catch some fish with dad on Deer Creek!

 We went up to Cottonwood Heights to watch the parade for Pioneer Day with my brother and his kids, and also my mom and my sister.  The kids love parades, and they quite enjoyed this one as well!  EmmaLee was so funny, too, because every time a float with some kind of royalty winner on it came by, she yelled out "Hello Princess!", and more than once they heard her and waved back!  She loved it!

 It didn't take the kids long to discover that the louder and more active they were, the more likely they would get candy thrown in their direction!

 This isn't the best picture, but this dragon came down the side and stood right behind EmmaLee, who was looking the other way.  She turned around and saw him, and kind of jumped and came over to the side, but while I was expecting her to cry, she started laughing and thought it was a great joke!

 We were also able to go to the train museum in Ogden this summer.  The kids really enjoyed the museums, especially the big trains outside.  You can actually climb up on them and all around, which was pretty cool!  I was surprised by how big the trains actually were!  I don't think I've been up close to a train before, and they are huge!

 Climbing on the engine.

 This was inside the museum.  That's one thing I liked about the museum was that it had a lot of hands on displays for kids to look at, climb on and into to!

 Outside on the train again!

 Eden barely made it to half of the wheel size! 

 This is the Upper Provo Falls.  It was gorgeous!  I didn't realize we had waterfalls like this in Utah that you didn't have to hike to, or look at from a major distance! 

This is the lower part of the river just beyond the waterfall.  Very beautiful!