Bear Lake

During the summer us girls and our kids headed to Beak Lake with my mom for a few days.  We spend hours swimming at the pool and hours playing in the water at the beach.  It was really nice being able to get away for a few days.

Anna loved playing in the sand...and eating it.

Caitlyn and Ashlyn

Rilynn and Anna

Crue building a sandcastle

I can't get enough of how cute this little girl looked in her swimming suit.

Looking for seashells

Tina and Anna

And Alexa and Anna

Firework Performance

Claire and Brexlie were pretty much inseparable all summer long.  I have mentioned before that one of their favorite things to do was make up dances, search their closets for matching outfits to wear for the dance (Tara and I have since just started buying them matching outfits)  make invitations and then come up with a dance.

Well these two cute girls came up with a great idea…they were going to decorate a trailer, have their dads take the trailer down to the park and put it in the middle of the ball field where the town residents will be waiting for the Independence Day fireworks, and then they would perform their new dance (danced to Firework by Katy Perry) for everyone to see while their dad’s set off fireworks behind the trailer.  They were also going to throw out star-shaped sunglasses and candy to all the kids.

We had to change some of their plans but it still turned out to be a great night.  They put on quite the performance.

 Claire and Brexlie spent hours decorating the trailer with balloons, streamers, and chalk. (Plus they spent hours doing a lemonade stand to earn the money needed to put on their little performance.  They bought all the decorations and candy themselves.)

 Brexlie's cousin came to the show and he had put together some sort of scooter club so the girls ended having the scoot club (the neighborhood boys) doing their tricks in the background.  Claire and Brexlie called the boys their backup dancers.  You can't really see it but there are about five boys lined up down the road behind Crue waiting for their turn to go off the little jump that was behind the trailer.  

 Claire and Brexlie doing their dance.  They did such a good job.

The girls with their scoot club backup dancers.

Throwing out candy and glowsticks (couldn't find any star-shaped glasses) after the dance.

It was such a fun night.  We had pretty much the entire neighborhood out to watch the dance and afterwards we did fireworks.  We sure love our little neighborhood.

Family Campout

As always we all got together for the Clark Family Campout.  We had lots of fun and it was so nice all getting together.  I am so glad that there are still some traditions that we have continued to have even after our grandparents have been gone for many years.

 Crue playing ladderball with Levi.

The kids love playing with Luke and every year they talk him into taking them on a hike.

 Grandma and Claire playing down by the water.

Daddy and Anna

The whole group of us...well almost the whole group.  This year we were lucky enough to have Aunt Dawna, Uncle Mike, and Uncle Paul in town.

Anna loved having lots of people hold and entertain her.

Crue and Lucy climbing on the rocks.

Whenever we have a family party Crue will search out Ben and hang out with him most of the time. Ben is really so good with Crue and they have lots of fun together. Here they are roasting marshmallows together.

Ashlyn eating a smore.

Skull Valley

As part of the James Palmer Family Reunion a bunch of us got up early and drove out to Skull Valley to see some of the sites out there.  The first place we went to was to see the remnants of one of the houses he built.  You could still see the rock foundation and part of the stone fireplace.

Claire, Grandpa, and Crue

 Here is what is left of the building used to keep their food cold.  Inside you could see where the water would come in and circle around the outside walls before leaving the building. 

Anna, Grandpa, and Crue

We also saw lots of Mormon crickets out there. We were able to place a quarter next to this one without him moving just so you can see how large they could be. Looking at how big they are it is easy to see how they were able to destroy the early Saint's crops so quickly. 

Our last stop was to see the schoolhouse that one of our ancestors built long ago. 

Grandma Holly, Tina, Grandpa Holly, Anna, and Crue

10 Months Old

 Our sweet little Anna is ten months old.  This last year has flown by and we are not ready for her to be growing up so fast.  Here are a few things we don't want to forget.

From day one Anna has always hated bath time. She would scream and cry for the whole two minutes it took to give her a bath. This is the first time that she had a smile on her face when we gave her a bath.  I'm not sure what changed this last month but now she loves bath time.   

 

 I should also mention the reason for giving her a bath this time.  Crue had opened up a bottle of jam (he will literally eat it by the spoonful if he can get away with it) and then left it on the kitchen floor. I walked into the kitchen to find an extremely happy baby Anna  taking advantage of the situation. She was covered from head to toe in jam. 

We were watching my sister's twin boys for a little bit.  Anna crawled right over and just stared at both of them.  She wasn't sure what to think about this.

 She likes to watch me sweep the floor and once I get everything swept into a pile she will crawl over and sit right in the middle of it with a big grin on her face. 

A few more things about Anna.
-She loves to eat bananas and spaghetti squash
- She has started to follow Crue around the house especially when he is holding something in his hand.  I think she has figured out that there is a good chance it is food and at some point part of it will fall on the floor and she will be ready and waiting.  She keeps a really close eye on him when he has a sucker.  She has quickly learned that he is not very good at putting his sucker sticks in the garbage and there is usually a little bit of sucker left on that stick.
-In the last two weeks she has finally got some teeth.  Not one or two, but three teeth with the fourth breaking through  any day now.
-During the last two weeks she has also started walking around with one of those walker toys..
-This last month she has also started to wave hello and goodbye.
-She has been saying "dada" for months but this last month she has started saying "baba" and "mama".  However she only says "mama" when she is telling me she wants her "baba".
-Her favorite thing to do each day is play with the door stops that are attached to the wall.  They make this boingy noise that she just loves.  And when she is tired of that she will unscrew the door stop from the wall, leave it there, and move on to the door stop in another room.
-She is completely a daddy's girl now.  I miss the days when she would only come to me and we would hang out all night long because she would only sleep if I was holding her.
-Our sweet little Anna has several nicknames.  Dad calls her Anna Banana.  Mom calls her Annabelle. Crue's nickname for her happens to be my favorite.  Fo Fanna...as in Anna Anna bo Banna, Banana fanna Fo Fanna, Me My Mo Manna, Anna!!
   

Cache Cave

Over the summer we were able to go up the Wyoming and visit Cache Cave.  Cache Cave is a cave that a lot of the pioneers used as a stopping place when they were crossing the plains.  Many times it was used as a shelter when women were giving birth, travelers and animals could seek shelter here and it got its name because early traders would use the cave to store their goods.  The cave is covered with the names of the people who stopped here. The reason for our visit was to see the name of my Great-great grandfather James Palmer who passed through here while on a mission.  

The cave is now on private property and is only open to the public once a year so I am really glad we took the opportunity to go and to teach our kids more about our ancestors.

James Palmer's name in the stone 

Rilynn, Claire, Caitlyn and Crue inside the cave.

Playing some more in the cave.  Every day is an adventure with my little Crue buddy.  Notice the animal bone in his hand??  Well I wish I had when I was taking the picture.  I, however did not notice the bone until much later when he was down on his hands and knees with a bone in his mouth saying "Look mom!!  I am a puppy dog." 

Another random/funny/noteworthy thing about our trip.

So we park the good ol' minivan on the side of a dirt road near the cave and we are literally out in the middle of nowhere. Luke goes to get Anna out of the carseat.

Luke:  Why is Anna still in her pajamas?

Me:  She has had a blow-out everyday this week so I didn't want to get her dressed yet in case she had one on the way here.  Her clothes for the day are by the seat.

Luke:  I am pretty sure she is fine.

Luke picks her up out of the carseat and he notices that he is wrong....way wrong.  Blow-out mess is all over her belly, arms, legs, back, and is currently dripping on his pants and shoes.

My thoughts are that you can either get upset or you can laugh.  I laugh....Luke does not.    And the fact that we are out in the middle of nowhere and this is the worst blow-out yet only makes it more funny to me....and more irritating to Luke.   I couldn't stop laughing which made him more mad so he finally sent me and the other two kids along while he cleaned up him and Anna.  I am pretty sure he used the entire package of wipes with that mess.  And look, he is still loving on his sweet little Anna.

There was this cool hole on the ceiling of the cave so Grandma Holly and Rilynn had me stay inside the cave while they went around up on top.

A view of the cave from the dirt road.

 

 My full of life, adventurous little boy. 

Just a random picture I found on the internet of Cache Cave.

Just a few favs from this summer

We started watching my niece again this summer.  Crue has been totally loving having her here to play with during the day.  Here they are with some nerf guns shooting the monsters that might be coming up the stairs.

Claire became best friends with a girl in our neighborhood and each day was filled with crafts, swimming, riding bikes, baking, and most importantly making up dances.  At least once a week they had a new dance for us that they had come up with.  This is pretty much how it would go...

1- Spend hours going through each other's closets trying to come up with outfits for the dance.

2 - Decide what treats you wanted to make for those that came to your dance.

3 - Make and deliver invitations to everyone in the neighborhood

4 - Hurry and make up a dance or talk the older girls in the neighborhood into helping with your dance.

Here is the invitation to their first dance of the summer.  I just smile every time I look at it.

 Brexlie and Claire all ready for their first performance.

 

They had the older girls in the neighborhood help them with this dance.

 They even talked some of the little brothers into helping out.

This handsome boy of ours had a lot going on this summer.  Right as summer began he noticed that all the other boys in the neighborhood rode their bikes without training wheels.  It didn't matter that the other boys were between four and eight years older than him.  He begged me to take the training wheels off and refused to let me put them back on.  Several times a week we would go out and practice for quite awhile and in about two weeks (at 3 yrs and 3 mo. old)  he was riding without training wheels.  Of course the next week he noticed that the boys were going off of jumps and he had to give that a shot too.  Then he noticed that they were all using big kid scooters (razors) and suddenly his mickey mouse scooter was being left behind and he was taking Claire's razor to go ride with them.  He had a great summer.

I put Claire in swimming lessons at the beginning of summer and then a month later I put them both in lessons.  The first time I had Crue in lessons earlier this year he hated it and didn't finish the session so I wasn't sure how it would go this time but he ended up loving it.  He even jumped off the diving board several times.  We were so proud of him and how great he did.  Here he is sitting on the edge of the pool waiting to get in.

 He always had some "great idea" that he was wanting to try out.  Here is one of his less dangerous ones.  He wanted to see how fast his John Deere tractor could go.

I think I must have blocked most of his "great ideas" from my mind because I can't seem to remember a lot of them.  I just remember thinking all summer long that any day now we would end up in the ER with this boy all because of one of the great ideas.  The only one I remember right now is walking into his room when he was supposed to be taking a nap to find him almost to the ceiling because he thought it would be a great idea to use his blinds as a ladder. 

This little beauty loved sitting outside in the evening and watching all the big kids play.

Claire and Rilynn both earned a ticket to ride the zip line out at the Miller Motorsports Park.  The tickets were given to the kids that had really good attendance at school.  They were each supposed to ride with an adult but Crue tells the story best what happened.

"Uncw Tim wouldn't ride with Riwynn because he was a chicken. And Aunt Steph wouldn't ride with Riwynn because she was being a big chicken and she was screaming wike a baby.  (They weren't even off the ground yet) It was so funny because she was screaming and screaming wike a baby. So she wouldn't go with Riwynn.  So Cwaire went with Riwynn the first time."    

Both girls absolutely loved it and got to go several times.  Claire got to go with Rilynn and then Luke and I.  Rilynn went with Claire and then we eventually talked Tim and Steph into going and I am not sure who screamed the most.  We had a great time.

And of course lots of fun in the water.  We would have the bigger pool, the giraffe pool, or the slip and slide out almost every day.