Busy Summer Times

We started the week enjoying the All-Star game in our sports gear.  Yes, the shirt Ian is wearing in this shot gets worn over a t-shirt pretty much every day.  He rocks (aka stinks) like that.

We had the fun chance to get together with some of our friends from our time in Minnesota.  Christa Ogden's son was awesome and organized the troops into a ton of fun games.

And it was great to be able to catch up with some of these fun people!  We kept marveling at how many kids we all have now.  It's a lot of people to get together and we were missing many more friends.

Swimming lessons were fun again this year.  Ian is a serious fish and it was hard to get catch him above the water.

Josie did a great job her first year!  She loved her teachers and stayed right by them the whole time.  It was funny because there was another Josie in her class which surprised us because we don't know very many floating around.

 Rachel was in a lot harder class than last year and was pretty tenative, but was brave and tried each skill.

 Here her teacher is coaxing her to try her nemesis knee dives.

Ian loved the noodles!

 Justin went to town on our old deck and we got almost all of the rotten deck/fence into a massive dumpster.

 Wow, it was a lot of work!

We were able to have some fun visitors from Texas overnight.  Melanie's kids Taylor and Colby joined us before they headed to Cedar City with Rachel for Science Camp.  Bridget took these three downtown to enjoy a few sights.

 We were even able to get into the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert last minute and it was pretty incredible!  Linsey Stirling violin and Nathan Pacheco vocal were the guest artists in the Conference Center.

 We even rode TRAX because they wanted to check train ride off their lists.

The next day we went out to the Great Salt Lake Migratory Bird Refuge for a quick walk.  Colby loved how big this "slow" sign was.

 And he requested a picture by our super tall sunflowers.

 Rachel took this one of geese.

 Here is some cute and tired kiddos.

 Both Colby and Taylor were so polite and patient with the little ones.  He was a cutie with Andy.

 And Ian continues his efforts and making him love all things Pokemon.

And Bridget was sick of the heat and decided to chop about 12 inches off her hair that she's sending in to charity.  Josie loves that they are "twins" with their "short cuts."