We had a fun night with the young women Wednesday.  We had planned to have a outdoor movie night in our back yard, but it evolved into a swimming party.  I was grateful Stacey offered her back yard and swimming pool because our back yard is full of everything that was in the garage! Kelley has been redoing the garage floor in the hut.  This is a pretty big deal.  I mean when we ever even think of moving, we have to say 'oh no, we could never move because that would require cleaning out the garage!' Kelley has so much stuff in that garage!  He is borderline hoarder.  I can't really say anything because I have stuff too, but his is kind of over the top amounts of things. (how many gas cans does one man need?) Well Kelley and KC have really been working hard out there.  They brought everything out of the garage...took several trips to the dump and a bunch of steel to the recycle place to trade in.  It has been a huge project but something that needed to happen real bad.  (They were actually searching for a stink that was somewhere in the garage...smelled like something had died.  Finally found some rotten eggs that had been left in the ice fishing sled  Ha!)Once they got everything out they cleaned the floor and walls till it was spotless.  Then they put this epoxy stuff all over the floor...let that set up overnight, then another coat of epoxy.  Then they put this speckle stuff on top that made it look really neat.

 

They found some treasures that have been buried for a while too.  I can't find my pictures of the finished floor, so I'll take some more and add them.  It looks really nice!

 

 

 

 The kids had a ball in Stacey's pool

 We grilled hot dogs and s'mores

 Played some water games

 Little birthday celebration for Sarah

Here's a few pictures from the last couple fishing trips.  That's just pure happiness there.

Isn't he the cutest?

 We are sure enjoying this boat!  It's gotta be the best one yet.  It's so comfortable I caught KC and Dan with their shoes kicked off, laying back on the couches having a nap while they were fishing!

 This was on the way up to Strawberry...there's a deer in there somewhere.  We saw several up in the hills and unfortunately, several that had been hit on the road.  They are such beautiful creatures...I seriously don't know how anyone could shoot them.

They were catching some good sized rainbows. We don't usually keep any, but some of these were so big, we decided to bring them home for some friends that like fish. 

 The water was just like glass.  So calm and peaceful up there.  The only thing making any racket was the birds.

 KC is always so careful to put sunscreen on, and it was a bright sunny day so he slathered up with some he found on the boat.  Only problem was that what he put on was not sunscreen,  it was Shea butter.(very deceiving container...I don't know where it even came from!)  Oh dear, I felt so bad for him.  He really got fried.

 Yesterday when we went up, we headed right for Haws point.  Ken next door had just been up there and said he caught a ton over there.  He  always goes up with Jerry and they fish from the shore.  So  we thought we would give it a try.  When we got close to that area, we heard people hollering and whooping it up.  There were two big pontoon boats full of Polynesian guys that were having some sort of competition to see who could catch the most fish....and they were catching one after another and really carrying on each time they did.  It was kind of entertaining at first...they are such a happy carefree people, but then it just got to be irritating because we were not catching any!  We thought sure they would scare any fish away cause they were being so loud, but it didn't seem to have any ill effects on their catching.  We decided to move to a different area and then we started catching too.  (And when I say we, I mean Kelley, KC and Dan.  I was pretty much skunked...well Dan let me hook one that had been nibbling on his line, but those don't count)  It was still such a fun day

We couldn't  stay too long cause we were feeding the missionaries at 5:00.  Kelley and KC cleaned the fish up there, then Kelley gave them to Judy, Belnaps, and Rick.  Later, Belnaps came by with a piece of the fish she had cooked.  She wanted Kelley to try it the way she cooks it.  They are the nicest people.  They bring their kids over to feed the fish and gather the eggs all the time.  It's nice to have them come play when I'm missing my own little ones.  They are really cute kids. Xiao Yu is trying to potty train Leila and she is really giving her fits.  She said Kelley probably saved the kids life when he showed up with the fish and played with them for a bit. ..  She said she was at her wits end after her daughter peeing on the floor for the 10th time that day.  She said she hasn't been able to go anywhere because Leila will just wet her pants. Have to admire her for powering through and refusing to put a diaper back on so she could take her out.  The kids wanted to get up in the chicken coop and play which was fine.  Then the older boy hollers out the door at his dad, "Hey Patrick...your daughter just peed in the chicken coop!"  I was dying!  This kid is really a character! 

Bonnie, Stacey and I decided to run over to Stephanie's house to wish her a happy birthday.  Can I just say how much I love these ladies!  Bonnie made her a birthday card that was absolutely hilarious!  She has got to be one of the funniest people I know. 

This morning I went on a hike with Bonnie up to Ferguson Canyon.  We have been trying to think of a place to take the young women and young men for a hike for our combined activity next week.  Bonnie is an avid hiker so she knows  a lot of places to go, but we needed it to be do-able by everyone. She had seen this hike on the Internet and it sounded really good (only 3 1/2 miles round trip) but we thought we had better check it out before we took all the kids up there.

It was kind of strange, you got to the trail head from a residential neighborhood...then walked down a dirt road for a ways, then it headed right up the mountain.  It started out to be a real nice hike.  Easy and real pretty scenery.  The trail followed along a little stream so there were places where we had to cross the water (still not too hard) and beautiful waterfalls to see along the way.

 This was just at the start of the hike...such a pretty view looking out over the valley up there.

 Then it started getting hard.  This was pretty steep and the dirt and gravel made it pretty slippery

 We got a little off the main trail about half the way up there (fork in the road!)  So when we were looking for the markers it was talking about in the hike description Bonnie had printed off, we were not seeing any of them!  We kept going though and it continued to get more and more difficult.  We decided at this point, that this hike would not work out for the kids.

 When we got to the top of the mountain, we sat  down to rest for a bit.  A guy came by and we asked him if this was the way to the top.  He said no, that the trail that we should have been on was on the other side of the mountain.  At the fork in the trail, we had taken the wrong path.  Oh well, we  were fine with that.  Then on the way down, we got off the path again and were on some animal trail!  It was really thick with bushes and little trees, but we didn't know what else to do so we just kept going down.  We both fell a bunch of times and I walked right into a low branch of a tree.  Ha!  That's going to leave a mark!  We finally found our way back to the main path and made it down the rest of the way.  Coming down was much harder than going up.  The slippery sandy parts were really bad coming down.  We had to just sit on our bottoms ( after falling) and slide.  It was a lot of fun though.  I wouldn't mind trying it again and trying to stay on the right trail.  It was so beautiful up there.  We are so lucky to have these amazing mountains so close to us.  I want to hike a lot more this summer!

Well I've gotten pretty far behind in my journal keeping, but I couldn't let another day go by without giving a shout out to my sweet Emily.  She turns one today!  I can hardly believe it...it seems like yesterday that I was at Camille's waiting for her to make an entrance into this world.  I have to say she has been like a ray of sunshine straight from heaven...a true joy and a blessing to our family. 

She was given the nickname PB at a young age and it has stuck...because she really has been a Perfect Baby!  She slept through the night right away, eats really well and is just pleasant to be with. Her little face lights up when she sees you and she has a smile that will melt your heart. She is always happy to see you and gives you the most amazing snuggles.  I love when she puts her little arms around my neck and lays her head on my shoulder...Really nothing much better than that.

Here's a few pictures from my recent visit...

 Helping me sort my floss.

 This was the funniest thing.  Emily loves to play with Camille's moles.  It's kind of like a silky blankie that baby loves to rub...but it's Camilles moles.  She has been wanting to have them removed but I think this helped her decide.

 She also loves Rose's dog food...yup she heads straight for it every chance she gets and  shoves it in her mouth.  Rose doesn't mind sharing.

Happy Birthday sweet Emily!  What an amazing future you have ahead of you!  I know it's going to be as bright and beautiful as you are!