We were home for a few days this week!  Cheyenne and Calianne were able to go back to tennis.  Bethany is learning a little tennis, too!  Ben could learn with Beth but he refuses.  I guess he's just a little too young for organized classes of anything quite yet!  Still, it's fun to watch the rest of them play tennis.

Sarah and Megan played some tennis, too, over at the high school as part of open court.  Savannah got to go to four cross country practices in a row!

Megan listened to a recorded book and weeded the entire garden and cleaned all the bathrooms.

Over the last two weeks, Sarah, Megan, and Mariah have been working their way through the Michael Vey series and the Delirium series.  They do that sometimes where they all get interested in the same books and pass them around.  I think it's pretty awesome.  I like seeing them all draped around the front room each reading a different book.  They all read The Guardian the week before that -- even Savannah!  Savannah is trying to work her way through The Poisonwood Bible for a school summer assignment.  She is not enjoying it as much as I did.  There is a lot of sadness in that book!  And no magic.  :(

Cheyenne and Calianne and Bethany and Benjamin played with all the kids they could possibly find.  They keep themselves busy and have tons of fun.  Cheyenne has been reading more because she wants to earn a mini webkinz that she saw at the store.  She's pretty determined!

On Thursday, we packed the van up again and headed to Bear Lake for Camp Skinner.  Thursday we swam in the campground pool and visited with Grandpa and Mariah.  In the night, Matt, Jacob, and Dena's families arrived.  Friday we went to the lake and played on the beach and took turns going out in the boat.  Savannah, Megan, and Mariah all got up on the skis!  The beach was wonderful with lots of shallow, clear, warm water that the little ones ran through and played in.  The rest of us sat under the shade and visited!  It was a fun, sun-drenched day!

Saturday dawned cloudy and grey.  We got a little swimming in for the young ones at the campground pool.  We decided to cut our visiting short, though, when it started to rain.  We're sure glad we went, though.  It's always so fun to see everybody and hear what they're doing and renew those family ties!  We can't wait until next year!

On Monday of this week, we packed up the van again and took off for Pallisades!  This is our fourth summer camping there so you should remember that it has a lake and a sandy beach and it's beautiful.  I love it.  Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik didn't come this year and we missed them but we did have the adventure with them in Yellowstone so we felt appeased.  We did invite some friends from our ward, though.  Two of Megan's friends, Hannah and Rebekah, came and my friend, Jen, Rebekah's mom, came as well.  It was really fun!  We did have some thunder storms every day . . . but we had some sunshine, too, and that was all we needed.

Hannah, Rebekah, Megan, Sarah, and Savannah.

I mean, really, why NOT bike in the lake?

Yes, this is me doing what I do best at Pallisade!

We did some minnow catching, too!

Savannah made some progress on her summer reading book!

And THIS is our lake house -- I mean, tent.  :)  We were right on the beach!

This tree is where Mariah finished her book!

We stayed Monday through Thursday.  Kevin had to stay in Springville to work, but he did come down Wednesday evening for a little while.  It was great fun to see him.  We had great neighbors, too.  On Tuesday night we got invited for an outdoor showing of The Incredibles on a screen outside someone's trailer.  It was tons of fun.  We went swimming one more time on Thursday after we were packed up.  Jen and I decided to swim across the lake since "It wasn't that far . . ."  You'll be happy to know that we did wear life jackets.  We were happy to know that our daughters loved us enough to take pity on us and came out to drag us the rest of the way back in the canoe.  Haha!  It was so fun.

Savannah worked Friday and Saturday.  Sarah played tennis.  Megan bought herself an ipod touch with her money from umping and she is super excited about that!  Mariah got to go to a party with her softball team.  Chey and Cali and Beth played with all their friends that they hadn't seen for four whole days!

Saturday morning we had a ward breakfast and outdoor building clean-up.  All of the girls helped and there were a ton of people there and we got a lot done.  I was proud of my girls for working hard.

Saturday afternoon we bought Beth and Ben a new bed.  Bethany is five and still sleeping in a toddler bed.  Ben was still in the crib.  We bought a daybed with a trundle bed for Ben.  It's really nice B&B love it and the rest of the kids are all crazy jealous.  Of course.

I got a new calling this Sunday.  I'm now the second counselor in the Young Women's Presidency over the Beehive 12-13 year old girls.  I'm happy about it.  I think it's going to be tons of fun!  We'll see if we can do some good, too.

I don't have many pictures this week!  It's sad because I saw a lot of people that I don't often see.  I think I am better at taking pictures of my own family.  I need to get a little braver with other people, I guess.  Or insist that they take a picture with my camera, too!

On Sunday we got together for a picnic dinner with all my cousins who are in the area.  It was tons of fun!  More people than I thought showed up!  Even my sister Amy and Maggie brought their families up in order to go.  My daughters had asked me why they didn't know who my cousins were and this gave me a chance to show them.  They were very interested and liked meeting their second cousins and mostly thought it was really cool.  I thought it was really cool, too.  I told them a lot about my dad's side of the family.  I wished my dad could have been there, too!

The only picture I got was when I posed with my sister Amy, and the two cousins closest to our age who we did so much with at family reunions, etc., Wendy and Jenny!  If I ever get access to the other pictures, I will post them, too.

These are all the first cousins who were there!

So, on Monday Amy and Maggie and their families stayed and we got a chance for a great visit!  Chey and Cali still wanted to go to their tennis class, so they brought Kayla with them.  Megan and Becca and Emily went to see a movie and the rest of us went to the Spanish Fork Resevoir.  You can see pictures from when I took the kids two weeks ago . . . I was apparently too busy visiting to take any pics!

Amy left Tuesday morning and Maggie left Tuesday evening.  It was sure fun having them and my kids sure loved being with their cousins.  Maggie even took two of my girls with her:  Megan and Mariah!  They had to finish out our annual "Week with the Gillespies," though this year they did half at the Gillespie home.  They've built some strong friendships there that I think we all value.  I know I do.  :)

Monday was also the first day of the softball tournament for Mariah!  Her team played two games in the scorching heat that day.  Both games went into extra innings but in the end they lost both.  Sad!  But happy, too, since it was very hot!  Mariah played great and pitched during both games.  She also stole home and hit well.  She had a great time.  She's really had fun all season.  I'm glad she told us she wanted to play.  It was fun to watch her having so much fun.

We didn't see Sarah much the first three days of the week because she was working as scorekeeper for the aforementioned softball tournament.  She came home at 11:45 and 10:30 on Monday and Tuesday.  That's P.M!  Fortunately it was on the fields just walking distance from our home.  She had tons of fun being scorekeeper, too.  She made friends with the other scorekeepers and officials and just loved being at the fields.  It's been a great job for her.

Sarah's up in that window!

Savannah heard back about her AP scores and found out that she passed both of them!  Yay, Savannah!  She got 3s on AP US History and AP English.  She worked hard for those and we're proud of her.  She worked this week and even took her cousins to Funfinity while they were hear to buy them each a little something!

While Megan and Mariah were gone the latter half of this week, Cheyenne came to me one morning to announce that she had finished reading five books so far this summer.  That is significant since I told them that for every five books they read I 'd take them for a happy meal at McDonald's.  Calianne spent the whole rest of the morning reading so she could come, too.  We had a fun lunch together!

On Friday I drove down to Cedar City to retrieve Megan and Mariah.  It sounds like they had a great time watching movies, playing games, going to discovery park, and exploring the shops in Cedar City.  Megan even got to go to a church dance while she was there.  Becca and Emily turned 14 this week, so it was their first church dance!  I think they all had a ton of fun.

The only other big news is that Sarah went bike shopping with her dad yesterday to use all that money she's been earning!  She bought herself a beautiful, NICE bike.  She should be able to use it her whole life . . . barring any loss or theft.  I hate those two things!  I hope she'll get a lot of enjoyment out of it.  I wish I'd taken a picture . . .

The week of June 30 to July 6 we were on vacation!  Before we left, we had a quick present-opening party for Beth!  She got a new doll from us and dress and doll clothes from Grandma Elton!

We drove up to Kevin's Dad's house in Rexburg, Idaho on Saturday.  He had a great dinner waiting for us and then we had another party for Bethany!

 We also got to ride on the four wheelers!

On Sunday we went to church and visited.  We drove into Idaho Falls and visited Kevin's Aunt Alice and Uncle Lyle and saw some cousins.  Kevin gave us a tour on the way home of all the houses he lived in as he was growing up and took the kids to the graveyard where a lot of their ancestors are buried.  They learned a lot about their dad that day.  It was neat!

On Monday we went boating with Grandpa Skinner!  Savannah, Megan, and Mariah all got up on the skis!  Sarah pulled a muscle in her arm, but she'll get up next time!  The rest of us enjoyed the tube and swimming from the dock.  Thanks Grandpa for a great day!

On Tuesday we left to rendezvous with Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik to camp in Grand Teton National Park.  It was sooooo beautiful!  After we set up camp, we walked down for a look at the lake, then back for dinner and another party for Bethany Kate Skinner!  Grandma and Grandpa strung streamers and hung balloons from the lodgepole pines all around camp!

On Wednesday we drove into Yellowstone!  We stopped to picnic, skip rocks, and eat fudgesicles at Bridge Bay then it was on to the waterfall at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and finally watch Old Faithful erupt before heading back to camp!  We roasted marshmallows and had s'mores that night.

On Thursday we did one of my favorite hikes ever.  We took the ferry across Jenny Lake and hiked to Hidden Falls and then on to Inspiration Point.  It's sooo beautiful!  The kids were all great hikers.  Ben was a great hiker there but a real pain on the way back.  Mostly he wanted to go every direction but down, wanted to pick up every rock, and wanted to stay and watch the caterpillar for the whole day.  Kevin got the brunt of it.  He was a good sport and the view was worth it!

On Friday the kids played in the trees where we were camped and we went down to the lake and swam some more.  Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik also had a bunch of camping games set up in the trees that the kids enjoyed all week.  I finished my book.  It was a fun day!  We were also joined that day by Kevin's Uncle James and Aunt Shirlene.  Fun!

Saturday we headed back home, but not without a nostalgic long look backward at the beauty we left behind!  It was a great week and Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik sure made it fun!  Thanks to all!