We started this week with Ben back at the dentist to fill the last few of his cavities.  He didn't do as well this time and fought them most of the way!  They sure earned their money.  They may have even questioned their decision to go into the dental profession.  Still, the job finally got done.  We're hoping for no more of those in the future!

Wednesday was Kevin's and my 21st wedding anniversary!  You may remember that last year we were planning on hiking Timpanogos and then were foiled by bad weather.  Well, about a week ago, Kevin told me he was planning on taking the day off for our anniversary and we could do whatever I wanted--even hike Timp if I wanted.  I hadn't been planning on it at all so I hadn't been training for it at all, but it's been so hard to find a day that works for us, that I decided we should jump on that chance!  So, we woke up at 4:30 on the day of our anniversary and were on the trail by 6:15.  We spent the next four hours hiking UP.  It's a beautiful hike through pines and shrubbery and red and blue and yellow wildflowers.  You pass a waterfall at the first mile and several small streams trickle down the mountain and cross the path as you continue to climb.  Eventually though, the tops of the pine trees are at your feet and even the peaks next to you begin to dip below your eye level and you realize how truly epic this hike you've undertaken truly is!  This was also about the time that the continual hike up and the continual hard breathing and continual heightened heart rate and the continual burning in my legs caused me to start seeing black spots in my vision and contemplate, as I looked down the sheer face of the mountain I'd been climbing, what an awful place this would be to faint!  Gratefully, I made it to Emerald Lake which is a beautiful destination 5.3 miles from the trailhead.  Gorgeous!  I sat gingerly on a rock and ate some of my sandwich hoping it could refuel my legs as quickly as refueling a car.  Funny how legs aren't like that.  It was 2 more miles to the summit.  Two more miles UP and then I'd still need to use those same legs to get back down.  Instead, Kevin and I decided to try again another time.  I'll need to do some training before the next attempt!  The hike back down was HARD, using my legs now to stop me from tumbling downward with each step. Constantly stepping downward.  For two and a half hours!  Ow. ow. ow. ow.  My legs were shot for the next three days.  It sure was beautiful, though!  And we sure will remember this anniversary!  And Kevin was the perfect hiking partner, supportive and thrilled to be there, too--and he carried both the backpacks from about mile 2.  It was a great adventure and great to do together!  We are already trying to find a day to go back!

The next day we packed up the car and left for the Skinner reunion at Heise Hot Springs in Idaho!  Sarah spent the first few days of the week with her friend, Allyson, and her family at Lava Hot Springs in Idaho.  That was on our way, so we just stopped by and picked her up.  She had a great time, though, going down the river in tubes, playing in the pool, and jumping from the high dives.

When we arrived at Heise, Michael and Aftyn and their family were already there, as were Grandpa and Maria.  We got to hang out with them at the campground that day and at the pool the next.  We haven't seen them for three years so it was great fun to be together again!  Matt and Lynsey and their family showed up that night and we had a great dinner together before heading back to the pool for a couple of hours and then some s'mores around the campfire before bed.  We had great fun seeing them, too, and passing around their baby girl!  Saturday, Todd and Brady arrived and we had as many as we were going to get.  It's always fun to talk with Todd and Brady so we did a lot of that while Kevin, Matt, and Michael tackled the golf course.  When they got back, the boys were finally able to give their dad the rifle they'd all pitched in to get for him.  We left later that afternoon for home.  It was a great visit!

Grandpa helped Beth pull her last front tooth
the first night we were there!

Our kids with Michael's Braxon and Eizak.

Michael's Linkon giving us his "I don't trust you, yet!" look.

The boy cousins climbed and dug and explored on this mountain
at our campground.

The "arm bands" Sarah made for her boy cousins!

Megan with Matt and his Quincy.

Cheyenne with Matt's gun because, "This is Idaho!"

The whole crew this year!

On Monday of this week, I took Ben to the dentist to get cavities filled.  Poor kid.  It took about an hour and when we left his mouth was all numbed up.  After a couple of hours feeling came back into his mouth and we discovered that in spite of our best efforts, he had sucked on his lip.  By the end of the day, it was three times its normal size! 

That night Cali, Chey, Beth, and Ben went to Grandm and Grandpa Gazdik’s house for a fun visit and a sleepover.  The next morning, Sarah, Megan, Mariah, and I left for Stake Youth Conference:  two nights at Camp Kohowolo on Mount Nebo.  It was so fun!  The kids played games, listened to guest speakers, helped stack wood for a service project, had a dance, ate great food, and even had a testimony meeting.  There were a lot of great kids there and it was a super experience.  Sarah was one of the youth leaders and it was great to see her be in charge and take ownership for the experience.  I counted myself blessed to have been able to go and participate with my own teenage daughters!

 

Kyle Collinsworth from the BYU basketball team
 and his wife, Shay, from the BYU track team.

 

 

Sarah taught the "Bunny Bunny" Game

 

These are the kids and leaders from our ward who attended.

We got home Thursday around lunchtime.  That gave us time to unpack and repack before we left around 2:30 for a trip to Las Vegas!  This time Sarah stayed home.  She had work and her friend Allyson’s surprise birthday party which she was planning.  She had been excited for days to have the house to herself, but when we left, she wasn’t so sure about it!  It’s a good thing that she prefers the house full of people since that's the way it is most of the time!

We dropped off Megan in Cedar City so she could hang out with her cousins Rebecca and Emily.  She got to go see them in a parade, go to their pool/waterpark, go to a dance, go hiking, and go to their cabin up in the mountains for campfires and card games.  She had a great time!

We picked up cousin Elizabeth the same time we dropped off Megan so she could have some cousin time with Mariah!  The reason we went to Las Vegas was that Mariah’s schaper team had a tournament.  She got to hang out with us between games still, though.  She played in three games and only lost two.  She averaged 10 points a game and Kevin said she played great!

 

The rest of us did a lot of visiting!   On Friday, we went to my friend, Kim’s house where she fed us a fabulous lunch and we swam in her pool and the kids played and we visited.  It was tons of fun!  I love that girlfriend of mine!

 

 

 

 

Friday afternoon we hung out with Grandma and Grandpa Elton.  Grandma made us a great dinner; the kids played with toys; we all visited.  It was great fun.  Uncle John sent a box of ties to the family and Grandpa gave an impromptu tie-tying lesson to all the granddaughters.  They love their new skill!

 

Saturday we went to my brother Pete and Monica’s house for a barbecue lunch and swimming, the works!  Most of their kids were there and Samantha, his oldest, even came by for a little bit with her fiancé and we got to meet him!  We had a great time catching up with Pete and Monica and talking with their cute kids and watching the cousins play together.  Good memories were created right there!

My brother.  Racing his "bike."

After Pete and Monica’s, we went over to Diane’s for dinner!  I really scored on rounding up the invitations this time, didn’t I?  Diane made us a terrific meal and we got to see her cute little house and the room she has all set up for her new baby girl who will arrive late next month!  The kids had fun playing with her little boys and enjoyed the swings and trampoline in the backyard, too!

 

Sunday we went to Sacrament meeting and then got on the road.  We were going to stop at my brother, Dave’s, but Elizabeth was sick and we felt like we’d better get her home!  We also didn’t see my sister, Amy and her family this week, but she was in Florida, so that sounds fun, too!  What a week! 

 

The biggest news of the week is that Savannah received her mission call!  We found out Sunday that the call had been issued on July 2nd, which led to some panic that the call had been lost in the mail.  Then Wednesday, we got a letter for Savannah from church travel services which should not have come until after the call.  This led to full-blown panic that the call had been lost in the mail and some calls to church headquarters.  The call came the next day, though, on Thursday.  Savannah invited a bunch of friends over and had family on the phone and on Google Hangout to watch virtually.  It was loud and exciting!  Savannah read the letter aloud and we all learned that she is called to the Toronto Canada mission where she will be teaching the gospel in the Mandarin Chinese language.  Oh, the smile on that girl's face!  She is going to do a great job!

Sarah worked Tuesday through Friday this week and when we passed the store Saturday said, "I am so glad I don't have to go in there today!"  She really loves her job, though, and her manager told me they really depend on her and she has risen to the responsibility.  She's been practicing tennis every spare minute and when she finishes that, she is working on finishing her sock monkey project of the last few years.  They are cute monkeys!

Megan has also been practicing tennis in addition to starting twice-a-day practices for cross country.  Runners are really some of the most masochistic people on the planet.  It gets results, though.  She is going to be fast!

Mariah also started the two-a-days with the cross country team and she had her last two basketball practices with Schapers.  She and Megan are pretty much wiped out for the rest of the day (or actually between their practices and after) but who can blame them!  They do a lot of reading when they can keep themselves awake to read the book!

Calianne and Cheyenne told me every night, "We'll clean our room tomorrow, Mom," and then when tomorrow came, they never wanted to!  Weird, huh?  They had lots of fun with friends this week, as usual.  I did get a chance to take them to the roller rink on Thursday. They earned free passes at school that needed to be used before the end of summer vacation.  Cheyenne had been asking me when we would use them since the first day of summer break!  Then when we went, she didn't feel well!  Poor girl!  She did start to feel better Friday and since she and Cali finished the summer reading program at the library, I took them to the end-of-program party:  The dog show!  It was pretty fun, too.

Bethany played with her friends and Cali and Cheyenne's friends and with Benjamin's friends!  She's kind of in the perfect spot in the last half of our family.  Benjamin and his friends dug out the pvc pipes that I had drilled holes in to water the garden but am not using this year, and they attached them in random configurations to the hose to make interesting sprinkler arrangements.  Bethany played with them while they did that (after she checked with me to see if I wanted to be mad at them or not, first)!  They had a great time.  I had no idea that it would be such a fun toy!  Sometimes you just never know!

Ben had the busiest week in our house this time!  A 12 year-old boy in our ward organized a "Boy's Camp" week for 4 to 8 yr olds.  For $12, Ben went every morning from 9:30 to 11:30 and got to play games, go on a treasure hunt, make race cars out of boxes, jump on the trampoline, play in the water, and basically have a terrific time with a bunch of little boys.  He loved it!  He also went to the dentist for the first time this week, which he didn't love quite as much and when I found out he has six cavities and we have to go back twice in the next month to get them fixed, I didn't love it quite so much, either!  He also "graduated" from his online preschool this week.  He got a cool hat and a couple of free books and he knows his ABCs a whole lot better than he did a year ago!  Go Ben!

Ben at the dentist's office.  He looks cool, anyway!

Graduation!

I fixed the washing machine this week--all by myself!  Alright.  Not quite.  I needed Kevin to put the motor back in and fix the clamps.  It was really heavy!  Still.  It was an accomplishment.  YouTube is a very handy resource.  Before YouTube, I never would have tried something like that.

Saturday Kevin and I took Cheyenne, Cali, Beth, and Ben to the new reservoir for a couple of hours and had a great time.  The water is still super cold but the kids mostly liked playing in the sand anyway.  Good memories!

This was the week of Girl's Camp!  Sarah, Megan, Mariah, and I had our stuff packed on the trailer the night before and left Monday morning.  We camped at a place called Lake Hill Campground just up the mountain from Ephraim.  It was about an hour and a half away and it was beautiful!  We camped in the Pines and the Aspens right next to a little lake where we kept a couple of canoes for the girls to use whenever they felt like it.  Our Youth Camp Leaders (YCLs) included both Sarah and Megan this year and they did a great job planning games, crafts, and devotionals!  Our theme played a little bit with the Frozen movie and we talked about "A Mighty Change of Heart" and how we could improve our relationships with ourselves, family, friends, and our Savior.  The girls had scripture study each day around the fire in their year groups with bookmarks outlining what they should read and the questions they could think and journal about.  We also played a ton of fun games getting to know each other, working together, and laughing together!  The girls made frames, journals, and bracelets. We also did certification and hiking.  Tuesday night we had an Epic object lesson activity where the girls learned about burdens, struggles, and trials and were given more and more rocks to carry as we hiked until a Savior figure came and took their rocks from them and they were welcomed to heaven.  It was very awesome.  I think truly, a fun time was had by all!

Back here on the homefront, Savannah left for work late and Dad came home early so that the four youngest had someone at home.  The softball tournament was in full swing at the park behind our house, so Dad and the younger ones would walk over to watch in the evenings.  Cali and Chey also got to go swimming with their friends a couple of times while we were gone, too!

On Saturday morning, Kevin ran a half-marathon in the canyon by our house.  He averaged 7:20 minutes/ mile for 13 miles!!  Holy Cow!  Yah, he was feeling pretty good.  Later that afternoon, he even went to play tennis with Sarah and Megan.  No problem.  When Kevin's health is good, it is really, really good!  I am happy for him to do these things that he loves.

We got news today that Savannah's status on the church website says that her call was issued July 2nd!  So . . . we should receive that big envelope sometime this week!  If you'd like to be on the Skype call when we open it, send me a text and let me know!  It is hard to tell who is more excited--Savanah or Kevin??