June ended with an amazing trip to Utah.
Eliot was thrilled with the planes, and the ride even though it included extreme (as in everyone screaming in unison) turbulence.
Th boys were in heaven at Grandma and Grandpa's new house. They played things like "noodle wars" with the cousins for endless hours.
Bodie
Ira and Truman
Midway's "Brag tags" were a good motivator for getting us out and about, exploring different activities in the cities. Ira is still a bit obsessed with his tags.
The Simons boys teaching our kids how to bowl.
Playing in Grandma and Grandpa's water feature.
We loved meeting the new cousins:
Nelson.
Pete
Taggart
Watching Oklahoma (in Utah)
Music
And dance parties
Ant and I got to visit in the Timpanogos temple, where we got married. Excuse the PDA.
The boys and I visited my nephew James at BYU.
The BYU MOA. James is one cool kid. He got the art appreciation gene, I guess. :)
We had a little Francis/Lund/Proulx reunion, in which the guys imitated their before and after dietbet shots. They lost about 60 lbs between the 3 of them.
Beautiful Mary and Diane!
And the Francis clan!
Ira took this as we celebrated surviving a very close call in which we were almost run off the road into railing by a mac truck trying to shift into our lane.
We arrived to Idaho for an Arave reunion and Molly's wedding, alive. :) It was a beautiful wedding.
Playing at the Lake. Eliot and I were too wimpy for the freezing water.
But our polar bears weren't.
Idaho Falls, where we were staying, hosted the second largest fireworks in the country. It reminded me of Marietta.
We were able to visit a load of family history sights and learn about family history on the Arave side.
The kids were having a "who can make their eyes the biggest" contest. For some reason the word "morbid" comes to mind with Ira's expression. But Jean is pretty cute.
I led a little practice wedding cake activity with Lauren and Addie.
For future reference. A cake this tall doesn't work with one piece of fondant. We had to get creative to cover all the crazy ripples on the bottom half.
And then the kids enhanced it by making it an arctic, climbing, lego cake.
Also for future reference. This much fondant, and this many rice crispies take 12 bags of marshmallows, and can last at least 3 family reunion sized potluck dinners.
Fishing.
We absolutely loved our time with family. Thank you Quinns, Araves, and Francises for an amazing time!
Soon after getting back we had a visit from my sister's family, the Durants.
Australian Footie
Eliot and Thomas getting acquainted.
The Village at the Henry Ford Museum.
This is what the Durant boys look like when exhausted and taking a "break" by watching a 1920s show choir. :) Cracks me up.
Th boys with Uncle John. Eliot didn't want to let him go.
My beautiful sister, Carolyn. It was a short visit of 24 hours. It's amazing how many happy memories you can pack in, in such a short amount of time.
Pioneer Day at the park. That's an upside down marshmallow wagon.
That pretty much sums up our July. Eliot's speech is still progressing and the boys are still overly aggressive. I hope they survive each other's childhood. But when they're not being too rough, they seem to really enjoy each other, thank goodness. On to August!
