Strawberry

Friday night we spent a night camping up Mud Creek at Strawberry Reservoir with Grandma Melanie and Jack.

Kyle went up a day earlier to get in more fishing and ended up keeping 3 big fish for me to eat today!

Mostly we played frisbee though.

Tai was SO proud of herself every time she caught it! She'd jump up and down, all excited and got pretty good at catching it too! #alligatorhands

Saturday morning Melanie rented a fishing boat that Kyle got to go fish on and they killed it. They caught so many fish! I'm glad they had fun.

We came home Saturday afternoon and I took Kasen and Tai to the Peterson Family reunion at the farmhouse in Cedar Fort. We have 27 cousins and 18 of them were able to come to the reunion.

Kasen had so much fun in the bounce house with Brinley and Carter. And Uncle David made a bowl on his pottery wheel that everyone signed. Kasen and Tai even signed it, but I didn't even know that until we got in the car...

First Week

Wednesday, August 17th Kasen started SECOND grade! He is in Mrs. Cable's class and has liked his first week so far. Tuesday we did back to school blessings and I love what Kasen's blessing said about being blessed to "feel what decisions to make, that the good choices and the bad choices will be easier to see and the good choices will be easier to make." 

He's also doing some home lunches this year now that school lunch isn't free. Mostly he likes picking out a candy to put in there.

Tai and I had warm chocolate chip cookies waiting for him when he got home from school and then we went with Marissa and Oliver to play at Manilla Pond in Pleasant Grove. I'd been wanting to go all summer! It has a perfect little sandy beach area for the kids to play in.

There were also lots of ducks! There was digging with ducks and Tai doing dolphin dives.

When we first got there Kohen was saying, "Chee-kin" but we got him calling them ducks by the end.

Tai Lynn lost her first tooth Thursday night! It was a little bit dramatic when her loose tooth was bleeding, but then she decided she wanted to eat a homemade bagel and let me pull it out for her with some floss! It was the first tooth I've pulled. Kasen has lost 8, but I didn't pull any of his. 

Her new smile is super cute.

Today Tai started KINDERGARTEN!! She's in Mrs. Timeteo's afternoon class. She crushed Kindergarten testing that took her all of like 6 minutes. She filled out an About Me page with a picture of her favorite animal, a pink giraffe and she wrote that her favorite food is chicken nuggets. I love that she wrote it on the edge of the box.

It's just not the first day of school unless she's wearing a rainbow dress. Third year in a row. And nearly the same pink, sparkly unicorn shoes she had last year.

Drop off was much better than when Kasen went in 2020. This time they had a "red carpet" and signs and breakfast food and an actual welcome to school. But it was also so hot! Tai kept asking where the shade is.

There are lots of friends from the ward in Kindergarten with her and she was so cute waving to me and walking in to her class. When I picked them up after school she and Kasen were holding hands. He goes to pick her up to take her to the flagpole for carpool. She was so excited to show us her magic pink playdoh when she got home too.

I celebrated by going home to put Kohen down for a nap and then having myself an ice cream making party! Later I had planned a dinner date with some friends from the ward for Heidi's birthday. We all went out to The Smoked Taco and hung out for a couple hours kid free.

It's going to be a great school year!

Bear Lake

Camping trip number 5 for this year, we went to Bear Lake! I think this was also my 5th time at Bear Lake, but I've never been with the same group of people twice.

This time Kyley and Jordan invited us and we camped 3 nights at Rendezvous Beach!

It was perfect because the kids could walk out almost to the buoy and still touch. It was SO shallow.

We walked down to the beach the first night we got there and saw some awesome lightening over the water. Right as we got back to the trailers it started pouring down rain!

The next time we went to the beach the kids had a sand castle contest. Tai and Charly made a whole village and Kasen and Bentley had a whole story about how the stone is an alternate power source and they used seaweed to make fountains in the front. I was impressed!

That night we went to get shakes! Bear Lake is the only place I will get fruity ice cream. Raspberry Cheesecake shakes are only for Bear Lake! Any other time I will get some sort of chocolate something. I fed Kohen ice cream so fast that he got a brain freeze, but then he still wanted to eat more of my ice cream! My plan did not work. lol

There were millions of tiny sea shells the kids loved collecting! They sifted the sand and found so many little shells.

Kyley and I had fun watching Kyle and Jordan play frisbee and their fun poses when they jump or throw it!

Kohen loves running, jumping and landing on his bum. He thinks that is so fun!

Jordan won the biggest sand castle creation!

Kasen loves just playing in the mud. He also liked swimming out to touch the buoy with Jordan, Bentley and Kennedy. They set him on it and let it flip him off, he thought that was so fun!

Kohen loved sitting in the holes everyone was digging! Bentley would dig two big holes with a dam between them that would fill up Kohen's hole as soon as he broke it. Very creative engineering.

Poor Kyle trying not to get sun burned. Haha he says he hates the beach. I don't understand how anyone hates the beach. It is my happy place.

When Kohen isn't hitting, biting or pushing Collins they have a rare moment of playing together, sitting in mud holes and making mud pies.

This is the water version of the Chariots game they played at Flaming Gorge! We also fed seagulls and tried to get them to eat chips off of Charly's back, but they never would.

We played lot of games! Yahtzee, Wacky 6, 5 Crowns, and Phase 10.