Summer skating and a Vegas trip

Kaitlyn has wanted to learn to ice skate since the first time we took her.  Lots of things interest her, though, and since the nearest rink is a half an hour away, we just never signed her up for lessons.  This summer was all about taking it easy though.  Last summer, every single minute was packed.  We were either renovating at top speed, out of town, or I was teaching sewing lessons.  So I signed us up for nothing this summer, and for the most part I didn't regret that.

I had a random thought on a random day though.  We had passes to the Seven Peaks water park, which was right next to the ice rink.  What if we could just ice skate and then swim?  I looked online, and sure enough, they had a session starting the next day.  So I signed her up.

The best part was that her lesson was the same time as Small and Tall.  That's the way we always went ice skating in the past.  An hour and a half on Thursday mornings, year round, just for kids under 12 and their parents.  I was worried that summer time would mean more kids out of school and going, but we often had the rink to ourselves.  So we would drive down together and often go swimming afterward, and on Thursdays, we would skate on the other rink during her lesson, and she would join us once she was done.

We even brought friends with us one time.

It was a really great part of our summer!  Ice skating was a great break from the heat, and when we heard that the gymnastics teacher wasn't going to do lessons this year, we signed both girls up for the next session.

The "entrepreneurial market", however, was a bit more of a flop.

On paper, it was a great idea.  Kaitln begs me to do a lemonade stand SO often.  I feel odd about it, though, because people often give her extra money and we don't really need money!  She just thinks it is fun.  This market was a market just for kids.  The booth fee was cheap, and then kids were supposed to be the ones selling their own stuff.  We had a great time making fidget spinner cases on the embroidery machine, and I figured I would put out what I had made, just in case we got any buyers. 

And she didn't sell a single thing to a stranger.  (I'm SO grateful for her Primary president and teacher who drove all the way down to buy things from her!)

The poor girl suddenly got shy.  Which isn't a problem, and I don't blame her, but it was so unlike her that I didn't know what to do.  She mostly hid in the booth.  At the very end, we had an interested person that I talked to long enough that she talked a bit too, and she realized that talking to to them really made a difference.  But it was just too late.   We also got a feel for the market.  It was mostly $1 items, and since kids were most of the customers, too, little games were also a big hit for the day.  Her $6 Harry Potter fidget spinners were just a bit high priced for that market.

Christopher had a work trip to Las Vegas that happened to be right near our anniversary.  My mother-in-law was renovating her house and couldn't watch the kids, but the girls were able to stay with some cousins (they had SO much fun!) and Tyler stayed with his scout leader's family and went to a scout campout (which was awesome because he became really good friends with their oldest boy).  And so we headed off to have a romantic weekend away!

It wasn't perfect, though.

We were going to go to a fancy dinner, but realized as we left that we wouldn't make the show in time.  So we came back and started walking to the show, only to have my shoes both fall completely apart.  I couldn't wear my fancy red dress with flip flops (the only other shoes I had packed), so I took this picture just to prove that at one point in the evening, I had looked good.

And then we went to see Bodies, which was amazing and I'm really glad we saw.  But I think I picked the least romantic event I could have picked.  Oh well.  I think we still had a great trip, even if it wasn't what we expected.

Payson Lakes

One of the trips we knew we wanted to repeat from last year was Payson Lakes.  It is close to home, has an awesome lake to kayak and fish in, a paved walking path around the entire lake, and our campsite has great trees for hammocks. 

Tyler's favorite part is the walking path.  He has done it all by himself a few times (including one time when I just told him to let the dog out of the trailer to pee, and he decided the dog needed a one mile walk around the lake.)

Kaitlyn caught 4 fish that weekend.  Daddy caught none.  In fact, once when Kaitlyn caught a fish, he handed her his line to hold while he took care of her fish for a minute, and Kaitlyn pulled in a fish on his line in the meantime.

I wish I could remember more context for this.  I think Jasmine was driving us crazy with too much energy on the beach?  All I remember is that we joked with her that she should just go swim across the entire lake.  And the she said "okay" and nearly did.  Look at how far she got!

Fourth of July

I'm behind in my blogging again, so let's see what I can remember.

One of the really neat parts about the Fourth of July for our city was the gigantic flag.  It was not their first year stringing a huge flag up the canyon, but it was a brand new flag this year that was even more massive.  Each star was 5 feet across!  Christopher and I ran a trail run 5K that was part of the celebrations for the week, and we went to an evening concert they held beneath it.

That run was brutal.  Most of the uphill was a walk for me, but it was still a great chance to get a workout in.

We hosted Christopher's family at our cabin for lunch again this year.  That is always a lot of fun.

And that evening, we went to our friend's parent's house.  I would have felt like more of an intruder, but there were hundreds of people there, and more fireworks than most city events.