june to august 2012 Run times

Welcome to our summer!  We have had a bit of the old and some of the new.!  We love our new camera with this awesome fireworks setting!  Really captures the moment! Old= the boys breaking our camera and thus the new purchase.  Hitting the camera with the light saber while making a movie will make the camera have a lens error that cannor be fixed.
We are adding that fix to the list of what we have replaced this year in our house.

This leads me this this picture of our BBQ which caught on fire.  That's what an over flowing grease can will do...once it catches the piece of wood on fire which the bbq was sitting on because of a previous grease can spill which caught the cover on fire, which was draped in the window well, which caught 10 soccer balls on fire as well, which then the flames proceeded up the side of the siding, which we were lucky to catch in time before we had to replace our house!  So now we add BBQ, new siding, and new window to our ever growing replace it list.

Ok I will just tell you what else we have replaced: washer, dryer, microwave, dvd played, + an expensive fix to dryer, all within the the 3 months of summer. 

Moving on, Dallin's is 18! I love that kid!

NEW....we hosted a Japaneese foreign exchange student this summer for 3 weeks.  We showed  up to the airport with our sign and Kento went home with us to experience life...Beck style

He didn't know what he was in for!

Well, we taught him how to throw a home made javalin

Played at some asweome playgrounds

Wonder if they have these in Japan?

Fun with the neighbors, who hosted a student as well

Hot dog roasting!

Look mom and dad, I can light fireworks!

Fun to the show they put on for us

The whole group of students

Oh my Japaneese son, I will miss you!

Sierra went on a great trip with her Aunt Krista, Amy, Heather and Grandma Beck to Seattle and Oregon.   

They went to the King Tut exhibit in Seattle

At Haystack rock

 

Mom in 41...And as Samuel put it, 41 is Awesome! couldn't agree more!

 And yes, new invention was a homemade pvc pipe bow and arrow!

I set a goal this year to do a 100 mile bike ride! Check that one off! and I'm not dead! And I did it in 5 hours 45 min!

We went to Rockport res. with Aunt Alison, and Uncle Chase for some boating extravaganza! Thanks Memmotts! you and your tube Rock!

Uncle Chase gave them some wild rides

So, here we are now with the start of school.  New= Samuel in middle school....big step for my little guy, Dallin in College...yes., He's at Salt Lake Community college, living at home and saving money for his mission.  He's working as an apprentence for an electrician in our ward and he's also doing an internship at the Sandy Fire Dept.  Hyrum in in 8th grade so he's an OLD pro at middle school. And Sierra is a 11th grader at Herriman so she's OLDER in that sense.
I'm working as a Surg tech. at a surgical center in Draper and I love it!  So lucky to have found a job 2 days after graduation.  Shawn involved with big projects at work and always looking for ways to go dirtbiking. 
More updates to come

Family Yellowstone trip!

Here we start on our hike to Ribbon lake.  Hiking in the back country of Yellowstone is something we have never done!  We got all packed up for an adventure.

 

Samuel and the sand hill crane. We kinda made him mad...lots of squawking

Hyrum and Samuel are the family fishermen.  Shawn did learn a fair bit about how to fix a tangled up fishing pole. And we did have to get in the pond to retrieve the reel.  They didn't catch anything but loved casating it out there.

Shawn, me, Samuel and Hyrum got into Ribbon lake.  Cold and a little slimy on the bottom.  But refreshing

We hung our packs at night .  All 6 packs up there.  That could have been a Bear picnic

yes, this is a bear claw mark in the tree holding our packs. Don't know how old it is but it's a great reminder that we are in their living room

Samuel and Hyrum at clear lake.  This lake was bubbling with thermal activity in the middle.

Here are the famous Artist mud pots...spewing some mud

We went down to the waterfall a new way for us, the Uncle Tom's Cabin way.  We loved all 348 stairs.

Here are the herd of bison in our campground

We loved all the thermal pots...really liked the clear blue ones

And yes, we found a swimming hole at Indian Creek

This is a herd of Elk in the Hayden valley. What you can't see is this herd is being chased by 5 wolves.  We were witnesses to mother nature at work....for some dinner!

Sierra is the photographer here, can you tell? She takes the best pictures

Yup, buffalo jam

And it really was a blue mud vent

Mammoth was the most dissapointing though. Very little water running there.

On the way home, the TETONS of course!

And after all the natural geysers, we top off the trip with the man made geyser at Soda Springs

We had a great family vaca at Yellowstone!