Summer in review

Without further ado, the 2013, Summer of Visitors!!

 

Fathers' Day (with all this Father's kiddos)

 
 My birthday. Now I can run for President of the USA. This is the REAL kickoff to summer, folks.

 Hiking Stewart falls with some of our bestest friends (who came up for Texas just to celebrate the kickoff to summer, aka, Ali's Birthday). These kiddos were troopers!

 At the falls. You can tell it is summer by the sparsity of the falling water.

 When those awesome friends left, we spent some quality time on the back deck, soaking in the mild evenings.

 My Dad and Stepmom came a week after our bestests left. My dad has a long tradition of telling Brer Rabbit stories to kids. Fortunately, my kids got to enjoy the story of "The Teenchy Tiny Duck". They were completely enthralled.

We dragged Dad and Carla up to Bridal Veil Falls. It is a nice, easy, fairly-shady walk.

 Watching the 4th of July parade, a long-standing Utah Valley tradition. It started out pretty mild but was scorching by the end!

 Cole approved of the parade!

 After the parade, we carried on the tradition of swimming and BBQ. Fun 4th! We're so glad Grandpa and Grandma Carla could come!

We got to visit the BYU Broadcasting Building several times throughout the summer. The kids really enjoyed posing in Studio B! A few weeks after the tour with Gpa and Gma C, we had my sister and her family in town. After the obligatory tour, we were lucky enough to meet Matt Meese,  of Studio C! Dream come true for my nephew!!

We also visited the Paleontology Museum at BYU with my sister and family...

And we "hiked" to Bridal Veil falls again. It was a lovely way to spend Pioneer Day!

Of course, Malcolm had to make sure the fish were biting on the Provo River!

There was also time for walking on the Provo River Trail, 

visiting Temple Square,

and swimming!

We had so much fun with our summer guests!

We also got to have Grammy and Pop visit!! Until partway through August, we only had a week or 2 before the next guests came. AWESOME!!! But that meant that in August, we had to make good use of downtime before school started again. So...

I painted the kitchen cabinets,

Tyler celebrated Movember a few months early,

Cole perfected his "splits" technique with Henry coaching him,

and we built amazing contraptions with Mega Bloks. 

Oh, and Tyler and I had a hot date to watch taping for Studio C!

Other things from the summer?

LOTS of rain! It was like living on the East Coast. Awesome, torrential thunderstorms. 

Lots of painting. Those kitchen cabinets took ages!

Friends. Not as much time was spent with friends as Jack would've liked, but they had a great time when friends were around. 

Phew! On to fall....