Summertime

..and the living is easy.... OK, I kind of hate that song. But, we have been having a pretty nice summer so far and that's what comes to mind. We like to be outdoors, and we have had plenty of opportunity lately. We've been hiking, exploring our local attractions and even camping.


We recently took the kids to Timpanogos Cave, which is a pretty steep hike, it's only about 1.5 miles, but you gain lots of elevation. It generally takes about an hour to hike to the cave entrance and then you are met by a guide for a tour. They usually take about 20 people in at a time. We were luckily surrounded by two large groups though and we ended up getting a private tour out of it! It was amazing, such a cool experience that our kids were given the guide's undivided attention to ask questions. Would you believe our kids complained more on the way DOWN the mountain, than on the way UP??? I was shocked! All in all, they did really well though! It was a nice day, we went early enough that it wasn't too hot yet and I think that made all the difference.


The following week we went to Red Butte Garden, it happened to be the Tahitian Dancers night, which was an added bonus. The girls even went up front for a hula lesson. Sydney was NOT being left out of THAT. I even shot a short video of Sydney shaking it! LOL. It was fun to walk around and see what grows well in our climate and put a name to things that we also have growing in our yard that we haven't been able to identify yet. Chris has an ongoing project that he's been working on, an almanac of sorts that lists all the flora in our yard with a corresponding picture, actually taken in our yard. It's quite an undertaking, and I'm sure the result will be wonderful to read through, especially for our kids. Maybe their Dad's love of plants and trees will continue on in them!


The week of the Fourth, we had our 3rd annual camping trip. Just 3 days, 2 nights, but it always takes a day to get ready and at least a day to recover!! Maybe as the kids get older it won't be so much work. We had a good time splashing around in the river and took a couple of hikes. One of the hikes was to a natural spring, that was so huge, it was like a river just flowing down out of nowhere.... We hiked in from the highway following the bank of this creek and as we got closer the creek became fuller and faster. It was really incredible. We also found some huge rocks that the kids and Chris climbed all over that had huge Spruce trees growing out of the top of them. Sydney tried to make it up onto the rocks too, but I was successful in diverting her attention to other things, it was really steep and she kept sliding! It was a really amazing site, and I'm sure this hike will be added to the adgenda for our annual trip going forward!

We hope you are all finding new places to explore and having as much fun as we are!