The Best Worst Camping Trip Ever

After Ron and Shirley's open house, we took off up to Pine Valley for a trip we had booked months ago.  When we finally pulled up to our campsite we got a sinking feeling when we saw a sign that said "Parking for sites 18-23" (ours was 23, an even worse feeling).

When we chose to reserve a "tent only" site we were thinking, awesome!  No generators all night, just the sweet sounds of nature and of our baby crying:)  But as it turns out, we had to carry all of our stuff from the truck up a narrow gravel path for, I kid you not, probably almost a block.  It was insane, and it wouldn't have been that bad if we had realized this and planned accordingly, but as it was, we had our large tent, 2 dutch ovens, three ginormous sleeping pads, a camp stove, a cooler, water cooler, and a barrel of wood.  Thank heavens we had our large double stroller which we could load down and make only maybe 7 trips with that.  And to make matters worse, the toilets were down by the parking lot.

We were the camp site farthest up the mountain, and it was BEAUTIFUL!  Seriously, it felt like we were the only ones up there.  There were deer sightings, the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen, and a small creek which was just gorgeous!  Two days of absolute heaven...until you remembered the toilet was a block away!

Father's Day

Our little Pine Valley Adventure was really part of Father's Day, but I need to get the pictures off Logan's phone to post about that.  Father's Day was really pretty low key.  We came home, cleaned up camping stuff and ate leftover dutch oven.

We were, however, able to surprise Logan with a gift.  I gave up long ago on buying Logan presents, too picky;) But he did order himself a new rash guard on Thursday and I thought there was no way in heck it would come before we left for Pine Valley on Friday so I took Chap to pick out some small things for Logan.  We ended up with some Father's Day rootbeer, some chocolate covered raisins, and a "poop cup" (Anisa's kids have him thinking that the poop emoji is hilarious).  But lo and behold, the rash guard did come on Friday so we wrapped everything up and hid it downstairs. Sunday afternoon when Logan went outside for something, we went and got the present and Chap was so excited to yell "surprise" (He does this frequently for no reason other than he thinks it is hilarious).  Logan was very surprised, and he even liked all of his Chap presents!

Happy Father's Day Logan! We are very glad that you are our daddy:) xoxo

Grandma Shirley

We have a new grandma!  Grandpa Ron married Shirley on June 17th and we couldn't be more excited!  It makes us so happy to see them so happy:) She is a sweetheart and is great with my kids, and we look forward to many years and many many memories to share with Grandma Shirley!

Summer Lovin' Had Me a Blast:)

We are LOVING this HOT HOT weather!

Carnival

When we were in Richfield a carnival was in town.   We left Merit at Kristy's house and went to the carnival in the rain.  We scored though because it was the first night and everything was only 1 ticket per ride and the tickets were only $1.  It was awesome and bad because there was hardly anyone there so there were no lines and they ran the rides for a long time.  This gave you almost no break in between and after our probably 4 minute tilt-a-whirl ride, Logan was feeling sick.  So Me and Chap went on the gravitron, and then I felt sick.  And then Chap talked us into going on one more ride, which I can't remember what it was, and I'm pretty sure we were all sick, but we still had to carry a crying Chap back to the car because he loved it so much! Moral of the story is this: We are getting too old for carnival rides! Haha!  But we're going to Lagoon in a couple months:)  At least we know Chap will like it!

Moab

After we went to Jacey's Graduation we went to Moab for the rest of Memorial Day weekend.  We had lots of fun, and got Lucas' trailer all to ourselves:) That makes it nice when you have crying babies:)

Our days were filled with swimming, 4 wheeling, a boulder park and Arches!  We went to these cool wind caves and there was one where you had to crawl in on your belly and then it opened up really big.  We all went in except Merit, I couldn't coax her to crawl into a dark hole, smart girl!

 Chap has been dying to see Balanced Rock because it's in one of his books:) He named a bunch of rocks he could see.  There was a Brenner, Joren, Terek, and Merit rock.  So cute!  We took pictures of all of them, but honestly, I don't remember which is which except I know the Merit rock was tiny.

Jacey's Graduation

I'm mostly blogging this to document my debut as a master lei maker, haha.

I don't know what I was thinking, but it took me and Logan actively working for around 4 hours to make this beast....and she didn't even wear it.  Womp womp.  Oh well, we love you anyway:)  Good luck with the next phase of your life!

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day I took the kids to see all the graves of the ancestors they were named after.  (Except one of Merit's is in Vernal, and I didn't make it that far).

I grew up with the tradition of decorating graves and of knowing about my ancestors who were buried there, and I'd like to pass that on to my children, especially since we live in an area where there are so many buried locally.

 Chapter at the grave of my Great Grandfather Fredrick George Gardiner in Panguitch, Ut.

 Merit at the grave of Logan's Great Grandmother Rosena Eliza Blickenstorfer Gubler Blake in Santa Clara, UT.

Chapter at the grave of Logan's Great-Great Grandfather Benjamin Fredrick Blake in St. George Utah.