I wasn’t sure how normal summer would be, but it’s turning out to be almost entirely normal. The children started the summer with a week of basketball camp. We’ve had plenty of neighbor kids over to play, and had fun in the garden and playing.

Porch-side preschool graduation:

We had a lot of fun with six dollars worth of shaving cream.

Building with Lego.

Even Zack enjoyed the splash pad with help from his older brother.

Curtis wanted to go fishing. We don’t fish. Neither Joe or I have the patience for it. But we love our kids, so we packed up the canoe and went fishing.

When we got to the lake, I decided it made more sense if I went on a little hike with the baby and Peter (who don’t care about fishing), while Joe took Curtis and Henry out on the canoe.

An hour later, we finished our hike, no fish were caught, and we went home. We will have to go fishing again. But next time we might take along someone who knows what they are doing.

We decided to go hike up Providence Canyon in Cache Valley. There are a couple of waterfalls. Here’s what went wrong:

• The bumpy dirt road upset my oldest child. And one of our back tires has been rather low since we got back.
• After the bumpy road, we parked and got out to hike. It turns out that Henry didn’t have shoes. He piggybacked on Joe.
• We picked a steep path to go up to the waterfall (there is an easier way we didn’t find until the way down).
• We walked up the very slippery snow so we could get to the base. On the way back, Peter and I both fell down. I hit my tailbone hard and it still hurts five days later.
• Hurtin your tailbone is quite literally a pain in the butt. Don’t do it. Don’t climb up slippery snow. Go around, or just enjoy the view from a distance.

I’ve worked as a garden designer for several years. People pay me to make planting plans. But I actually had never done a complete planting plan for my own garden. I kind of planted whatever whenever. I wanted to rectify that situation, so I re-designed the front garden with a proper planting plan. We also upgraded the pathway, and I’m quite happy with the results.

The same Saturday we finished our front garden, we went down and helped my brother install his. Two gardens in one day. It was a good day.

Also, gardens take a while to fill in and look as intended. It’s an interesting art form to work with.

One more picture of this little cutey who started to crawl. He’s been working so hard and was finally rewarded. He went from little scootches to crawling across the room in a couple of days.

We went out west to a couple of spots that we have never been to. The first was a sulfur hot springs in the middle of nowhere. We drove by it and had to turn around to find it.

There was also an arch that we’ve driven within a mile of and didn’t know it existed.

We also bought a bunch of tents with stimulus money. We only kept three but bought a bunch to see what we liked best. Colemon makes a pop up 1-2 person and we kept two of those and one other dome test, also Colemon. (We decided that Colemon makes the best budget tent.) Also, we don’t necessarily need three tents but have found the kids do much better having their own tents.

Finally, here are a bunch of pictures of artichokes. The one in my greenhouse has gone crazy and is bigger than me.

This is the yard, 6.5 years later. Plus a flower arrangement I made with spring flowers.

You can tell I’m not that into lawn care…

And we are currently re-doing the front garden, so it’s more of an in-progress shot than an after.

Now that the kids are old enough, and everyone has a bike that fits, we decided to bike around Mantua Reservoir. We had to do a little bit of encouragement in the form of Pokemon Go and treats, but overall it wasn’t too hard to convince the kids they could do it.

On the backside of the lake, we took a break to eat lunch…and the kids decided to climb up the big hill or small mountain. There is a trail (we found this out later), but we just went straight up the side of the hill. It was a lot of fun. And I’m happy to have kids that add on to a four-mile bike ride instead of being unable to finish it.

Curtis and Henry and in this picture too if you look closely at the top of the hill.

I like low-key holidays, and I was happy that the only thing we did for Easter was an egg hunt for the kids, a nice dinner together, and lots of learning about Jesus.

Has anyone else discovered the wonderful joy of squishmallows? When I was buying Easter candy I saw them for half off and bought three. Except when I was in the checkout line I realized I actually have four kids, and ran back and got another. I hid them for our kid’s Easter egg hunt, and Curtis found one and excitedly yelled, “I got a squishmallow!” The other kids loved them as well.

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The baby got his own little Easter egg hung as well. He would put the basket on top of his head, it was adorable.

There are good things about being at home. I love to see my children playing together. They fight less than when this all started. And it is so fun to see spring.

The boys play outside a lot. We have started to rediscover things we have but haven’t used in ages, like our disc golf hole and spikeball.

General Conference was awesome. Our kids were old enough to listen for quite a while, which was nice to see. And they even took some notes. (Offering candy helped.)

Also, this is incredibly random. I like processed food (it’s quick, easy and made to taste good, forget about what’s healthy for a second), and Thanksgiving. So here’s a processed food Thanksgiving. That I liked enough to take a picture of.