Stotts come to Utah

 As many of you know, we were priveledged to have my family from Oregon come for a visit the last week of August.  My dad, my brother Andrew, his wife Toshia and their kids, Adrian, Luke, Jonathan and Reagan!  After arriving Sunday night, we soon discoved the tent we put up would be of no use as the Oregonians had brought the rain and even some lightening! 

 

 

 

On Monday the girls enjoyed playing dress up and the boys went geocashing.

 

 

Tuesday was the first day of school for the boys. 

Skyler is a Senior and the twins are Freshmen! 

It has been nice for me to have Skyler drive them to school.

 

We decided to go swimming at the Crystal Hot Springs.  They had a couple of nice water slides and cool water pools for kids, but the other pools were HOT!  Which Brielle seemed to like so much she would scream if I tried to take her out! 

 

COUSINS!!

Tuesday night we had an awesome BBQ with Aunt Candy, Uncle Loyal,

Braden & his fiance' Jennifer, Chelsa, Tony and their little guy, Joseph,

Cameron his wife Leslie and their 2 little girls.

 

 

 

Brigham City Temple!

 

Wednesday we enjoyed a tour at the Brigham City Temple open house.   

The Temple is so beautiful and I love that is so personalized

for our area with peach blossoms represented in everything

from the tile work to carpet, door handles, windows and paintings! 

Not to mention that it's only 2 miles from our house!! 

Wednesday night we had a party.  Andrew and Toshia had bought us a firepit

as a family birthday gift, and we roasted mashmallows

and banana boats. Toshia made an amzing campfire cake!

Tons of fun! Brielle and Reagan enjoyed sneaking into the mashmallows all night! 

 

 

 

Thursday we played games and enjoyed watching who could make the funniest serious face!

                                                      

 

Friday morning they left and we will miss them very much!!!

 

Our Summer Summary!

There's really no excuse for not keeping my blog current other than it's summer and frankly, I have better things to do like sit outside sipping lemonade while stimulating my brain on words with friends, or scanning through the endless world of Pinterest.  Of course, I only get to do those things when I am dreaming!  Reality hits and I am usually packing for a campout, or reunion, or doing laundry, or cooking, or helping the boys pack for another campout!  We have been busier than usual this summer due to the boys working and going on the Trek with the stake. Other events include our Bradley family reunion, K&C Birthday's, the 4th of July, a zoo trip, campouts and our family vacation.  Here is a summary of our summer!! Enjoy!

Skyler is an active member of our community.  Three years ago he joined a friend at a Youth City Council meeting, and on June 25th  this year, he was sworn in as YCC Mayor!  I refuse to believe he stays involved with this voulunteer group because of all the cute girls, but something inside me tells me otherwise!

Fourth of July was fun as we took a family walk around Manutua resevoir and made cake pops!  Which, by the way, are my new love/hate relationship!!

On the 5th of July we drove down to Springville to enjoy the company of 50 other Bradley's at our family reunion.  Some of the activities were shot put shooting and swimming and boating at Payson Lakes!  Fun times!!

July 18th-21st was the Stake Trek!  The boys were put into separate families and along with 230 other kids, walked 32 miles in 4 days!  They had a great time and learned to appreciate what our ancestors went through!

 July 24th  is Pioneer Day in Utah, so with the day off work, we went to the Hogle Zoo which we haven't done in years!  Brielle had a blast seeing all the animals, but she also enjoyed spraying everyone with her water bottle.  After walking in 95 degree weather, it was welcome!

On the 28th Kevin and Caleb celebrated their 15th birthday! Mark took them to Boondocks fun center this year .  I made up clues for them to "find" their gifts around the house. For example; "You're old enough now, So it's time you learned.  When you plug it in, Just don't get BURNED!"  This was the clue for their new electric shavers which were hidden in the oven.

Skyler and couple buddies from work joined the city's Triathalon.  He swam the 200 meters!

The second week of August we took our family vacation.  We decided to stay local as we are saving for a more exciting vacation next year.  Our first stop was Lava Hot Springs.  So much fun!  We all had a good time going down fast slides, but Mark and the boys were the brave ones jumping off the 30 feet high dive platforms! Mark and Brielle are watching from the water as they all line up on the highest platform! 

We also went to a water park called Cowabunga Bay.  It was fun but we enjoyed Lava better!

We also rode on the Heber Valley railroad which was kinda boring, but we had never been on it before.  2 hours of riding the train through beautiful scenery is fun for the first hour, but we were hot

and tired and ready for the air conditioned hotel.

Finally, we celebrated my birthday by going to the Park City Factory outlet mall and the new City Creek Center Mall in SLC to go school clothes shopping.  When we got home I had a party with my favorite people and a chocolate creme pie!  Mark and the boys gave me a crockpot cookbook and a cake pop cookbook,(the death of me!!) and a nice new juicer which I'll need to shed the pound brought on by the cake pops!!

Lifeguarding the new carpet?

Ok, so many of you know we have been needing new carpet since we moved into this home 4 years ago.  When making this kind of improvement, you spend months looking at carpet samples trying to make the right decision. Finally after moving quite a bit of furniture, painting some walls & baseboards, and tearing up all the old carpet, our new carpet was installed on June 14th.  Here are some before and after shots.  We also took advantage of this time to install new vinyl in the laundry room/bathroom area.  Now that everything is back in its place I think its a nice improvement.

beforeafter

Brielle's room before

Kevin is such a hard worker!

 stairs before

during

after

family room before

during

  Family room after

 Now that the carpet is done, we are enjoying our summer a little more.  Skyler has started his summer job as a lifeguard at the High school Natatorium.   He teaches swim lessons every morning from 8- noon, then has a break and goes back to lifeguard in the afternoon/evening.  It's really a great job for him!  Kevin and Caleb are doing lawn care this summer for a few people in our ward.  On the 16th we sent them to the Bradley's Farm to help their Grandpa put in a retaining wall.  They will be there for 10 days then come home, sleep in their beds one night, then head off to High Adventure camp with the scouts.  I love that the boys are so busy.