Game Night

We love to play games as a family. Some of our favorites are Settlers of Catan, Risk, Ticket to Ride, Clue, Cities and Knights, Scattergories, Apples to Apples, Masterpiece, Colosseum, Acquire and the list goes on and on. Each of us has our favorites but everyone is willing to play.

Sometimes the action is a little slow so the girls try and liven things up a little bit. We were playing Cities and Knights last night and the girls decided to make the pirate invasions a little bit more real. In the end it's all about having fun together which we always seem to do.

Birthday Fun

Sarah turned 19 the weekend. She is sure that she is really "old". I guess it is all relative.

We had a great day and as you can tell she received many fun and exciting gifts.

New mission--same darling missionary

In July part of David's mission was split off to form a new mission, Missao Brasil Teresina. We just received this photo of David with his new mission president and his wife, President and Sister Dias. David seems to be thriving on mission life.

Starting another school year

Another school year is starting--summer always goes by too quickly. Sarah doesn't really start fall semester for another week but I won't be there to take a picture of her at BYU. Brad is a Junior. Betsy is in 9th grad. Michael is in 7th grade. This is the first time in 15 years we haven't had a child in elementary school. They are all growing up too quickly.

Cookies and Engine Fires

A few years ago our niece, Lisa, taught us how to flood cookies. We think they are cute to look at and fun to make but a little time intensive.

This year we decided it would be fun to go to the demolition derby. It was a cultural experience. We had a ton of fun. One of the highlights was the firemen cutting the top off of a truck to remove an injured driver.

Gardening

For years we have had a vegetable garden in our backyard.

Some years have been more successful than others.

This year we have had a lot of fun and grown lots of fun things to eat.

Green beans and turnips are some of the new things we tried this year. We have loved the green beans (easy to grow and delicious) and we won't be growing turnips again (easy to grow and not so delicious).

We planted some fruit trees last fall. We are anticipating great things in years to come. This year our harvest will consist of one peach and one apple.

Adam's Canyon Scout Camp

The boys went camping with the scouts this weekend.

There was a beautiful waterfall in Adam's Canyon

They had to backpack in so cooking was an adventure on the little backpacking stoves.

They slept under the stars.

Brotherly Love

They came home with a lot of extra dirt, but they had a great time.