Summer begins!!

 While Whitney was at soccer camp for a week in June, we spent a day in Provo.  Katelyn did baptisms in the City Center temple, while we walked around it and I had fun playing with my portrait mode on my phone!

The kids at the underground entrance.  We sat on a bench for a little bit, and a man come out dressed in all white- a sealer going home after his shift.  He stopped and talked to us for a few minutes about the temple and made a big impression on the kids. 

Also that day, we went to Emma's upstart graduation!  It turned out fun because they had a trivia contest that Owen and Katelyn ROCKED at.

This was a fun random day in early summer- Whitney was cleaning out her closet and found her box of slime supplies. From when she was REALLY into slime haha. So she invited Owen to help her make a giant bowl of slime to use them up!  It was hilarious.

and very cute to see them working and laughing together!

Whitney played grass volleyball!  It was a party!

More temple pics.

Beautiful girls in a beautiful place!

This was a fun thing we did- Whitney had a tournament up in Ogden, and we thought it would be fun to take the train/bus there.  So Eric and Whitney went up the night before for the first game and slept at Kurtis and Lauren's house. We left Katelyn home (and she slept the next night at our neighbor's house) and boarded the train!  Actually she dropped us off at the station- she had Summer Shakespeare all day every day so she couldn't come. The kids were stoked to get on the Frontrunner!  It left early so we ate breakfast on the way.

Here's Eric talking to the team before the game once we got there.

More pics enjoying the train.

The transfers and bus actually went better than I expected, (most of my public transportation experience has been in Mexico haha!) and the bus dropped us off literally right next to the soccer field!  It was awesome.  We spent that night at K&L's and went to the game the next day too.

Side note- Also in early summer, I trained for a triathlon.  Here's me riding a bike at sunrise!

Here's the before and after of me at the Payson Orchard Triathlon.  It was fun! I got 3rd in my age group, slow on the bike but destroyed on the run as usual- even though it was a hard out and back up the canyon!

One day this summer Katelyn did a little craft class for the kids- she used her ceramics skills and taught them how to make a little vase out of clay. They dried them and painted them, it was very cute!  And it meant that I didn't have to come up with a craft to teach them haha.

We also did the Spanish Fork Arts festival again, it was fun!!  Just the younger 3 did it.  Emma took a Lego class and Encanto crafts class.  Maris did Ukulele and Sewing class.

Owen did Lego Stem and Ukulele.  They learned a lot and had a great time. I was grateful for the good base the Uke class gave Owen and Maris- now they can practice and do more on their own if they chose.

Eric didn't get to go to their little showcase, so they performed for us at home. And here's a pretty sunrise over Timp I took a picture of.

Some pictures I took from Whitney's tournament.  They got put in a bracket with older teams, and made it to the semifinal. They were playing a team a year older, and were tied at the end so they went into extra time.  Whitney basically had an asthma attack with the heat (we finally got her an inhaler in October!) and the other team scored with like 5 seconds left.  It would have gone to penalties and who knows what would have happened....and who knows what would have happened in the championship game.  But it was still a bummer way to end the tournament. We met at Farr's ice Cream in Ogden to try to shake it off!

It was crazy because it was the last time they would play together for a long time- the next month all the 9th graders would try out for high school teams, and the 8th graders would combine with some other girls to make a provisional team. So here's Whitney listening to Eric on the sideline, and the girls eating ice cream.  Whitney still couldn't smile!  It was rough.  They played a couple of scrimmages together in late October, but still as I write this have not played a real game together yet since that June tournament!  But we go to a tournament in St George in 2 weeks, yay!

The middle day of the tournament, we decided to visit our old stomping grounds at Pineview Reservoir and go boating!  Brad and Kurtis came up and went with us, it was great!!  So beautiful up there.  But in hindsight not a great idea because Whitney got super dehydrated..... anyway it was cool because Emma went on the tube for the first time! Here's Emma and Whitney, and Emma me and Maris.  Owen tried the kneeboard and got up!

We had promised Owen a trip to the train museum in Ogden, so we went after the team ice cream party, before heading home.  It was pretty cool to see how big they were, and as you can see- Whitney was smiling again! Owen loved it.

June was a fun month!!