Our first weekend of Summer we headed out to the Grand Canyon. We had a fun trip planned. We got to the Grand Canyon about mid -day. We found our camp site and set up our tent and got settled. About 3 or 4 we went to the Rim and hiked around for a while. We had Autumn in a back pack carrier and every tourist in the park came and took pictures of her. I didn’t realize we would be such a spectacle. I guess with 4 young children we looked (and maybe even sounded) a little out of place. We had fun and then got back to the camp ground. We made a little fire and cooked hotdogs and scones and played and talked. There were some boys in the campsite next to us that came and played with Jackson. They were homeschooled and were doing a tour of all the national parks and a few other well known sites. They had come from Maryland (I think) and were nearly done with their 8 month long trip. We got to know the mom and the grandparents a little because our battery in our car had died and they helped us with that and their camp site was next to the bathroom, so we crossed their path what felt like a million times with Chelle and Lacey. About 9:30 we got Chelle, Lacey, and Jackson to bed and I sat out by the fire and rocked Autumn to sleep. When she finally closed her eyes I thought there was a good chance she would sleep most of the night because she was so tired from all the activity and she hadn’t napped. I held her a little longer and then about 11:00 went in to the tent and laid her down. That lasted about 2 hours and then she woke up and was all out of sorts. For about an hour or two she would calm down in my arms and I’d think she was asleep and lay her down and she would pop right back up. Then she quit calming down and was screaming! Micah put his shoes on quick and took her to the car, where she was still not sleeping and crying loudly enough for me to hear her. All the sudden I heard the car start and drive off. Micah drove around the Grand Canyon several hours of the night and finally about 3 AM or so decided to take his camera and go look over the edge and watch the sunrise.  He took some great photos and Autumn finally fell asleep for a few hours.

Later than morning we packed up and headed to Bearizona. It was pretty fun but also a little expensive. We loved having the animals walk right around the car and be able to see them so close up. It was pretty amazing.

After that fun we headed to the cabin to stay Saturday through Monday. It is always beautiful there and such a fun place to play.

I was relieved that we had taken a test drive of camping so that our long summer trip that we were planning for July wouldn’t include any camping!

We came back home to start Swim and Dive team. Jackson loves swim team – he is such a great sport. This year his goal was to get one ribbon of every color. So by the end of the season when he didn’t have the 7th and 5th place ribbons he thought he should probably try harder to get those ribbons 🙂 I think its amazing that he just loves competition but doesn’t care about it at the same time. Lacey participated in dive this summer and had a great time. I was a little disappointed because in the beginning of the season she was making some progress, then she started realizing that she didn’t really have to try and they would tell her “Good Job Lacey!” no matter what she did. So she didn’t really learn much, but enjoyed the time she spent there. She had 2 girl coaches and 1 boy coach. One day she told me Coach Isaac was being “such a handsome silly boy.” Made me laugh.

I went to girls camp the first week of June and it ended up being really great. I was a little skeptical, from personal girl’s camp experiences and because of some the stake girls camp prep nights we had had that were horribly unorganized and not very well put together. But I was incredibly surprised and it was an amazing few days with so many opportunities to learn and increase testimony. I was grateful Micah’s first week of self-employment was spent playing Mr. Mom. It was nice not to have to worry about who had the kids and how they were going to get everywhere. They had such a good time with Dad of course and it was nice of Lori to take the kids for a morning to help him out a little! He was sincerely grateful.

June was spent mostly swimming, either swim lessons, swim team, or in our own pool. We had a little routine in the mornings when we got home from swim/dive where we would get rooms cleaned up and do a few chores, get some homework worksheets, phonograms, site words, etc, done and then we’d work on memorizing scriptures or other things. Jackson would read to Autumn or the other girls and we read lots of books together. It was great and just enough structure, but then we got to just play our hearts out. It was the life. Micah built a fun “water-park” out of our existing play set and drip lines hooked up to the hose, and it was fun because the kids could actually use the play set this summer – Usually the pebbles are too hot for our feet, the swings burn our booties, and the slides burn our legs. We had such a great time just being together.

I love summer time when the kids are out of school.