Too much time on their hands

First day of summer holidays, and already the kids are in to mischief. They were supposed to spend 3 hours working today (2 in the house, 1 outside in the yard). After about an hour, I saw Brent & Luke on the stairs. Brent is at the top, holding the end of a long rope of shoelaces from a toy, all tied together, and Luke is at the bottom, with the rope tied around his waist. I asked what they were doing, and Luke said he was just testing out his bungee cord, so he could bungee jump on the stairs!

Politically correct bishop?

This weekend was our ward temple trip / campout in Cardston. We had a great time, and lots of people from our ward came. Despite enjoying going to the temple, and spending time with the family, the highlight of the weekend was provided by Mike...

On Friday night, after people were back from the temple, and before all the kids went to bed, everyone gathered around the fire. Mike wanted to take a few minutes to talk to everyone, but wanted to start with a song. He asked a few people if they had a song we could sing, to start us out, but no one was coming up with an idea - not even the kids. Finally, Mike says "How about that Indian song, with the arm movements?" So, opening song was "Book of Mormon Stories".

Swim Meets

We've entered swimming season at our house. This means that pretty much every Saturday from mid-June to mid-August is spent at a swim meet. This means getting up EARLY, to get to a pool by 7 am, and staying there til 4 or 5 at night. And, packing a ton of stuff, because you need swim stuff, food for everyone for the day, stuff to play with, and a sleeping bag to sit on and chairs. Then, once July comes, the pools are still indoors (mostly), but you sit outside between swimming, so you need to bring some kind of shelter as well.

But, it's worth the hassle, first because the kids love to go, and second because we usually buy dinner or DQ on the way home!

This year is Katie's first year. At her first meet, she got to be in a relay race. One of the swimmers was a "veteran" 8 year old, and the rest were new. Their coach spent some time talking to them about how when the starter goes, the first one swims to the other end, then you can't dive in until she touches, then swim to the other side. However, she must have forgotten to mention that you should wait until the swimmer touches at your end before diving in. So, first Katie went, and swam to the other side. Then, the girl at that end jumped in and started swimming - but so did the girl at the other end. They ran in to each other in the middle, and kept going. Then, the last girl dove in and finished. The girls were all excited with how well they did, until the one who knew what was going on told them they were disqualified!

Basement news!

Well, we might still have a mud pit in the basement:

and an archaelogical dig outside:

But, we now have big basement windows!

Late night adventures

Last night, Troy was sick, so we were sleeping on the couch together. At about 3 or so, I decided to go up to bed with him. Unfortunately, I must not have been very awake. I stumbled up to my bedroom with Troy, then managed to step on a container of little cars. It really hurt, but I got Troy into the bed safely, then went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. That's when I noticed the trail of blood I was leaving....

I called Mike upstairs (he had been on the other couch), and he took one look and said I'd better go to the hospital. He said "You can drive yourself - like your Dad - it's a Babowal thing". So, 6 stitches later, I'm home from the hospital. I was pretty lucky, from cutting my foot to home again was only about 3 hours!

Father & Sons Campout

This weekend was our Ward's Father Sons campout. It's been beautiful all week, in the 20s, and then they predicted SNOW for the weekend! But, Mike, Luke, Jordan and Troy decided to tough it out and go camping anyways. (Well, Troy didn't have much say in the decision.)

It turned out that someone in the ward has a cabin by Lac des Arcs, which the Relief Society was going to use on Saturday, for a Mother Daughter activity. But, since no one wanted to hike in the snow, that activity was cancelled, so the men used the cabin for the campout. Not having to set up tents in the rain and snow made putting 30+ people in one cabin worthwhile!

Anyways, sounds like they had lots of fun, just not a lot of sleep. They went for a midnight walk, went fishing, watched movies, and ate lots of food.

I asked Luke if it snowed the whole time they were there. He said, "No.... sometimes it rained or hailed."