Here’s what we were up to in July:
4th of July fireworks at the neighborhood party. (Side note: fireworks are not a soldier who has been deployeds’ friend. July is a rough month in our house, especially since because of Pioneer day being a big deal in Utah…people pretty much set off fireworks every night the entire month).
We went to a big event in Orem where they had the Candy Bomber from WWII fly over and candy bomb everyone. But there were tons of people and they only dropped a few candy parachutes, and the didn’t drop them where they said they would…so it was kind of a bust. But I do love the story of the candy bomber.
I also drove up to Ogden one night to go to my friend Megan’s baby shower. She is my friend from Italy and it was so nice to see her. I can’t wait to meet her baby!
Jonah beat his record climbing the rope at gymnastics, he got way higher than this photo.
Nick’s Dad’s family had a family reunion up at Heber Valley camp. We went up and spent the night and did a fun ropes course swing. Jonah loved the swing. When I did it Declan cried for me the entire time…that boy loves his mama. Nick got to see cousins he hasn’t seen in many years and found out that many of them live within a few blocks of us, lol.
Dress like a cow for a free meal at Chic fil a day! Free food? We are there! And let’s be honest, it’s pretty fun to see a bunch of people dressed as cows. We slapped these outfits together in about five minutes. Not bad eh? It was faster than cooking dinner!
Our little cowboy rockstar with his two obsessions this month, his boots and ukelele.
Jonah lost his very first tooth! It was super wiggly so I grabbed it and it popped right out.
I’ve been out training a lot. And enjoying the beautiful scenery. Sometimes there are benefits to running even in the rain. Like getting to see the double rainbow when it stops. Or seeing every sun set and sun rise. Or having people call you crazy for going out in a hail storm because you have to get your training time in and you only have so much time in which to do that (early AM and evenings after the husband gets home). Kate is loving all the runs as well.
My coworker was cleaning out her house and decided to give us her kids’ old k’nex set. Jonah has been in heaven, especially since she had the instruction book and it has 50 different things to build. He is an awesome builder.
We took a weekend trip to Burley, Idaho where I competed in the Spudman, Olympic distance triathlon. Burley is a small farming town (that my Dad actually grew up in) and they don’t have a lot of lodging…the spudman brings in almost 2,000 people. So they open up the golf course (at the start/finish line) and you can camp on it. So we did.
On our way down we stopped at the golden spike monument and made it just in time for a reenactment. In Jonah’s words…boring! The trains were beautiful but the reenactment was quite boring…every important person at that time had to make some kind of speech about the monumental moment when the tracks met and the golden spike was driven in (which it wasn’t really, they kept it. And there was more than one golden spike, several states made golden or silver spikes for the occasion. When they removed the golden spike and put a regular spike in, the important guys attempted several times to drive the spike and missed. They had to get a railroad worker to come do it for them. This was the best part of the reenactment.)
I was so nervous about the water temperature the night before my race. I don’t have a wet suit and I was worried that I would regret it. But despite pretty much everyone else wearing a wet suit I jumped in and the temp was great. The visibility however was horrible. I couldn’t even see my own arm.
The race went super well and I did it way faster than I was expecting. I got stuck in a peloton (a big glob of bikers) during the bike portion and it was actually super fun and made me way faster. I wasn’t really even tired afterwards, I think I could have gone faster. My total time was 2:35. I placed 10th in my age category and 54th for all females. And the competition was tough, so I was happy with my results. It was good practice for my race coming up in August that is twice as far!
Big thanks goes to my awesome husband for hanging out with antsy kids for three hours while waiting for me to do my thing. And watching them every time I go out to train.
On our way back from the triathlon we went through city of rocks and did a little hike. The boys were in heaven finding all the “crystals” …they have been obsessed with crystals lately so going on a hike with millions of them was like winning the lottery for them.
We downloaded a “tour” for our hike. That little hook on top of that rock is called a picklehaube.
We have started to harvest some things from the garden. The boys love it. This is my first real garden (I did some planters in Italy, but did not have land to do a real garden). I am not amazing at it but it’s working at least! Check out that big carrot!
