I'm back to trying to catch up on journaling our activities, feel free to skip the writing and just look at fun pictures!
August was packed full, as it always is, trying to squeeze in as many fun activities as you can before school starts. We headed down to Pine Valley by St. George to spend the weekend before school started with my family. Pine Valley is the cutest place and since it's up in the mountains it's significantly cooler than St. George.
We spent some time hiking in Snow Canyon and tried to survive the heat. The kids loved digging in the red sand.
There was one hike where you could see names the pioneers had written on the walls in axle grease. Sheldon was brave and helped the kids climb up to the top so they could see the names.
Walks around Pine Valley, Sheldon looks super cool with his red sunglasses and shoes.
On Sunday we went to Church the Pine Valley Chapel. Built in 1868, it is oldest LDS Chapel still in use. There actually wasn't room in the main building for so we attended sacrament meeting in the little tithing house. Later in the afternoon we went back and took a tour of it, it's a unique chapel because the person in charge of construction was a shipbuilder. When you go into the attic of church, it looks like an upside-down ship. They also have a replica of this church at This is the Place Heritage Park, if you want to see it, but don't want to travel to St. George.
The cabin we stayed in was perfect large enough for everyone to have their own room, even the kids! There was even a giant dining room table big enough for us all to sit around. There was a fun tire swing in the back yard and my favorite part was all the animals that would show up in the field behind the house. We saw cows and wild turkeys every morning and even some deer.
There was no fence in the back yard, but at least there was a gate for some strange reason. Terrell and Heather cooked some awesome dutch oven on their night to cook.
We played some good old fashioned horseshoes, which is surprisingly harder than I thought it would be.
We celebrated Tucker's 7th birthday and Heather's birthday while we were there. You can't go wrong with cobbler and ice cream to celebrate. Tucker got lots of legos for his birthday and it kept him busy while at the cabin putting all of the sets together.
We went on a pretty hike around a lake with lots of big sticks, so the kids could all have their own hiking stick. It was a great trip, and I think it's safe to say we would all go back again!
First day of 2nd grade for Tucker! Of course Finn had to wear a backpack to be just like Tucker. It's always a little hard getting back into the school routine, but it helps that Tucker always likes schools and makes friends easily. His teacher this year has been really great and he has really progressed in writing, math, and spelling.
We squeezed in one last camping trip with Sheldon's family. Sheldon's parents went up earlier and were super helpful by having our tent already set up for us when we got there. It was a great little campsite right next to a shallow river and the kids would spend all day exploring. Since it was so shallow I felt comfortable letting the older kids play around in it by themselves.
Sheldon doing Halle's hair, I had to get a pic to remember it and he did a pretty good job.
Halle found a caterpillar and I love her face in that picture. Half amazed and half terrified at the same time.
The kids hiked up the river to a big pipe and even found a snake inside. I'm glad that Sheldon was with them when they found the snake, I consider myself pretty brave, but Snakes freak me out a little bit.
