Independence Day Weekend

For the holiday this year, we had a pretty crazy party. On the 3rd of July, we all went over to Greg's parents' house for dinner and a movie. We goofed around for a little while and when it started to get dark, Kay set up the projector in the backyard and everyone laid out their sleeping bags for a massive sleepover of all the kids and grandkids. There were enough bugs though and Greg and I headed inside to sleep on the floor. About 1 in the morning, a massive lightning and rainstorm hit and in seconds, everyone and everything were in the living room with us and partially to fully drenched. Half of everyone was upstairs with the other half downstairs and we all crashed. The morning of the fourth, everyone usually gets up really early to watch the balloon fest in Provo but no one even budged. Everyone was so pooped that we slept in, had a leisurely breakfast and then headed home to take a nap. One exciting thing that did happen besides the insane lightning, Elyse announced that she is pregnant with #5.

Later that night, we went over to a park in Provo to watch the fireworks and have dinner with a bunch of friends. It was pretty fun but we were there way too early and got bored long before the fireworks started so we headed home. My sister, Amy, and her family were on their way here so we decided to go hang out with them instead. They ended up not being here so we did the fireworks chase. We figured we had to see at least one batch of fireworks so when we would see some fireworks going off, we would head towards them to see if we could find where they were coming from. It is amazing how many people light illegal fireworks and it totally messes you up when on a hunt for city fireworks. We drove all over and laughed the entire way. When we decided it really was time to head home, we found that the best place to watch fireworks was our own driveway. When we pulled in and looked to the north, we found that we could see not only the Stadium of Fire, but Springville's, and American Fork's and well. Who would have thought? The best part was that we didn't end up spending the next 2+ hours fighting traffic. That is the real entertainment though.

Sunday we went to a fireside with Amy's family and their 22 scouts that they brought with them. My brother in law, Ryan, is a scout leader for their ward and they decided that it was cheaper to come to Utah and spend the week at Mapledell instead of going much closer to California for scouts. They had to report first thing Monday morning though and not wanting to drive on Sunday, decided to come Saturday with everyone, stay at my mom's house Saturday and Sunday and then head up Payson Canyon on Monday. It was quite the crowd. After the fireside, we played the funniest game of Big Booty. They took a little while to catch on but really went to town with it afterwards. At about 11 that night, the leaders called it quits and time for bed. Come to find out, during the game, my brother in law got a call that his father had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. He and my sister immediately headed over. He was on life support for a few days before he passed away. They had the funeral the following week and it turned out really well. Some of the cousins did a musical number with two violins and a flute to "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" and it was gorgeous. They also had all the kids and grandkids go up and sing "I am a Child of God" and they did such a good job.

My post is a little late but better late then never right :).

Russon Family Campout

At the end of June every year, Greg's family all meets together at the designated spot for a weekend of playing, hiking, eating, and marshmallow roasting. This year, Laura was in charge and did an incredible job. We went up American Fork Canyon to Timpenooke and had some of the best campsites up the canyon (we ended up with 5 of them because there were so many of us). We headed out Friday early afternoon and claimed our spot and soon after, everyone started to show up. We just goofed around that night doing smores and roasting licorice over the fire which the kids promised was really good. Then the rain started… then poured… then came down like someone poured a bucket of water on your head. We were drenched and it was late enough that we just headed for the tent. We got up there and realized we left the windows open so now we had a nice puddle on one side of the tent. We dried things up as best we could with an extra t-shirt we had and rolled into bed. The morning brought sunshine, and K-HOP. Oh, blessed K-HOP. Greg's dad's name is Kay and he makes some of the best breakfast ever to be found thus it is dubbed K-HOP for Kay's house of pancakes. We stuffed ourselves silly then started to pack our lunch. We set out and hiked and hiked and hiked and then hiked some more before we finally reached the summit of Mount Timpinogos. It was incredible and very fitting for the campout this year as Greg's great-great grandpa is the original founder of Timp Cave. The night previous, we listened to his first-hand account of how he found the cave and who was with him. It was so fun to hear the recording of him talk about it and then go up and see the pictures and stories they have at the visitor's center. The cave was amazing and because of whom they are descendents of, they let us go together instead of splitting up the group. Going down was definitely better than going up and James and Greg were complete pals through the whole hike. When we reached the bottom, I snuck away and got an ice cream cone (shh, don't tell) and hid away while I ate it. I shared a little with Greg but very secretly. It was fun.

We headed back to camp and Laura came out in the funniest brown wig to play a family trivia game. The questions were hilarious, such as: Name 3 of Kay's sayings ("I'm so hungry my stomach thinks my throats been cut"), Who brought a fan to Lake Powell?, Who got stuck on the jet ski at Lake Powell?, Show Laura's pose in her famous dance picture, etc. I learned quite a bit about this family I married into (there seemed to be a lot of talk about bowel movements too for some reason). That night for dinner, we did pulled pork sandwiches, potatoes, and then some amazing cobbler. Have you ever had pumpkin cobbler? Oh my heavens, amazing! We then made ice cream and it was so much fun. We were all so stuffed that we just sat around. When it started to get dark, we set up the projector and watched cartoons in the trees. We were really only waiting for others to show up to start a slide show. L&L put together a pretty cool slide show including pictures of in-laws (YIKES!). It was pretty fun to see it all. The ending picture was my favorite. L&L's youngest was in the middle of a dirt road with his back to the camera and his pants around his ankles. The next day, we just loaded up, headed home, and crashed. Laura really did an amazing job and it turned out to be a lot of fun including when Cedar decided he liked to eat horse droppings.