Party @ The Lake House

4th of July in Heaven

I am writing this blog on behalf of Meagan who is driving beside me dictating her wishes.
And I quote:
This invitation is extended to all who read the blog (if you don't read it, you suck anyway. And if we don't know you and you're reading this blog, you're creepy). Please come party at the lake house!!! Starting July 3rd. It's a camping party. In order for this to be fun for all (Meagan included) the house is off limits. The mudroom bathroom is okay to use. But no kid group potty trips. And obviously the little ones should be accompanied. This is in all other respects a "camp out". Bring stoves, tents, paper plates, roasting sticks, etc. etc. The baptism will be Saturday afternoon so we will have to divide and conquer to shower everyone. Between Cory's family's houses, the lake house and mom and dad's there will be plenty of showers.
It's going to be so fun!! The lake is a dream to swim in. There's a fishing boat and a dock and bull frogs (ps those suckers are loud so bring headphones, earplugs or sleep aids). Lots if grass to play games, ripe cherries on the tree. However, only one bathroom, don't go overboard on the cherries. A fire pit, sports court, 2 tire swings, a walking path, running buddies, a trampoline and a barn. Basically everything you need for to have fun outside on the 4th!!
If the camping does not sound fun, please make other arrangement. We will not be offended and please don't take offense. We just all want to have fun. And if Meagan is crazy, it ain't fun. Am I right?
Because we will go anywhere but hungry, let's talk about food.
Bring your own. There is a fire pit and a BBQ available and We can bring out the Dutch ovens. There is a fridge and freezer in the barn but it might be smart to bring a cooler as well as there are lots of us. We're thinking for dinners, everyone do their own meat and a side to share. Yes? Maybe we could do breakfasts together? And lunches, we're all on our own.
So that should sum it all up. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, please feel free to call Ellynn because we all know Meagan will not answer your call or listen to your voicemail. (I just deleted 23 unheard messages from her phone. I think there were 3 from me. I'm a little hurt)
When we're all together it will be ZION to me!!! And I really am tearing up right now. "Our favorite place to be is together".
-Meagan and Ellynn
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

How do we?

Slow down enough to enjoy life? Well, we haven't figured it out yet...

We have all three kids signed up for swim team this year, Cole and Dayne on dive (their request), and while talking tonight, Geof and I realized Cole had scout day camp all week and that was going to conflict with swim/dive practice. Ugh. 

Geof: "that's it, we're officially over scheduled East coasters."  I told him I think it's become that way everywhere, that we only think it's really bad here because we're comparing it to our childhood out west. 

Gone are the days of an open and free childhood?? I hope not. 

Here's some Instagram pics of our latest adventures. I've had an itching to explore the western side of Va ever since I hiked with the young women in our ward a few Saturdays back. It's not the Rockies or Sierra's, but the Blue Ridge Mtns has a beauty all its own. It's rich in history, tradition and culture. We camped last night 2.5 hrs away in George Washington National park. We went out there mainly to see Natural Bridge which reminded me of the arches in Southern Utah. 

     You know our kids have done too much easy camping when we show up to our more "remote" camp site and they ask where the bathrooms are. They also haven't hiked enough. We drag them all over the state exploring, but a simple walk in the woods was just too much for them! No wonder Geof isn't as excited as I am to backpack with them. However, I'm determined that it'll get easier the more we do it. 

We went to church today in Buena Vista. Only about 20 minutes from where we camped. They have SVU there--Southern Virginia University. LDS owned. Beautiful little campus nestled amongst the Shenandoah's (I probably didn't say that right). 

We show up to church looking a little raggedy-you know, camping style. I had packed Geof's church clothes the night before we left, but I guess leaving them in a basket in the hall was a bad idea-our sweet, but not so smart Phoebe cat thought she'd leave her mark on them. Not enough for me to notice when packing them in the car, only right before Geof went to put them on and they'd been baking in the hot van. Yuck. So although the rest of us were at least dressed in SuNday dress (albeit a little sloppy), Geof showed up in shorts and a hoody. I believe most of the ward mistook him for an AT hiker passing through. Ha!

And then to top off our scraggly look, we picked two ticks out of our girls' hair during Sacrament Meeting! 

We ended our day going to see Stonewall Jackson's grave (confederate army general) in the beautiful town of Lexington, VA. Lexington is the home ofWashington  and Lee University (Robert E Lee became the President of the school after the Civil War) and even more impressed were we discovering VMI (Virginia Military Institute) was in Lexington. And what a cool campus it was! It had a slightly modern, mid evil/castle look--if you can imagine. All in all, I think it made for a wonderful ending to Geof's Father's Day weekend. My kids couldn't ask for a better daddy. He adores them and makes them laugh everyday. 

House hunting

Poor Le Anne's eyes are killing her. Hopefully WA and the humidity will be good to her when she gets home tonight. If I could write a poem to express my undying gratitude to Le Anne, I would. It has been so fun to have her with us for so long. Yesterday and today have been a cookie/cookie dough making/eating frenzy. Oh, we are all going to miss her so much!

We didn't get the house we put an offer on in Heber. Back to the drawing board (ie Zillow). The kids and I are going to meet up with Adam when he gets off work on the 26th. Then we will follow him as he rides the HD to WA the 27/28th. Whoohoooo!

Swings

Home

" Hold on, to me as we go.
As we roll down this unfamiliar road.
And although this wave is stringing us along.
Just know you’re not alone,
Cause I’m going to make this place your home.

Settle down, it'll all be clear.
Don't pay no mind to the demons,
They fill you with fear.
The trouble it might drag you down.
If you get lost, you can always be found.

Just know you’re not alone,
Cause I’m going to make this place your home."---is this not a Mumford&Sons song, who is Philip Phillips anyway? It sure lifts my spirits at a time like this, tho.

This is the house in Heber we broke into. After looking in the windows I was filled with desire to see the upstairs. I tried the address on the lock box, when that didn't work I entered "9999" and it worked! We wandered around, amazed that someone would put so much money into a home with two bedrooms, two kitchens, two bathrooms, and a lion spurting water fountain in the entry. See more pics here: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7890-E-Lake-Creek-Rd-Heber-City-UT-84032/2115902327_zpid/
The property has a stream running through it. We'd been listening to "The Mark of Athena" and were at a part about evil water nymphs who love to drown children. That's all I could think about when looking at the innocent little stream. There was a fire pit with a bunch of lawn chairs and grills surrounding it. It was as if a bunch of rich frat boys built this house in 2005, partied out here a bit, then up and left it all to rot. Very mysterious.

This house was on a beautiful lot with a great view, but the house was trashed. Obviously, Bruno and Belle were allowed free roam and I was grateful that we didn't get inside this one. We were in a gated community of cabins here, ranging in price from $100k to 5 million. Kaia expressed concern that these were the kinds of homes that went up in flames durning forest fires. When we got home on Tuesday, we could see and smell lots of smoke. There are several fires in CO right now, one of which is in Colo Springs where over 100 homes have burned. So very sad.

I wish I would have taken more pictures and recorded more stories from our house hunting adventure in Heber. We got to meet up with Aunt Jack, Uncle Kev, and the Hatch's at Camper World. The kids swam, we gobbled up all their hot dogs and s'mores, and had a great time visiting. Alicia reminded me of a story we shared with them that I want to record here. So, Le Anne has opened my eyes to the fact that Ruby is a spoiled, rotten, bully of a 4th child. I knew this, but was also blindly enabling it. When Ruby would beat up on her siblings and instigate problems, I'd usually end up yelling at the older kids for not being able to use their skills to find a solution. Le Anne started telling them to be "kind, but firm" with Ruby and not let her get away with it. My go-to punishment for Ruby has been to say something like "Ruby, say sorry for [enter any number of wrong doings here, i.e. trying to scratch out your brother's eyes] and everyone gets a treat except for Ruby." This usually led to Ruby inflicting more injuries upon anyone within her reach. Well, I'd said this in the morning one day and by the evening still hadn't followed through. Sierra is always good to remind me, and while we were in the store I grabbed a  $1 box of Goobers (the chocolate covered peanuts, the box was boasting 7 g of protein per serving!). In the truck, everyone got a handful, except for Ruby (and there was knashing of teeth). Then, a man was standing on the street corner begging for food. In our desperation to offer him something, we handed him the half eaten box of Goobers. Ruby stopped crying, the punishment was inflicted, and we'd done a good deed.
I am so so so very grateful for Le Anne helping us while house hunting. It was such a roller coaster. We only had Adam with us for a few days then he went back to work and texted us between working and sleeping. We put a deposit on a lot in a new neighborhood last Thursday, Le Anne and I spend almost two hours in the design center picking out carpet, cupboards, counter tops, etc. Then Adam texted the next day and said he was running the numbers and it no longer looked like a good deal. So we backed out, and I wept. But it made sense to me to me and we kept looking. Staying at Ellynn's empty condo was bitter sweet. We sure wished the Willmores were there to play with us. We had a great time creatively eating all the food Ellynn left behind in her fridge/freezer.  Le Anne can make a delicious smoothie using broccoli, zucchini, fruit punch concentrate, frozen strawberries, cranberries, bananas, spinach, and a whole bunch of other stuff. At one point, Le Anne needed a spoon to stir something and sent Sierra and Kaia to the neighbors to ask for one.  They wandered down to a family who was setting up for a garage sale the next day (it looked very much like an eviction). The woman was very happy to loan the spoon, but when we saw her later digging through the dumpster, we wondered why we didn't sanitize it better before using it.  The kids and I wandered through the garage sale, genuinely enjoying all the character's in Ellynn's hood.  Tristan kept asking the sellers if they were giving anything away for free. One lady with a LOT of cats, who was selling a LOT of yarn, gave him a very dirty look when he asked, as if to say "get out of here punk, this is how I pay the rent".  Another family was selling a lot of toys for cheep.  Tristan gathered up a collection of bath toys, Ruby got a phone and keys that made annoying sounds, Sierra got several Harry Potter books. Tristan asked for prices, added up the total quickly in his head, and blew the lady away when he handed her the correct amount of change. She looked at me in surprise as if to say, "How old is wonder boy here?" Grandma Danna taught the kids to play 10,000 and sudoku. Tristan can add up scores faster than anyone and picked up sudoku in just a few tries (this makes Sierra insanely jealous, but Kaia could care less).  We got to spend one morning on BYU campus. It was so fun to wander around again, so much new construction that I hadn't seen yet. We had a blast in the Eyring center playing with all the science displays.  We went to a band concert in the park, walked around downtown P-town and saw the construction on the new temple. So many other stories I wish I could remember, but we are home now and need to unpack and battle the mountains of laundry...

Tonight's FHE