So cute!

We sure love this girl.

Blacksmith Fork Canyon 2012

Anytime that I mention to someone the fact that our family really enjoys camping, I'm always asked where our favorite place is to go.  And my answer is always the same:  Blacksmith Fork Canyon.  It's located above Hyrum, in Cache Valley.  Bryan and I started camping up there the first summer we were married, sleeping in the tent on air mattresses, packing all our own water in and out, peeing in the woods, etc.  Fun times.  We brought Tess up there in the tent when she was a baby, and we brought Miles there as a baby in the tent trailer, and now we're bringing Bree there in our full-size trailer.  No matter what changes in our life, we always love to go there each summer.  Here are a few reasons why.  During this last trip, Bree was napping in the trailer, and Bryan had taken Tess & Miles for a 4-wheeler ride.  It was on Thursday morning, so it was relatively uncrowded.  I was sitting outside in a chair, reading a magazine and listening to the silence all around me.  I looked up and this is the view I got:

Right in front of me

Directly behind me

To my left

To my right

In front and above me

It's just incredibly gorgeous up there!  It's not a campground, so you're not crammed in parking stalls with your neighbor 10 feet away.  You can find places that are very secluded, away from the road and from people, but close enough to trails to ride the 4-wheeler or go hiking.  There are so many trees that you're shaded all day, and the river is small and shallow enough to walk in, but big enough to have a few fish to catch.  You can watch the silhouettes of all the bats coming out of the mountain crags and flying down the canyon at dusk.  It's very idyllic.  I love it up there!

Bryan caught this guy.  The kids were very excited.  Bryan laughed because it was pretty small; it made him realize that he needs to take them fishing more often!

In this picture, Bryan was pretending to take a big bite of the fish's backbone.

He tried to get Tess to do the same for the next picture, but THIS was the cute picture I got instead!

Bree, of course, was just happy to be there!

Miles got his socks and shoes all wet, so here he is, chillin' by the fire in his bare feet.

Tess is our "queen of funny faces."  That girl is a ham!

While we were all sitting around the fire she was wiggling and wiggling her loose tooth.  She eventually got it out and she was so happy that the Tooth Fairy found us, even in the trailer!  That Tooth Fairy sure is a sneaky one.

We went for a hike on Friday and found that someone had fashioned an armchair out of rocks.  So here we all are, trying it out...

Tess was able to catch a butterfly with her bare hands; I was pretty impressed--I don't think I could do that!

We went into Logan for lunch one day.  We got take-out and ate at Adams Park while the kids played.  While there, THIS happened!  (Ignore my ugly camping clothes/shoes...)

(Tess was born in Logan and took her first steps in Riverdale, Miles was born in Riverdale and took his first steps in Hooper, Bree was born in Hooper and took her first steps in Logan....a complete circle. :) 

Soccer

We signed the kids up for soccer this year.  It's AYSO soccer, otherwise known as "All Your Saturdays are Over" soccer.  Both Tess and Miles are on teams with their friends so they are having a great time.  Their coach (the same for both teams) is a friend of ours who is really great with the kids and makes it fun and pretty low-key.  Here are a few action shots from their first games...  (Tess's team is the "Crazy Lizards" in green and Miles's team is called "White Speed" in, of course, white.)

Relay for Life

I participated in Relay for Life this year.  The last time I did it was in 2000, the year after my mom died.  It was very emotional then, and I was pretty emotional at times this year as well.  I certainly had a few tears, but we also had fun too.  Here is a picture of our group...  (one of the fundraiser booths was selling funny bras that were crazily decorated, so that's what my niece Emma and her friend are wearing on top of their shirts!)

 They had all sorts of activities going on, all evening and even through the night.  Here I am attempting Zumba for the first time...  (it's pretty fun, but I sure felt uncoordinated!)

 As they lit all the luminarias, they had a special program with poems and songs and then everybody added a glow stick to a big huge luminaria.  We walked around the track and saw the bags for all the cancer survivors and victims.  (And really, when you think about it, everyone who has cancer is a victim, whether they survive or not, right?)  It was pretty depressing, to be quite honest with you...

Cancer sucks.

Wicked-Lagoon Day-Cherry Hill

We had a busy, but really fun, weekend!  First Bryan took me to see "Wicked" on Thursday night for my birthday.  He doesn't really enjoy seeing plays at all, but he especially dislikes musicals.  When he bought the tickets, he didn't know anything about Wicked, other than the fact that I wanted to see it.  He found out that it was a musical the day before we went and he wasn't super thrilled, but he ended up (somewhat) enjoying it, and I LOVED it!

Friday we went to ES3's Lagoon Day.  We decided to get a babysitter for Bree this year.  (Because she was still nursing last year, I spent a lot of my day holding her and waiting for Bryan to ride all the rides with Tess & Miles.)  She's still too little to ride even the smallest kiddie rides, so we thought it would be best to leave her home.  We had a great time!

 Tess always asks for cotton candy, and we're too cheap to buy any of the super-overpriced food at Lagoon, so we always say no.  Tess begged and said that she had never even tasted cotton candy in her life, and I decided that, super-overpriced or not, that is just a travesty to be seven-years-old and to never have even TASTED cotton candy!  What terrible parents we are!  So we bought a bag and she was SO excited.  Here she is having her first taste of cotton candy...

Bryan doesn't really care for it, but here he is having a taste...

 I like it OK, every 10 years or so...

 Miles was really excited to try it, especially after all the hype from Tess.  But he hated it and said, "it tastes like there are chunks of sand in my mouth!"  When I asked him to at least take another taste so that I could take a picture, this is what I got:

Saturday we went to a Jensen family reunion at Cherry Hill.  We played at the waterpark and went miniature golfing that night before camping over and playing in the pool in the morning.  We also decided to make some more of the silly duct-tape headbands.  Here are Miles and Tess making silly faces with their cute cousins Brooklyn and Aiden.

 This is what I saw after we got home on Sunday...  ha!