First Day of School

Yesterday was Julia's first day of third grade, and today Collin went to his first day of first grade. They looked so cute!! I can't believe that I'm home all day with only Anthony now. It's a little strange to think about Collin not being here for part of the day.

Lake Powell

We got back from a week of Lake Powell on Saturday. We had a blast. It was hot, but the air conditioner on the houseboat was a lifesaver. We did a lot of swimming, building sandcastles, riding the wave runners, and watching movies at night. It's one of our favorite trips. A few of the group even took a four hour boat ride to go see Rainbow Bridge. Isn't it beautiful? It's the largest natural arch in the world, I think.

Shawn made this teepee one night when he wanted something more productive to do. We all thought he was kind of funny and then it turned out really cool. All he needed were a few animal skins to cover it with. The day after he built it another house boat pulled in next to us and Shawn was talking to them a little bit and he discovered they were a scout troop. Then they got talking about the teepee and how the lashing was good or whatever. What a scouting nerd!!! Just kidding.

All three of the kids slept in one of the basement bedrooms. We turned them sideways on the bed and then they all fit on it together. We thought they were so cute. Every night we'd look in after they were all asleep just to look at them.

Here's us swimming in the lake. It's one of my favorite things to do and the kids loved it. It's also probably the best wasy to stay cool in the afternoon. We did get a little sunburnt, but only on our shoulders, and it really wasn't too bad.

Shawn and Collin built this sandcastle one night. Collin loves to build. He's sitting in the "swimming pool."

Two years ago at Lake Powell, the boat next to us had built this huge waterslide. Then we saw a video of our friends Trevor and Wendy who'd done the same thing. We decided to try. They got all the plastic laid out and the hose and everything, but our beach just wasn't steep enough to make a good one. So, Shawn decided to make one for the kids. He build it up a little so it was steep enough. They loved it. Anthony even went a little crazy (no surprise there).

I put more individual pictures of each of the kids on their own blogs, so if you want to go take a look, feel free.

A more recent picture

Ok, so I finally downloaded some pictures off my camera. Yes, I need to do this more. In fact, I need to take more pictures. Here is one of my kids from Lauren's wedding. I thought Julia just looked beautiful and the boys are so handsome.

Ah, Summer...

My kids are finally out of school for the summer--if you can call it that. Precisely 27 days isn't exactly the summer I remember as a kid. That's what you get from year-round school. We are even going to Lake Powell for a week of that measely little 27 days, so my kids have about 2 1/2 weeks of true summer. Then they go back to shool for 9 weeks before another three week break.

Hopefully, we can use the little time we have to do a few fun things. Like today we're going to make little scrapbooks for them to color or write stories in. Tomorrow, hopefully, we're going to run through the sprinklers.