July

July was a busy, fun month.  The kids spent lots of afternoons swimming in the pool in our front yard, usually with their neighborhood friends.  There was one day when the neighbors were all pretty much gone, and even Nathan and I ventured out with the kids. (I know, all that white skin is a bit much!)

 This is the super cool nail polish Leslie tried at a young women's activity. It is silver until it gets in the sun and turns pink! She was pretty fond of it, therefore it is documented.

Miriam is just interesting in this one.

This is the last photo taken by my little red camera.  It is a tent city in my basement.  And a pretty good one at that.  I am so sad my camera died, because I have no photos of my family reunion.  But we went to visit my parents on July 11th for a weekend with my siblings and a reunion with much of my mother's family.  I saw all of my aunts and uncles on the Murdock side and many of their children and grand children.  Nathan and I were also able to make a visit to my Murdock grandparents.  Grandma was in the hospital, but released soon after our visit, and Grandpa was in his new home at the assisted living center.

We slept in tents at my parent's home and visited.  We played in the water at Porter Park in Rexburg and mom and dad bought tickets for the carousel, filling it with their posterity.  That was my favorite part, looking all around the carousel at all the cute children and being amazed that two people, and 40 years of good living can turn into quite a busy crew!  We attended my cousin Amy Jo's graduation voice recital at the college.  Ethan kept leaning to me and asking how they made her voice so loud.  It was the first introduction to opera for him.  Then we went to the sand dunes--which was definitely my children's favorite part!  They came home with sand everywhere, exhausted and happy.

This photo was taken on the same trip at my  20 year high school reunion.  Five of the seven people that graduated in my class are here:

Back: Jason Vielma, Shaun Grover

Front: Jenny (Jacobson) McAllister, Tammie (Stewart) Smith, Terry (Wilding) Roberts.

It was great fun to see each other and talk and talk and talk.  And laugh.  We always did have a pretty good time together.  Shaun, Terry, Tammie and I were all classmates from kindergarten through 12th grade.  Lots of memories, we were just like siblings and we are glad to be back in touch with one another.

We also spent the 4th and 24th holidays with the McAllisters.  Food and fireworks. :)  Uncle Paul helped the little boys build model rockets to launch and that was a huge hit.  The McAllister ladies also had a quilting day tying four quilts.  We had so much fun, that we have scheduled another day, so we are piecing quilts to do it all again.