August Activities! (...I love alliteration - can you tell!?)

This month was a great one!  The end of the month got a little tricky as the kids "checked out" and felt they deserved a break since they've been working "hard" all summer (really people!?  Your chores, practicing, work book, and reading take maybe 1 hour and 30 minutes of your day to complete, but they drag it out all day).  Anyways, after what felt like all day of trying to get them to finish up their stuff, we did do many fun activities that we all enjoyed.

We did our first Primary activity this summer.  We had a great turn out, including many kids who don't come to church.  We let the kids decorate their own flags for their teams and then did a torch relay to get things started.  The Young Men helped us put on the event.  We had an obstacle course, basketball, frisbee golf, fencing, discus, and soccer.  They were so cute with the kids!  We finished the event off by giving each of the kids medals and popsicles.  A great time was had by all!

We had a Harry Potter birthday party with our good friends, the Walkers, who are also HP fans.  We hid pics of Myrtle all over the house, and put up some "Wanted" posters from the movies.  We had a BBQ with muggle food.  We made some wands out of chopsticks, glue sticks, and then the kids painted them.  We watched one of the movies and had popcorn with themed candy.  We also made butter beer (non-alcoholic, of course) which was de-licious!  Glad for good times with good friends!

We had fun during the week of the fair!  We enjoyed the parade, the kid's favorite entry was the missionaries from Martin's Cove.  We went to the cat show, saw all of the exhibits, went on kid's day and were able to see our friends in the junior rodeo clown competition, saw what ribbons Emma and Cal's artwork got (Emma got a blue ribbon and Cal got a green!), squealed over the animals, and Emma and Daddy went on a special date to the demolition derby.

We visited Vedawoo in Medicine Bow National Forest with our friends the Schaefs.  It was beautiful and oh, so fun!  The kids loved the rock formations, and got a kick out of naming them, and Cal was in heaven climbing around.  We hiked on the rocks, and then we had a picnic dinner near the pond in the state park.  They're such sweet friends and we love getting together with them whenever we can.

We also tried geocaching for our first time, and it was pretty fun!  I was surprised how many treasures are hidden right here in our neck of the woods.  We had good luck finding t o, but couldn't find the other two we were looking for.  The kids loved it and keep asking to go again!  So I think we will try it again.

We also got to go to Martin's Cove to attend a baptism, push the handcarts around, and check out the Visitor's Centers.  What a neat place with a special spirit!  The year since Emma's been baptized has flown by, and it brought back some sweet memories being there with the family.

Well, it's been fun, it's been great and it's hard to believe fall is on it's way soon!  Let the good times roll!