Scenes of Summer

Ok, we have had a very busy June and I don't feel like I have time to blog it all in detail. So here are some snapshots to show what we have been up to. If I get time to do more, great. If not, you can imagine the details yourselves!
Sports already run a good portion of our lives, and June was no different. I'm a little scared to think how much worse it is going to get in the next few years!
We spent the beginning days of our summer at the BYU Soccer Camp, which Cole always thinks is so cool.
Then, we would rush home and change Cole so he could go to his teeball games.
Cole showing us his "Rrrraptor" position.
Then, a few weeks later, we repeated the rushing around, but this time with BYU Basketball Camp. This was the first year that Cole could do the basketball camp and he loved it! He thought it was even better than soccer camp. (I can't remember if he has 1 or 2 more camps in July! Chad loves that perk of his job! I'm pretty Cole does too.)
Maybe by next year he will grow into his jersey!The next few weeks it was Emily's turn to rush from sport to sport. She started gymnastics (I don't have any pictures of that yet.) about the same time as she and Cole started swim lessons.
Emily proudly waits by her number for her class to begin.
Although, who needs to learn to swim when your teacher gives you rides!
Cole is becoming quite the swimmer on his stomach ...
And on his back.
He even jumped off the diving board and swam to the side all by himself!
Somewhere in the middle of June, we attended the Taylor Reunion.
Chad and one of the few remaining Taylor siblings.
Emily and her loot
Chad was untouchable at horseshoes!
Also somewhere in the middle of June, we attended the Manti Pageant,
Where we had Cotton Candy,
And got to see how beautiful the temple was at night!
Then, thanks to Uncle Allen and Aunt Shelly, we spent the night in a cabin not too far from Manti. The next day we got to do lots of fun stuff in the woods, like
Ride 4-Wheelers
Shoot BB guns
I'm really not sure who had the most fun with this part of the trip!
After practicing shooting at targets, the mighty hunters were ready to go shoot bears, or wolves, or deer, or more likely lizards and spiders!
While Emily likes to get down and dirty, she is also elegant and refined! She found a tree house that had a kitchen cupboard in it. So of course she talked Aunt Shelly into having a real tea party in the treehouse with real snacks that she organized on the kitchen shelves. (It could have been the most organized tea party in the woods ever! She had to put the plates and napkins in the drawers and the drinks and snacks on the shelves before anyone could take anything.)
She had lemonade and root beer, chips and fruit snacks, and plates and napkins, just to name a few. (I have to say that it reminded me of the popcorn commercial where the dad and brother dress up for the sister's tea party just so they can eat the food. When Cole and cousin Hunter heard Emily was having a tea party, they rolled their eyes and said that it sounded boring. But as soon as Emily started pulling the actual snacks out, they were suddenly very interested in participating! I was cracking up!)
We also found time to visit Grandma Sweetpea,
And to make several trips to Seven Peaks with family and friends.
Chad used to only be able to go on the big, fun rides with other kids.
But this time, Cole went on Boomerang for the first time with only minimal hyperventilating! This gave Chad great hope that he will have a riding buddy in the near future.
Emily and Kira enjoy a Fruit by the Foot snack in Lady and the Tramp style.
And I don't even know what to say about this. Maybe she had been in the sun too long. Or maybe going down the slides slightly warped her brain. Or maybe this is just Addy and her defiant personality! She loved to lean over and put her head in the water on the ground.
We also had fun going to the park to swing, slide, ...
And to eat so many chips that we broke the bench!
We also played ball.
I'm not sure if Emily is the Umpire or the Catcher here. I'm guessing she probably doesn't know either!
While, we took the kids lots of fun places and had them do lots of fun stuff, my kids also had plenty of fun just playing around the house.
June finally got warm enough that it was fun to just play in the yard with water.
The blue plastic pool that we bought when Cole was this age could be our greatest investment ever!
"You run, you slide, you hit the bump and take a dive!"
And saving possibly the best for last. I've discovered that my kids have an abundance of creativity. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes, well not so much. This picture shows a prime example of that. One day, I came in from mowing the yard to a kitchenful of kids, cups, and pans of ice and water. Little did I know that the pans also contained plenty of salt! While I was out, the kids had decided that they were going to sell, not lemonade, but salted, ice water. I'm not sure why or how they came up with this idea, but they thought it was a winner! After I told them they couldn't ask total strangers to buy their salt water, they proceeded to go and ask all their friends on the block to come try it out. I'm pretty sure they ended up giving it all away and didn't sell any, but they had a great time!
Wow, after rereading all of that, I can better understand why I'm exhausted and have gotten nothing productive done this summer! Oh well. Maybe July will be less intense.