Monday, July 31, 2023

July 2023

 Kylee kept busy working 30 hours a week most weeks but still found some time to play.  Poppy and Pout had a Barbie Party as the movie was coming out.


Kylee took the ACT for the 2nd time in June right after she had done the BYU bootcamp and she did really well but was one point off for the full ride scholarship (she got 32).  So we decided it wouldn't hurt to try one more time, but that meant driving to Brigham City for the second year in a row.  Girls trip!  She got her results a week later and she KILLED IT!!!!  Scholarship secured and we couldn't be more proud of her.



We wanted to reward her for all her hard work and we figured with her having a scholarship for school, we could splurge on Taylor Swift tickets.  Of course Taylor was done with her US dates so we had to go International.  London in June sounded dreamy.  Tickets secured and Kylee was SO EXCITED when we told her!

She spends so much time with dance and soccer.  But she just loves it.

Hillcrest has a new girls soccer coach and it's a guy from the BYSL board that I've known for a few years and he's a great guy and very invested and we are so excited for the upcoming year!  The team went to Boise for some friendly games and they did really well!  It was 90 degrees but we made it work.  I brought Sadie to hang out with me because I have gone without her and left her behind with the boys so many times with Kylee's team traveling so much.  She watched the games with me and we spent the day at the water park too.  It was a lot of fun!






Kaden wrote a note to the tooth fairy.  He's getting a little too smart to pull anything over on, so I decided to just answer him.  He immediately sent a text to his cousin telling him how we've been scamming him the whole time.  Jason was like, yeah I know. Lol.
YM/YW fundraiser auctioned off some bball lessons from two 8th grade boys so we bought them for Kaden and Porter.  They had so much fun with these boys (and surprisingly the older boys loved it too) so they ended up doing a few more lessons and we paid them.
Kaden is loving tennis!  He likes to come play with me and insists I serve him real serves.  The only problem is I'm not that great at getting my serves in anyway.  But I like learning with him.  We signed up for lessons from Hillcrest together because they offered adult lessons and I'm excited!
Hip Sip was on the way home so we stopped because he promised to help me wash my car.


Ryan played in the adult/jr tournament with Kaden again and secured the win again.  We are just hoping Kaden enjoys playing enough that he will keep with it.
Dylan started working on this online video editing app and making real money.  We were skeptical at first but we helped him set up a Paypal account, and a bank account and he started having money rolling in.  He's pretty good at it!  It's just so Dylan to get a "job" without telling us and then work hard and make some good money doing it.

Dylan and Kaden went on the hike I made them go on with me and Julie. It was an easy hike and it was pretty fun.  Kaden said it was more fun than he thought it would be.  Dylan stayed ahead of us most of the time and just wanted to finish and be done. 







Sadie and Kaden participated in the soccer camp.  It was hot and long and they were pretty miserable. But it's good for them.



Sadie and Kaden still enjoy the lake, but only if they can bring their friends.  I love hanging out there with my friends so we were all happy.



Sadie and her friends worked at the ward (stake?) party like the helpful girls they are.


Sadie and I went to see Barbie together with Ingrid and her daughter.  Kylee went without me with her friends so I'm glad Sadie was willing to be my date.  Ryan went to Mission Impossible with his friends instead.

I made a trip to Utah to meet up with my Africa friends!  That's what I call them now.  Formerly known as my high school friends.  We met at Maddux and had a great time though I'm still annoyed that our waiter abandoned us and never refilled our waters while we were chatting at the end of our meal.
I started playing Ladie's League with Michelle Sayer!  She invited me and she needed a partner and I felt like she knows me and how I play so she knew what she was getting into so I agreed.  I was nervous!  But it was really fun and I'm glad we did it.  I'm never going to get better if I don't get out and play.  This week we both won a closest to the pin and somehow took 1st.  We didn't do much any other week though we both had times we were close to longest drive but got beat at the end.  They screwed me over with my handicap at the start of the league, giving me a 5 or something ridiculous when I'm more of a 15.  They adjusted it as the league went on but I was still a little bothered that I didn't have a chance at winning anything those first few weeks.

And the sunsets coming home were always amazing!
My friend Holly invited us to play glow golf with them.  It was an event the club was putting on but you had to play in teams of four.  We decided it would be fun to try, and it was.  It was so trippy though!  It's very different when you can't see the ground.  I've never seen Ryan hit so wild, lol.  I hit my share of bad shots too, but surprisingly I did pretty good!

Speaking of nighttime lights, the night we went to Island Park before hiking Yellowstone, someone heard that the Northern Lights were visible so we walked down their driveway to get a view.  How cool that we could see these from home (or close to home)?  The funny thing is you can't really see anything with just your eyes.  These colors came from the slow shutter on our phones.  But still cool.


Last but not least, I have pictures of road work because I can not believe how much road work there was in our city this summer!  Everywhere you went there were closed roads.  To the point that I was surprised the city even owned that many orange cones.  Every road from my house heading north was either closed or there was construction.  You had to zigzag to get anywhere north and it was soooo annoying.  There was quite a bit downtown too.  And then I hit this in the parking lot by Al's and Michael's and I had to take a picture because I just couldn't believe it.

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Yellowstone

 We did an amazing hike in Yellowstone.  It was North Rim and South Rim.  The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone is a really cool site!  And this hike was pretty stunning the whole way.  Highly recommend!













A week later I went back to Yellowstone with my brother Jeff and Amanda.  They came up to Island Park for the 24th because we have kind of outgrown Newton.  I think we will probably go back to Newton again and hopefully set up pickle ball with Lyn and Darlene or something.  But this year we planned to do a few things up here.  We planned Yellowstone, floating the river, and hiking.  I told my kids they didn't have to come to all of them, but they had to choose one.  Sadie was hurting and didn't want to hike.  And she certainly didn't want to do the river again.  So she came to Yellowstone with us.  It was a long day and she was a trooper, even though she was pretty miserable for some of it.

We got to Old Faithful with an hour or more before it's next scheduled time so we walked around the other geysers of the area.  I haven't done this before and it was really cool!  It was quite a bit of walking and Sadie was struggling.



We made it back to Old Faithful just in time and thought we could watch it from a different vantage point but realized there's probably a reason everyone watches it from the seats, the mist was all we could see so we walked a little further and got this view.

We ended up eating at Cafe Sabor after, which was really crowded but yummy.  The rest of the weekend didn't go quite as planned.  We decided not to hike because it was too much driving to go to Jackson and instead Jeff and Amanda went back to do the rest of Yellowstone with Kennedy and her boyfriend.  Then they came to our house and stayed the night and couldn't bring themselves to drive back to Island Park to float so they just packed up and went home.  Which was fine, we had a good visit with them.  But that meant Sadie spent the whole day with us and the rest of the kids didn't have to do anything.  Kylee was so busy with work and dance that she didn't have time but I told the boys they still had to go with just me.  Kaden wanted to float the river, but Julie and I decided to hike so we just took the boys hiking.  Pictures in another post.