August has been very busy. And since we're going away again, I decided it was time to update you all. We all had a great morning at the splash park near us. The kids really love it! Especially colin.

We have been waiting and waiting for our chickens to start laying eggs. John built this hen house for them in June, and they seem to be happy, but no eggs. Finally we got one!!! At the beginning of August, the John and the kids found an egg! They cooked it up right away and ate it! They definitely taste better fresh! Here's a picture of our Happy chickens!

My little brother Roger and his wife Tasha Just had their 1st baby. She is such a cutie, and the first baby girl since Erin! Her name is Alyssa.

Erin's favorite thing lately to do with Colin is to dress him up like a girl. Colin just loves getting dressed up and lets her do what ever she wants. These are the results:

Devin seeing all the excitement, decided to get in on this attention.

With only a couple more weeks of summer left til the kids go back to school, we decided to go camping. We went up to the High Uintas where it's cool, and neither John nor I have been there before. We camped in a smaller campground with a river running right through! It was so fun to sit on the banks and watch the kids play. We drove up to the Provo River falls they were beautiful! There are several layers to the falls too, so it was fun to hike along and see all the different falls. We also went to Mirror Lake. It's such a peaceful place! What a beautiful place.

While we were out and about, John decided it was a good time to take a profile of me, cause I'm definately starting to show.

Yellowstone

In July, we decided to head up to Yellowstone. It had been years since I went with my family as a child, and John had never been before. Since he's had so much time off lately, we decided that it was worth the trip.

It is amazing to see all the geothermal hot pots, and geysers there. We had a ton of fun, but some of us didn't particularly enjoy the smells. We did a lot of walking and I'm discovering that I can't hike as long as I usually can when I'm not pregnant.

One of the things that you're most likely to see in Yellowstone is Buffalo. You hear of them walking up to cars and people, but you don't really believe it until you see it in real life. They are really huge and really dangerous. We were really glad that this one was on the other side of the fence. Another thing that's beautiful in Yellowstone is all the waterfalls. Some of them are right off the road! They are so fabulous! After spending 3 nights in Yellowstone, we headed down to the Grand Tetons for 2 more nights. The Grand Tetons are Beautiful! We loved dipping our feet in the Ice cold lake water.

John also took the kids right down by the Jackson Lake Dam! That's some waterfall!

We made the typical drive through Jackson Hole to get a picture by the Elk horn Arch.

But our favorite part of the Grand Tetons was going up on the Jackson Hole Aerial Tram to the top of the world. The view was beautiful, and the ride itself was fun. It will definitely be remembered for a long time.

Through the whole trip, we'd been looking for all sorts of animal life. We saw buffalo, elk, ravens, eagles, even a coyote. We got in three bear traffic jams, but missed the bears each time. The one thing we really wanted to see was a moose. we searched and searched one evening and never found anything but beavers (that was cool). Then on the ride back to the camp site from Jackson Hole, we saw this beautiful Moose! she was right off the side of the road! I took this picture from the car window without zooming! Then we saw another one a few hundred yards down the road. I guess you just have to be in the right place at the right time. It was my birthday while we were in Yellowstone, and we celebrated by going out to dinner instead of cooking dinner on the fire. But when we got home, we celebrated right. John made me a cake and Dinner. It was a fun birthday. By the way, I know that a lot of you have been wondering. We had an ultrasound right before we left for Yellowstone, and we're having another boy! We all thought it would be a girl to balance us out, but boys are fun too. We know how to do boys. There was no doubt whatsoever that it was a boy!

July

It's already August, and I haven't even blogged about our 4th of July or Devin's birthday! Here it is: We went to a really fun Family reunion on the 4th of July weekend. It was in Richfield and there was a ton people, a ton of good food, and an awesome water slide! The kids loved the water slide, but got cold really quick. We had a great time!

Then Erin went off with her cousin to Fish lake for the weekend. That was really weird, to celebrate the 4th without her, but she had a great time. They went down to Richfield for their 4th of July celebration. There she caught a fish with her hands! And won a gold fish in a game. What a fun weekend for her! Thanks to Mindy and Lafe for hosting her and taking care of her while she was with them!

As for us, we went home and had our own fireworks celebration. The boys loved the sparklers.

I love fireworks and as you can tell, so does Colin!

We also had the kids in swim lessons for the first 2 weeks of July. Devin passed off his level 1 with flying colors.

He even went off the diving board without any help from his teacher!

Erin is in level 4 and is swimming like a fish.

She went off the High dive! She was a little nervous at first, but once she did it once she decided to do it a few more times.

We found this cool splash park near our house, and one morning while John and Erin were out skiing, I decided to take the boys out for a little fun of our own.

There was also a a dry play ground there where the boys could warm up and dry off. That was Colin's favorite part.

As for Devin's birthday. It was a lot of fun.

He was so excited to get a star wars Nerf gun and a new Lego set, among other things.

We had a birthday party for him at the end of June before all the kids got out of school and went on family vacations. I had the party planned for outside, but we had to improvise when the wind became torrential and interrupted all our games. All in all, though it was a really fun Pirate party, and Devin tells me now that the Treasure hunt was his favorite part. Happy 5th birthday Devin! I'm so proud to be your Mom!