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!

Camping in August

On the second weekend in August, we went camping with my parents up Nephi Canyon. It is so much work to get ready for camping, and I was worried that John wasn't going to make it because of work. But I did it, and John even made it! It was so fun to sit back and enjoy time as a family without stuff to do and things getting in the way.

Grandpa took Erin and Devin fishing (for a whole 5 minutes, cause there weren't any fish there).

We walked to the creek and threw stones in (Colin's favorite thing to do).

We had a fire going all day on Saturday, cause it was cold!!!

Erin and Devin found some swings to play on.

I made my first dish in the dutch oven ever. We got this dutch oven for our wedding 10 years ago and we've never used it til now. I made peach cobbler and it was awesome!!!!! I won't hesitate to use it again next time.

Colin loved just checking out the trucks. He was even more interested when Grandpa started telling him what everything is.

Erin decided that she found the perfect "Lion's Den" in some grass and convinced her brothers and even her Dad to play along with her. It was so much fun to watch, that I decided to share a little bit of it with you.

These are just some more of our favorite pictures of camping/relaxing.

Moab

The last week of June, We went to Moab Utah. What a beautiful place that is! We drove through Moab and headed up the La Sal mountains, cause I knew it was going to be hot in Moab, and wanted to remain as cool as possible. We Google-mapped our route and started on our way. However the road it told us to turn on turned out to be a 4 wheel drive road! I couldn't believe it! all this planning and reservations and we weren't going to be able to stay up on the cool canyon! Well, we decided to head back to town, but on the way we saw a sign for Warner Lake (which is where we were going to stay) and headed that way. We followed the signs up into the mountains and then onto a washboard road that was 4 miles, but 45 minutes long. We got there just in time to set up the tent before dark. What an adventure! And the Vacation had just started! we knew this would be no ordinary vacation.

Warner Lake was beautiful!!!!!!!! Well worth the huge adventure it took to get there! When we drove into the campsite, there were deer all over! They would come right up to our camp and peer at us like they had never seen humans before! It was amazing! Erin chased them all over, and came back claiming that they had let her pet them, which of course they never would.

We hiked together, played games, and enjoyed the relaxing environment of the peaceful mountains. the day we packed up, it poured. We were sad to be leaving that beautiful place, but excited to see Arches and get out of the rain. We started down the canyon, and used our GPS to go a different way to Moab. Well, we stumbled on a gold mine! We came out of the luscious mountains into Castle Valley! There were these huge castle like spires sticking up out of the middle of nowhere! It was so awesome! and then we ended up following the Colorado River as it wound it's way to Moab. What a gorgeous drive!

We stayed the next night in a cabin. That was kind of fun. We took showers and freshened up, then slept in a real bed. Very nice. The next day We went into Arches National Park. We drove straight in to do a couple of hikes while it was still cool. We walked right up to several arches, like the Windows, and the Turret Arch, and the Landscape Arch, and then there were others that we looked at from view points like the infamous Delicate Arch.

One of our favorites was the Balanced Rock. Kind of amazing how a huge rock can be just sitting there on top of sandstone, and not fall. The kids also got to play in a nice shaded natural sand box. They loved that.

We were eating Cheetos and Devin made his own Delicate Arch!

The next day we drove into Canyonlands National Park. It was a beautiful view. Our favorite part was the Mesa Arch. It's a short half mile hike, and it was worth every step. The arch was on the edge of a cliff and you can walk right up to it and look down into the valley. It was literally breath taking. You can see how John was holding on to Erin and Devin really tight here.

This was not one of Colin's finer moments.

While we were in Canyonlands, Erin discovered the Jr. Park Ranger program. She got a booklet which she completed some projects in and then she became a Junior Park Ranger. She liked it so much that she became a Jr. Park Ranger in Arches too. We were so proud.

Yes it was hot in Moab that weekend, but we were able to beat the heat by getting out early, and spending the afternoon in the pool at the camp ground.

There was a play ground there with some wooden horses that Erin grew attached to. She named them all and would ride them very frequently. This was a very candid shot of her taking care of her horse gingerspots.