July went by incredibly fast. Seriously. Not sure I even took a breath. After a very busy 4th of July weekend, I celebrated my 29th birthday, and then we went straight to Idaho to have the Martin family reunion. This picture is not from the reunion, but since Tanner and Caroline couldn't make it for that I am showing the whole family when we were together for Grandpa and Grandma Backus's memorial service.
Yay Martin family!
After the reunion a bunch of my cousins and aunts got together to clean my grandma and grandpa's house since there would soon be over 70 of us converging there to help her celebrate her 80th birthday. Wanna know something funny about my grandma? Hee hee! I am giggling already about it. So we cleaned her house 2 weeks before the big party, right? And my cousins had the GENIUS idea to hide all of her knick-knacks and special things that had the strong possibility of getting broken by the plethera of young children that would be overtaking her house. So while dusting said precious items they took the liberty of hiding them. And there were lots of things to hide, and lots of creative places in which they were hid. Turns out that Grandma couldn't handle having all her things hidden, so a few days later she found every single one of those knick-knacks and put them back! Good times.
24th of July weekend was fun too. I can't remember it, but I'm pretty sure it was spent doing something fun.
My mom and dad flew in a few days before the party; Tyler and Ozma flew in the next day, and Zak and Shelby flew in the day after that. We spent a few days cooking and eating and getting everything ready for the party, and then Saturday was the big day. It was so much fun getting together with the whole family and celebrating such a wonderful milestone with my grandma! I think every cousin was there but 1, and his wife had just had a baby so he was understandably excused. We spent 2 days eating, playing, talking, singing, watching videos, and just plain having fun! Zak and Shelby had to leave on Sunday, and so while my mom and her sisters took Grandma to Park City for some girl time, my dad, me, Tyler, Ozma, Kara and Sophie did some sight-seeing. Evens was deathly sick, so he stayed home to sleep. We ended up going to Park City and then drove through Provo Canyon. We had to stop at Bridal Veil Falls to let the girls play in the water, but then someone got the bright idea that we should all hike to the top of the Falls. (stupid me) Ozma and I were wearing cowboy boots (again, stupid me) and we each took turns carrying the girls. It was a lot of hard work, but definitely worth it once we got to the top and felt that wonderful cold mist coming off the waterfall.
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| Tyler |
We hiked back down and let the girls play in the water.
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| Sophie wanted me to hold her so that she could put her feet in, |
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| and then pull them back out when they got too cold! |
At one point we lost Kara, but found her walking across the pond to this huge rock. Sure glad the water didn't get any deeper, because my dad and I were not close enough to catch her!
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| Showing off her big muscles that helped her climb that huge rock all by herself! |
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| Just chatting with some random friend on the rock | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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| When we told Sophie we were leaving she ran back to the bridge screaming and crying. She did not want to go! |
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That was a very fun day! We ate dinner at In 'n Out (yum!) and then went home and crashed. Tyler and Ozma left the next day, but we managed to squeeze in a trip to Salt Lake City to visit the Gateway and ride the elevator to the top of the Joseph Smith building (I think???) to take pictures. If Tyler ever sends those to me I will post them because I think some of them turned out really cool.
My dad also took us girls up to Bear Lake. While in Logan canyon we also stopped so Kara could do some rock climbing. Man that girl can climb! I took pictures and video on my camcorder so if I can get those onto my computer I will post those.
As you can see, July (and the first part of August) was incredibly busy, but so much fun! I am looking forward to relaxing (somewhat) this month. Kara starts preschool at the end of August and can't stop talking to everyone about it! And Evens's birthday is this week. And our anniversary. So maybe August won't be as relaxing as I hoped...
