Just me and the kids at Granny's house

Every year Cris goes up to Fish Lake in Oregon with his Grandpa's friend and his cousin. They usually go the first weekend in August, but I had to work that weekend. I had the following weekend off, so Cris went on his trip and I took the kids down to Utah to celebrate my birthday with my family. We had so much fun! Granny got 2 new kittens and Karson couldn't get enough of them! He held them about 75% of the time we were there... it would have been 100% if we would have let him.

We went to the Hogle Zoo... which is undergoing some construction, but we still saw lots of cool animals. The coolest animal we saw was the polar bear. It was showing off for us by doing the backstroke in its pool haha. Chloe was so tired that she fell asleep within minutes of getting back in the car. My grandparents came over that evening with a delicious ice cream cake... mmmmm!

The next day we went up to my grandparent's cabin. My mom rented a paddleboard so we took that, a kayak and a wind surfer down to the lake until the stormy weather hit and we headed back up to the cabin for some 4-wheeling. The kids loved the 4-wheelers!

 Stand up paddleboarding!

Sunday we headed back to my parent's house and had my dad's family over for a little birthday party for me... yay for another ice cream cake! Then on Monday we went to the new rec center in Provo. They had the coolest pool ever! Inside there was a lazy river, a rock climbing wall, slides and a huge kiddie pool. Outside they had a couple bigger slides, another kiddie pool and some lap pools. We had so much fun! Chloe loved the lazy river and Karson was all over the place, just having a blast. Tuesday, we headed home :( It's always sad to leave, and Karson asked me to turn around almost the whole way home. Cris was missing us and it was our 2yr wedding anniversary, so we had to get home.

Mmmmm blueberries!

Provo Rec Center

Camping, camping and more camping!

We took Chloe for her first camping trip of the summer a couple weekends ago for a redneck wedding. She did pretty good, and we had a fun time! The wedding was right along the river up at Boiling Springs, which was so pretty! Chloe loved running around in the dirt and actually slept semi-okay for us (with a lot of patience/determination on Cris's behalf). It was a good trial run, but we were kinda bummed that Karson wasn't with us (he was off spending a fun-filled weekend at Aunt Janet's house instead).

The next weekend we made our annual family trip to Lava Hot Springs and had a blast!  Mom and Dad made some delicious Dutch oven meals, and the weather was somewhat cooperative. It rained for awhile on Saturday, but the sun came out just long enough for Mom, Dad, Karson and me to float the river a few times. We sat in the hot pools on Saturday night, which put me right to bed when we got back to camp LOL. I had full intentions of staying up to socialize with the fam, but fell asleep while putting Chloe to bed... oops! We spent our last day floating the river, and it was nice and sunny until the last few minutes of our last float... when it started raining again. But I do have to say the rain was a nice break from the hot weather we have been having.

Cris had a couple unfortunate experiences during our trip. On the first day there he got tossed around by a waterfall while floating the river and scraped his back up. The last day he slipped walking down to the river barefoot, which resulted in a blood blister on his heel about the size of a half dollar... ouch! And if you didn't already know, we came home to a destroyed chicken coop and 4 dead chickens :( Sad day! Fortunately, one of the chickens survived and we were able to get her home... so there might be some more chickens joining our family in the near future. It has been a busy summer, and I think we're about ready for school to start and life to change pace for a little while :)

Cris caught a whopper!!!