Bear Lake

Brent and Kristene took us to Bear Lake again in September. It was a super fun weekend! The cabin is just beautiful, looking out over the golf course. 

We started out with racing Go Carts.

It was so funny to hear Brent smack talking before we started! And to see little Emilie be so aggressive on the race track. :) I loved it.






After we cleaned the grime off our faces from eating Brent's dust (haha! But literally. :), we played some board games at the cabin. Then we went to dinner at the Conestoga Ranch. It was great food and a great atmosphere, with the open air and live country music.

We sat around the campfire after dinner and laughed our faces off. I'll just leave it at that. ;)
Isn't this panoramic selfie cool?! It took us about 20 tries, but totally worth it. And it only added to the laughs.

We went to the Juanito Bandito play at Pickleville Playhouse, "Who Shot Juanito Bandito?" Those plays are so funny.


On Sunday Kristene made a delicious breakfast and we played some more games. It was so fun to spend all that adult time together. We love Bear Lake Weekend!

Family Week

We were so excited that Chad came to visit for about a week in September! It was a busy week, but we wanted to see him as much as we could. We did family pictures and went to Bear Lake with the Clark's, went to dinner with Clay's side of the family, and had dinner at Adria's house with Marlene's side of the family. It was really great to see everyone so much that week.

We also went to Sully's baby blessing that week.

He is absolutely adorable. The kids had a ton of fun playing with their cousins at Caitlin and Trevor's house after the blessing.

Clark Family Pictures

We took family pictures with our Clark family since Chad was here in town.

I love them! Cade and Chad worked together to make sure they turned out awesome! They are both very talented.

I'm so grateful to be a part of this beautiful family!!

The cousins had fun together and were pretty good sports about not being too crazy until the pictures were finished. :)

Labor Day Campout

We camped in Grandma and Gramps' backyard over Labor Day. This is one of the kids' favorite nights of the year. We got there early in the day and the kids loved playing outside for hours.

We roasted hot dogs over the fire and had a yummy dinner. Damon was so funny. He told Gramps over and over again how great of a fire he made. "Gramps, I like your fire." "Gramps, great fire." "Gramps, good job making a fire." I heard him compliment his fire at least 13 times. It was adorable.

All the kids liked picking Grandma's strawberries and finding the toad in her garden.

We played spike ball and night games and roasted marshmallows and starburst over the fire.

We had breakfast and played some more before heading home on Monday. It didn't take long at all for Damon and Tess to fall asleep after such a fun campout.

  

What The Kids Did...

Here's what the kids did when Paul and I worked on the new landscape.

  

  

  

  

As long as water was involved, they were happy!

  

  

New Landscape

Paul and I have never been crazy about the landscape at our house. It was very "wild," which is not our style. We decided to change it this summer. We took almost everything out of the planters in the front and back yard, and put new sod in the backyard. It took months of work.

Those bushes were a beast to get out!

We had quite the pile of everything we removed throughout this process!

We decided to do rocks with more sparse plants and flowers, since we loved that in Eagle Mountain. After removing all the plants and bushes, and digging up the stepping stones from the planters, we went to some nurseries to choose our plants.

We laid down weed tarp everywhere, and then cut spots for the plants and planted them.


Then the rocks were delivered. We shoveled the rocks into wheelbarrows and spread them throughout all the planters.

  

Al came over and helped with the rocks two days in a row. She was a huge help!!! That was so nice of her, especially since it was 100 degrees! The work went so much faster with her help, plus it was so much more fun with her there. Some guy was driving past and stopped to tell us how tough we were doing all that in the heat, and then played Eye of the Tiger for us to pump us up. :) 

Our neighbor, Ray, came and helped Paul finish the rocks up one night too, after I had fractured my rib while surfing and couldn't help anymore. Those Loosli's are sure good people. :)

Rockwell loved helping any time he could. I loved hearing him say how good it feels to work hard every night when he would head inside for bedtime.

Keith and Ben came and helped Paul lay the sod in the back yard. That was so nice of them to spend their Saturday helping us! It was great to cover up all that dirt! The last part was power washing the stepping stones in the backyard, building a barrier around the stairs and hot tub pad, and laying the last of the rocks in that spot.

Rockwell was a huge help with that part. He worked so hard that day, helping Paul power wash the hot tub pad and deck too.

Then he wanted to help mow the lawn too. I love that he's such a hard worker.

We love the new landscape!



The backyard sod is still struggling. It's very frustrating! I'm not sure what the solution is.

We've had a few flowers bloom, but we're excited for when the flowers and grasses bloom and fill in over the next couple years.
  

I also planted a succulent garden in a garden box that's on our deck. I put all the heart rocks I've collected over the past couple years in too. It's fun to remember all the places we've been to collect all those rocks. I'd look for them whenever we went up the canyon, on a hike, to the coast, or to the ocean.