Rosie Comes to Visit

 Caleb, Johanna, and Rosie came to Utah for a family event. There were a lot of changes to their schedule and they ended up spending a couple days in Provo, so Caleb asked if they could stay at our house one night. We were all so excited to see them! Tessa made a few signs for them and hung them in their room.

Julie came to Utah too, and I met up with her, Lindy, Al, and Grandma for lunch. Our acai bowls were delicious!!

Tessa was so so so excited when Rosie got there that night! They got right to bonding with each other. :)

She is so stinking cute!!

We all took turns holding her as much as we could. :)

Tessa got some good time to hold her the next morning before school too. That's a couple of cute girls right there!!

That night Tessa and I went to Haley's graduation party. She graduated with a Master's from the University of Utah and her parents threw a really fun party to celebrate. It was fun to watch Tessa and Hallee get to know Uncle Ron a little bit.

I found some cute selfies on my phone after that party. :)

Mel and I joined Haley and JJ on the dance floor for a little bit before we left. It was really fun to let loose for a bit and laugh with my sister and cousins.

Tessa and Hallee joined in too and we had a lot of fun.

On Sunday we went to Grandma and Grandpa's to celebrate all the graduates and Damon's birthday. We were so excited to see Rosie again. 

Damon loves it when Jonah plays with him. Jonah was using him as weights this time, and Damon thought it was awesome. 

There was a big group of graduates this year! Caitlyn and Amarie are graduating high school, Elijah, Johanna and Caleb earned their Bachelors, and Kyle and Paige earned their Masters. Nice work everyone!!

Grandpa talked a little about the importance of education that both his parents and Grandma's parents instilled in them from a very young age. They have definitely passed that on to their children as well.

Damon loved celebrating his birthday with the Ham Fam.

Alpine Days

Rockwell qualified for Alpine Days in the 800m, 1600m, and the 4x400 relay. The top 3 athletes in each event get to represent their school at Alpine Days. He was really excited for this, and Paul and I were really excited to watch him. Paul was teaching on the first day, but luckily made it there right in time for the 1600m.

Rockwell set a goal to run the mile in under 6 minutes, and accomplished it by finishing in 5:58. Way to go Rockwell!!!

That was his only event on the first day, and it was very hot, so we left as soon as he was finished and got some dinner at Dairy Queen. :)

The next day was the 800m. They ran this one in 2 heats for 7th grade boys. Rockwell took 2nd in his heat, and 11th overall. He finished in 2:36, which was 20 seconds faster than his next fastest 800!!! He was just feeling it, and you could tell as soon as he took off the line.

Paul and I were so impressed with how he was keeping his pace up that we didn't even notice that his shoe fell off somewhere in the first 100m. He didn't flinch, or look back, or slow down at all so we didn't even realize anything had happened. He ran 700m with only one shoe on!!!! We were super impressed with his PR, and then when we realized he PR-ed with only one shoe, we were stunned. :) He did such an amazing job keeping his mind where it should be and not letting a hard thing stop him or slow him down. Great job Rockwell!!

Sadly, one of the teammates for the relay didn't show up so they weren't able to run the 4x400. We stuck around just in case he showed up, or Mrs Robison was able to get ahold of another boy to come fill in. But nobody could make it there in such short notice, so they just had to skip that one. Rockwell was bummed about that. He sure did awesome on the two races he ran though. Track was such a good thing for Rockwell. He made good friends, realized he likes running distance, got in good shape, and was very happy with his decision to join the team. Great work all season Rockwell! We're proud of you.

Life Lately

While Rockwell and I were on the campout, Damon had an amazing soccer game. Paul said he played so well and scored 2 goals. Damon thought it was so cool that his coach asked him to help the other boys at practice that week to learn to be more aggressive. 

Tessa was a great helper in the yard that day too.

We had Monday off school last week, so Paul and Rockwell spent the day helping Grandpa Ham with his yard. They pruned the peach tree, transferred rocks, and cleaned out the rocks. 

They had some lunch at Burger King and had a great day together!

I love that Mrs Cooper posts pictures and videos on Instagram for the parents. Damon loved his field trip to the farm.

He enjoyed selling his stick people for the class market.

They did some reading outside when the weather was actually nice for a couple days.

And they have been researching their animals for their Animal Report. It's so fun to see little glimpses of things they do at school.

Tessa and I love to watch The Voice together. Paul took a pic of us watching. :)

I love love love getting pictures of the cute new babies in our family. Zariyah pulls some adorable faces!

Damon got his jaw expander and braces on this week. He doesn't have room for new teeth to grow in, so even though he's really young, it was time to make some room in his mouth.

I feel like he immediately looked about 3 years older!

Aubrey walked all the kids to and from school on Friday since it was Walk To School Day. They thought that was really fun.

Youth Campout

Rockwell and I got to go on a Youth Campout with our ward last weekend. We camped in Green River Friday night. When we got there, we set up our tents, had some dinner, and then did the Lip Sync Battle and had a devotional from the bishopric. The Lip Sync Battle is a huge deal in our ward!! Rockwell had told me that the Deacons quorum were doing Peaches from the new Mario movie, but he didn't tell me that he was going to wear a whole Luigi costume. :) I was so surprised to look over and see him like that. Haha!

Their song was a fan favorite for sure! Everyone enjoyed that one. Here they are listening to the reviews of the judges.

After the judges deliberated for a while, they announced the Deacons came in 2nd and our Young Women's class came in 1st for the second year in a row!! They chose Cruisin' for a Bruisin', and it really was so cute and well done! 

They were so excited to get that trophy again!

The next morning we had some breakfast and packed up all our stuff. The kids had fun skipping rocks in the river when they had any down time.

We drove to Goblin Valley and spent the morning there. It was such a cool place, and perfect for a huge group of youth.

There aren't trails, you can just explore and climb on everything. Everyone immediately started climbing on the goblins!

And jumping from goblin to goblin apparently. :)

Elena's mom had let us know that her depth perception is about 70% what most people have. This causes some safety concerns around edges and cliffs. She ran to the goblins and tried to climb them, but I could see she was pretty unsteady and having a hard time knowing where to step. Angela and I stuck real close to her and tried to help her find some she could climb safely. 

I think it was a little frustrating for her to see all the other kids climbing everything and jumping and scaling edges of the rocks. 

Angela and I just stuck with her and we headed over to "the gray rock" that we were supposed to end up at. Nobody came for quite a while and so I headed up to the top of the gray rock to see if I could see where the group was. I couldn't see anyone, but I sure saw some gorgeous views up there!

Turns out there was a different gray rock that everyone went to. Whoops! We headed over to see if we could catch up, and luckily we ran into Mike, Brother Lawrence, and Jared Searle. They took us to a cave that everyone had already gone through.

You could climb to the back of the cave, and then up and out of a hole at the top of the cave. Mike said it was real tricky and then it was dicey to get back down on the backside of the mountain, so we just looked at the front of the cave and headed back out. Elena was having some trouble climbing down, so Mike jumped right in and had her step on his back to get down. :) It was a little sad to miss out on the cave and seeing Rockwell and the rest of the girls enjoying Goblin Valley, but Angela and I agreed that it all worked out for the best that we stuck together and did a different route with Elena. 

We ate lunch on some picnic tables, and then drove to Little Horse Slot Canyon. This was so so cool!!

We hiked about 3 miles in and then 3 miles out. It was beautiful and so cool to hike through the slot areas!!

Afton and I thought it was really fun to climb the walls. :)

We stopped to rest for a bit and took some pictures. I stayed with Elena again, so I hardly saw Rockwell the whole time. It was fun to see him when we stopped here. He had such a blast!! He loved everything about this whole trip.

Kyle had dinner bagged up for us to eat in our cars on the way home. It was a really long drive home. Talia and I really thought the girls would be exhausted and want to sleep on the way home, but they were not. :) They were so loud and crazy the whole time. Talia and I were very excited when we got back to the church and out of the car. :)

When quiet time was over on Sunday, Rockwell didn't come out of his room. I went and checked on him after a while and found him napping. He wore himself out having so much fun!