July 4th, 2010

July the 3rd (celebrated in UT on the 3rd b/c the 4th was a Sunday) and 4th were a BLAST! All the community activities were on Saturday July 3rd (Traverse Mountain Carnival, Thanksgiving Point fireworks, etc.). Baby G is doing a "power to the people" pose here. The American People that is. She's very patriotic already. ;)

& we got to celebrate with the whole Durtschi family on sunday the 4th! We had an AWESOME meal, Karina made the coolest Watermelon cake, Madee made the perfect Flag Cake & beautiful floral arrangement using flowers from her beautiful and coveted garden,

Thomas always surprises us with his delicious concoctions, while Grant brought a Red, White, & Blue salad. Jennifer made up a Watermelon drink because that's just how we roll in the Durtschi family. WATERMELON! I just realized, in this one meal, we had fresh cut watermelon to eat, watermelon pureed and mixed with club soda to drink, then a cake shaped like a watermelon for dessert! haha!!! The Durtschis crack me up! One of these days I may just do a blog entry called "An Ode to Watermelon".

The kids put together an awesome and very patriotic play narrarated by Karina reading the Gettysburg address. (Their costumes were incredible!! Thanks Aesha & Karina!!) We played scrabble & other games. Michael was Uncle Sam for the day. Then our cul de sac did tons of mini fireworks in the street. (ours were the best by far!! eep! did I just say that?!?!?!)

Horseback Riding Lessons

Tabitha Hill was fun enough to do Horseback Riding Lessons for Chiropractic Adjustments swap! Each boy was at a different level emotionally and physically with riding. Every Tuesday this summer we would be at Horseback Riding Lessons (English style!) by 8a!

She taught the boys how to groom the horses, how to walk around and talk with a horse,

how to saddle up a horse, what the different parts of a horse are (the boys especially liked the part of the hoof called "the frog"! but it was SURE hard to clean the mud out of it!!),

we cleaned out the stalls and the corral,

played red light green light (one of our favorites!!) against Tabitha's dog...

By the end, Tabitha had them all feeling very confident on a horse, giving it directions, guiding and even TROTTING!

At the end of their summer of lessons Tabitha congratulated them by giving them Certificates of Accomplishment and we had our own Horse Party right there in the Barn!

snuggling babyG

Our neighborhood

Kids in our neighborhood congregate in our cul de sac right outside our front door. We've hung out there with them to watch them race their bikes, bring out ice cream for them all (they all said it was better than the ice cream truck that visits our neighborhood every now & then!!), play basketball on the neighbor's basket, bike with them, blow bubbles, putt nerf golf, play with neighbor's dogs, roast marshmallows, & just hang out in general. It's such a neat feeling to feel so connected with our neighbors.

Paper Airplanes

Aaron wanted to have a paper airplane. So Eric asked him what kind? Aaron wasn't sure so Eric made all sorts of different paper airplanes.

Eric suggested they have a champion test (since Aaron doesn't like "racing" or competing right now) so Aaron could judge which was his favorite. They tested which could do the best tricks, which flew the fastest, the hardest, & gave them super cool names like: "Super Trickster", "Vin Fiz Flyer", "Classic Cruiser", & "Super Jet". They had quite the system going and each came up with their favorite! Afterward, we strung them from the big boys bedroom ceiling so they could watch their airplanes in flight every day!