What a trip!

Well we survived our stay in Royal City, WA. In fact we had a BLAST!! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE going home. I know it is not technically my home any longer, but because I grew up there it will always be home to me. There are so many things I love about going home, but for sure the best thing is seeing family. My kids have soo much fun with their cousins, and every time we go they beg us to move there! I have the greatest family in the world! We have so much fun together! In 5 days here is a list of things we did: (remember this was only Monday -Friday! And with 11 children in tow!)

*Swimming at the pond (complete with rope swing, zip line, paddle boats and canoe
*Swimming at another pond with a HUGE concrete slide the kids LOVED!
*Swimming at Christensen's baby pools
*Swimming at a different Christensen's big pool
*Swimming lessons at neighbors pool (man we did a LOT of swimming!)
*A day at the lake (although boating didn't work out so well..mechanical trouble!)
*visited Great Grandma A in her new assisted living apt. twice. Ate lunch there too!
*Boys went paint balling
*Girls got pedicures and went to dinner
*kids played at the school gym several times (one of their FAVORITE activities)
*worked 3 mornings weeding and picking up branches at the cherry orchard
*hours and hours, miles and miles of riding 4 wheeler and golf cart illegally around town! (no calls to the cop this time, luckily!)
*hours and hours and more hours of jumping on the tramp
*toured a mint plant where they take mint from the mint fields and turn it into mint oil that goes in gum, toothpaste...etc. This was cool!
(I know I am missing soo much...but these were just SOME of what we did)


WHEW!! No wonder we are EXHAUSTED! So exhausted that on the way home Brian and I were struggling to stay awake (that NEVER happens to Brian!)so we stopped and stayed the night in Boise. It was such a fun trip though, and we discovered that if we "schedule"out every day we went crazy...oh what I meant to say was we stayed very busy and got to do everything we wanted to do in our time there. Thanks sooo much to Mom, Becky, and Courtney (and their families)for dropping everything for the whole week and keeping us constantly entertained! We honestly had the BEST week! I took hundreds of pictures...so here is just a fraction of the ones that show all our adventures! WARNING: A LOT of photos coming up!

Tyson on the rope swing....thanks Matt for talking him into this!!


Visiting Grandma Great


Two monkeys in a canoe


Three monkeys in a canoe


Sydney flying high!


Kylie looking a little nervous!


How many monkeys can you fit on one golf cart?


Grandpa and Aftyn with their kind of fun at the pond!



Grandma making cookies with the kids (she's so great!)


Dad's gotta have fun too!



It's a speeding bullet! Seriously you went soo fast on this slide! It was great!


ahhh summer BBQ's at the Lake!


Uncle Matt is such a show off!


The "big" kids went to lunch all by themselves! They are growing up!


hot tub in Boise on the way home


My crazy, crazy kids! (pool in Boise)


I wish I had pictures of the kids working in the orchard, although you could not really get the full effect unless you could hear the whining that constantly accompanied the kids. The grand kids love working on the farm about as much as us girls did growing up. Ha! Guess they are taking after their parents. They ended up working fairly hard and getting everything done Grandpa had scheduled for them. My kids of course have already spent their money! Thanks Dad, for helping me teach my kids to work. I might plant a small orchard to keep them going! Plus the cherries are SOOO YUMMY!

A great big bonus of the trip was that Dad let us take the ski boat back to Utah with us for the summer. They don't use it much anymore and we live soo close to the Lake, that we will use it a TON. We have already gone out twice. Both times we had technical problems, but my amazing hubby has got the boat working and the kids are loving it! I'm sure there will be lots of boating pictures coming up! I just wish all the cousins were here to enjoy it with us! Those Andersen's really do know how to have a good time!

We're off!

We are headed out to Washington today for a week stay. A little r&r is in order.
(although I have a feeling we will come home exhausted, sunburned, and ready for a break from each other!!) But the fun will be great while it lasts! See ya next week!

A whole lotta everything

This post is a bunch of random pictures of random events over the last couple of weeks. Sorry it is soo...well... random!"

My nephew Tyler graduated from Canyon View H.S. on my birthday May 22. We headed down for the celebration. Congrats Tyler...we are so proud of you! Anyone who can survive High School these days is a hero in my book! Here are a few pictures of that trip:

I loved their gowns...they were such a unique color!


Tyson wanted to wear the cap, because he "graduated" from 2nd grade!


Brian's Grandpa who just turned 90 drove up. Doesn't he look great!

I absolutely love where we live! We have streams for endless playing in, the hot springs pool, which we swim in all year round, and beautiful mountains that surround us. Although we moved from this neighborhood, we still have friends who let us borrow their key so, Heather and I took the kids in for a day of ...stream playing, swimming, mud playing, and volleyball playing. A great time was had by all!


A little volleyball to start off the day!


"Mud Magnets!"


Cleaning up in the warm stream water! Feels good!


These boys were up to NO GOOD! But having a LOT of fun!


Sydney chillin'...I mean "roastin'!"

Next up was our trip to the Mount Oquirrh temple open house. It was a lot different than the Draper temple, but equally as beautiful. The Draper temple had beautiful hardwood and woodwork throughout, but the Mt. Oquirrh had beautiful stone/travertine (sp?) throughout. We are so lucky to live by so many temples. There is NO EXCUSES to not be attending regularly. We now have 3 temples within 20 min drive, and about 6 within an hour!

Isn't IT beautiful?


Aren't THEY beautiful! I am not biased AT ALL!

Summer swim has also started. Fun times dragging the children out of bed at 6:30a.m. during the summer. They swim M-F for 2 hours (minus Tyson who only swims for 1 hour) and on M, W, F, they swim for 2 hours then run for 45 min. Nothing like boot camp over the summer to whip the kids in shape!Man they are sleeping GOOD at night though! They are exhausted! Hopefully there will be a meet coming up soon for me to post about. I have actually missed swim meets. Wasn't sure I would ever say that. Brian and Tyson have been sick the last few days, so we've been taking it easy. Brian is on the mend, and back to working. A camping trip and Washington trip are on the agenda next.
Happy Birthday to my Mommy today. She seriously is the BEST! I love you Mom. I won't tell you how old she is...but I will tell you that she looks WAY younger than she actually is. Must be the Grandma B. genes in her! Hope you have a great day Toots (as my Dad calls her)! You deserve it!