A few weeks ago, we went to California to visit Aarons family for about a week. They put in a pool this year so when we weren't playing games or visiting, we were swimming! The air temperature was around 108 and the pool temperature was 85, so we could swim all day and night without ever getting cold! It was great for the kids, they just got in and out of the pool constantly and never got cold. Cameron had 4 weeks of swimming lessons this year and has made a huge improvement from last year. He was jumping and diving off of the side, diving for rings, and making faces at us under water! Last year, he wouldn't even put his face in the water!

After about 5 days, we headed to San Diego to the beach! Cameron loved playing in the sand and jumping waves in the ocean! Owen played in the sand until every inch of him was covered in it! Graham went around trying to "wash" everything off. He wasn't too happy about being sandy, and figured that on one else liked it either. He spent most of his time washing the toys in the pool and dumping buckets of water on everyone who had sand on them!

It was warm and beautiful and we had some great waves! Cyndi (my little sister) and Pete came and hung out at the beach with us! We swam all day and played games all night. I even ate some sushi (it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but not my favorite thing).

On the way home, we stayed in mesquite and spent several hours playing in the pool at the hotel! This was our last vacation of the summer, and none of us wanted it to end!!! I am going to post a slide show with the pictures so I dont have to add them all one at a time!!!......

yellowstone

We went to Yellowstone in June with Aaron's family and I have been putting off posting it because I still haven't sorted through the bazillion pictures I took there, but I decided I better do it anyway before I forget what we did. His entire family was able to come, so it was kinda crazy, but tons of fun! Lucas had his 2nd birthday, we played rock band, hung out at the cabin, and toured as much of Yellowstone as we could! We saw a bear about 50 feet off of the road (a little black bear), tons of elk, and of course buffalo!

We walked the loop around Old Faithful and saw tons of different geysers and springs. It was a pretty long walk, but the kids were still running by the end of it! We also hiked down some really steep switchbacks to the lookout over an amazing waterfall. Aaron carried Owen in a backpack and took turns pushing a stroller with graham and lucas in it! (taking a stroller down the trail turned out to be a bad idea....but everyone survived!)

We then decided to hike down about twenty billion stairs to another viewpoint. It was an amazing view, but quite a workout! It was a lot of fun....Yellowstone is a pretty amazing place and we had a great time spending time with family! It is the first time we have all spent that much time together for a long time and we loved it!

There are 7 grandkids.....all boys.....and they had so much fun together! Lucas and Graham followed each other around exploring everything. Cameron, Parker, and Aiden were busy being silly and having the greatest conversations about everything around them.... everytime I would catch a little bit of what they were saying, I had to laugh....little boys are hysterical! Brennar and Owen spent most of their time being passed between their moms and grandma! They all had a lot of fun together and were sad when we all had to go back to our own homes!